Fire Emblem Three Houses post. That is all.


I finished my Edelgard playthrough. The final battle had an interesting and challenging mechanic, but climaxed in an arduous slog against a *gasp* dragon who could oneshot pretty much anyone. How did my well-considered maddening-difficulty plans fare?

Well, let's start with one prevailing observation: through much of the playthrough, any enemy unit could oneshot most of my squad. This was with xp gain focused on my starting lineup of twelve. The only way to have milked more experience out of the run would have been to bypass motivation-restoring exploration for battles.

• Canto and especially flyers played out well. They tend to have a high avoid and can do damage and retreat to an inaccessible location. Objectives-permitting, my tactics tended to be tower defense, so my flyers were the only way I could thin enemy numbers or break the steady stream of attackers into discrete waves (allowing my other units to finish a wave without being left exposed).
• I often needed to kill an enemy by any means necessary to avoid burning through your wheel of time. Combat arts sometimes helped, but are often a wash based on lowered attack speed. Having unique weapons like Luln and the Sublime Creator Sword were the best way to drop an enemy when it would otherwise mean taking a casualty.
• My tanks were useless since they could, at best, survive one attack. Aegis and Defiant Strength simply did not go very far on this difficulty. My tanks ended up being anyone with 2x5 charges of Impregnable Wall (batallion).
• FE3H has a lot of defiant _____ and other skills that trigger at low health. The one-hit thing made these pretty pointless unless I wanted to intentionally keep a unit at low health.
• This playthrough (plot path?) had more enemy monsters with barriers that were invulnerable to magic. It wasn't the end of the world, but it takes one class of ranged units out of the pool to take down the shield and trigger a stun.
• Speaking of stuns, this difficulty level meant I learned to pay much closer attention to (and not waste) the momentary stun triggered by removing any single monster shield square. On easier difficulties you can just burst on the full-turn stun and finish the monster quickly.
• Lethality didn't trigger quite as often as I expected, but it was a really nice way to take down a full phase of a tough monster. It's also a great feeling to have a unit with Impregnable Wall trigger Lethality.

Since it is *three* houses, I decided to make a second maddening run with Dimitri. To add some spice, I grabbed the DLC and ran through the okay side arc.


The gameplan:

• Paralogues are important xp and unique weapons farms. I'm not sure if I missed out on any in the last run, so recruiting and getting buddy-buddy with everyone is a priority (while not burning xp on actually fielding them). This means tea time and adjutant usage.
• No tanks, just archers, mages, and flyers.
• Bring someone with Silence along. Ranged magic is rough.
• Use my favorites (Lysithea, Cyril, Petra) but try out the DLC characters and classes.
• Do my homework to avoid dead ends and units receiving suboptimal growth rolls.

The DLC added a really neat alternative final class for Byleth. Rather than walking around with Enlightened One or being a non-swordsman with Wyvern Lord, a female protagonist can go Dark Flyer and focus on sword and black magic all while floating effortlessly above rooftops.*

*Pure digression, but it'd be an interesting (and maybe bad) gameplay mechanic where flyers couldn't be attacked by non-ranged ground units.


Completing the DLC campaign is best done before a new playthrough. Completing it provides a few things, including:

• New recruitable characters
• New classes
• Skirmish battles that have greater rewards
• Access to a sauna that, I guess, boosts learning or something
• A few items, including a (permanent) MV+2 consumable and an equippable ring that (like most bosses) allows counterattack at any distance

I reformatted some info from Serene's Forest to be more (in my mind) useful.

Class growth rates

Last time around, I summed all stats and used those as an "all things being equal, what classes are great and what classes suck". I've since realized that HP (for maddening), Luck, and Charm are situational at best; judging a class by speed and dexterity gains is far more important. So I came up with a different metric:


Since you have limited control over your attacker, I equally weight defense and resistance, then throw a half-weighted luck value in since it plays a role (and roll XD) in crit resist. There is a case to be made for ingoring defense altogether (maddening) and also for adding speed and dexterity and even HP. Since I'm using Defense' as a stepping stone value for my real metrics, I left it simple.


So this is basically a measure of how good a given class is for a physical attack build. It takes the physical attack combat modifiers and sprinkles on a devalued/mixed defensive ability while totally ignoring HP and Charm.


Same deal for magic. There's something to be said for a third, combined metric to cover Dark Flyers and Tricksters and the like. But let's take the growth chart and add columns for total stats, physical stats, and magical stats:

Type	Class	HP	Str	Mag	Dex	Spd	Lck	Def	Res	Cha	Tot	D'	Phy	Mgc
Unique	Noble	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	5	5	0	0	0
Unique	Commoner	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Unique	Dancer	20	-5	0	0	0	0	-5	-5	10	15	-10	-15	-10
Unique	Enlightened One	20	10	10	0	0	0	5	0	5	50	5	15	15
Unique	Armored Lord	20	5	5	0	0	0	5	5	10	50	10	15	15
Unique	High Lord	20	5	0	5	0	0	5	0	10	45	5	15	10
Unique	Wyvern Master	20	10	0	0	5	0	5	0	10	50	5	20	10
Unique	Emperor	30	10	10	0	0	0	5	5	10	70	10	20	20
Unique	Great Lord	30	10	0	10	0	0	5	0	10	65	5	25	15
Unique	Barbarossa	30	15	0	0	10	0	5	0	10	70	5	30	15
Beginner	Myrmidon	10	0	0	0	5	0	0	-5	5	15	-5	0	0
Beginner	Soldier	10	0	0	5	0	0	0	-5	5	15	-5	0	0
Beginner	Fighter	10	5	0	0	0	0	0	-5	5	15	-5	0	-5
Beginner	Monk	5	0	0	0	0	0	0	5	5	15	5	5	5
Intermediate	Lord	20	0	0	10	0	0	0	0	10	40	0	10	10
Intermediate	Mercenary	20	5	0	0	5	0	0	-5	5	30	-5	5	0
Intermediate	Thief	20	0	0	10	10	0	0	0	5	45	0	20	20
Intermediate	Armored Knight	20	0	0	0	-10	0	10	-5	5	20	5	-5	-5
Intermediate	Cavalier	20	5	0	5	-10	0	5	0	5	30	5	5	0
Intermediate	Brigand	30	10	0	0	0	0	0	-5	5	40	-5	5	-5
Intermediate	Archer	5	0	0	10	0	5	0	0	5	25	3	13	13
Intermediate	Brawler	30	0	-10	10	10	0	0	-10	5	35	-10	10	0
Intermediate	Mage	5	-5	10	5	0	0	-5	5	5	20	0	0	15
Intermediate	Dark Mage	5	-5	10	5	0	0	-5	5	0	15	0	0	15
Intermediate	Priest	5	-5	5	5	0	0	-5	10	10	25	5	5	15
Intermediate	Pegasus Knight	15	0	0	0	10	0	0	5	10	40	5	15	15
Advanced	Hero	30	10	0	0	10	0	0	-5	5	50	-5	15	5
Advanced	Swordmaster	25	10	0	0	20	0	0	-5	5	55	-5	25	15
Advanced	Assassin	20	0	0	20	20	0	0	0	0	60	0	40	40
Advanced	Fortress Knight	30	10	0	0	-10	0	15	0	5	50	15	15	5
Advanced	Paladin	30	10	0	5	-10	5	5	5	5	55	13	18	8
Advanced	Wyvern Rider	30	10	-5	0	0	0	5	-5	5	40	0	10	-5
Advanced	Warrior	40	15	-5	0	0	0	0	0	5	55	0	15	-5
Advanced	Sniper	10	5	0	20	0	10	0	0	5	50	5	30	25
Advanced	Grappler	40	10	0	10	10	0	0	0	5	75	0	30	20
Advanced	Warlock	10	0	10	0	0	0	-5	5	5	25	0	0	10
Advanced	Dark Bishop	10	0	10	0	0	0	-5	5	0	20	0	0	10
Advanced	Bishop	10	0	10	0	0	10	-5	5	10	40	5	5	15
Special (DLC)	Trickster	20	0	0	15	20	10	0	5	0	70	10	45	45
Special (DLC)	War Monk/Cleric	40	10	5	10	0	0	0	5	5	75	5	25	20
Special (DLC)	Dark Flier	20	0	0	0	10	0	0	10	10	50	10	20	20
Special (DLC)	Valkyrie	5	0	5	0	-5	5	5	10	10	35	18	13	18
Special (DLC)	Death Knight	30	10	10	0	-5	0	5	5	0	55	10	15	15
Master	Falcon Knight	30	10	0	0	20	0	0	5	10	75	5	35	25
Master	Wyvern Lord	30	15	-5	0	10	0	5	0	5	60	5	30	10
Master	Mortal Savant	20	10	10	0	-10	10	0	0	5	45	5	5	5
Master	Great Knight	30	10	0	0	-10	0	5	-5	5	35	0	0	-10
Master	Bow Knight	10	0	0	0	-5	0	0	0	5	10	0	-5	-5
Master	Dark Knight	10	5	10	0	-5	0	5	10	5	40	15	15	20
Master	Holy Knight	10	0	10	0	-5	10	5	10	10	50	20	15	25
Master	War Master	40	15	0	0	10	0	0	0	5	70	0	25	10
Master	Gremory	10	0	10	10	0	0	0	5	10	45	5	15	25

Neat, but verbose. Should we be happy with this metric, a more useful chart shows classes, proficiencies, and the derived combat values:

Type	Class	Proficient	Proficient	Proficient	Growth	Phys	Mgc
Unique	Noble				5	0	0
Unique	Commoner				0	0	0
Unique	Dancer	Sword	Authority		15	-15	-10
Unique	Enlightened One	Sword	Brawl	Faith	50	15	15
Unique	Armored Lord	Axe	Authority	Armor	50	15	15
Unique	High Lord	Sword	Lance	Authority	45	15	10
Unique	Wyvern Master	Bow	Authority	Flying	50	20	10
Unique	Emperor (Edelgard)	Axe	Authority	Armor	70	20	20
Unique	Great Lord (Dimitri)	Sword	Lance	Authority	65	25	15
Unique	Barbarossa (Claude)	Bow	Authority	Flying	70	30	15
Beginner	Myrmidon	Sword			15	0	0
Beginner	Soldier	Lance			15	0	0
Beginner	Fighter	Axe	Bow	Brawl	15	0	-5
Beginner	Monk	Faith	Reason		15	5	5
Intermediate	Lord	Sword	Lance	Authority	40	10	10
Intermediate	Mercenary	Sword	Axe		30	5	0
Intermediate	Thief	Sword	Bow		45	20	20
Intermediate	Armored Knight	Lance	Axe	Armor	20	-5	-5
Intermediate	Cavalier	Sword	Lance	Riding	30	5	0
Intermediate	Brigand	Axe	Brawl		40	5	-5
Intermediate	Archer	Sword	Bow		25	13	13
Intermediate	Brawler (M)	Axe	Brawl		35	10	0
Intermediate	Mage	Faith	Reason		20	0	15
Intermediate	Dark Mage (M)	Faith	Reason		15	0	15
Intermediate	Priest	Faith	Reason		25	5	15
Intermediate	Pegasus Knight (F)	Sword	Lance	Flying	40	15	15
Advanced	Hero (M)	Sword	Axe		50	15	5
Advanced	Swordmaster	Sword			55	25	15
Advanced	Assassin	Sword	Bow		60	40	40
Advanced	Fortress Knight	Lance	Axe	Armor	50	15	5
Advanced	Paladin	Sword	Lance	Riding	55	18	8
Advanced	Wyvern Rider	Lance	Axe	Flying	40	10	-5
Advanced	Warrior	Axe			55	15	-5
Advanced	Sniper	Bow			50	30	25
Advanced	Grappler (M)	Brawl			75	30	20
Advanced	Warlock	Faith	Reason		25	0	10
Advanced	Dark Bishop (M)	Faith	Reason		20	0	10
Advanced	Bishop	Faith	Reason		40	5	15
Special (DLC)	Trickster	Sword	Faith	Reason	70	45	45
Special (DLC)	War Monk/Cleric	Axe	Brawl	Faith	75	25	20
Special (DLC)	Dark Flier (F)	Sword	Reason	Flying	50	20	20
Special (DLC)	Valkyrie (F)	Faith	Reason	Riding	35	13	18
Special (DLC)	Death Knight	Lance	Reason	Riding	55	15	15
Master	Falcon Knight	Sword	Lance	Flying	75	35	25
Master	Wyvern Lord	Lance	Axe	Flying	60	30	10
Master	Mortal Savant	Sword	Reason		45	5	5
Master	Great Knight	Lance	Axe	Armor	35	0	-10
Master	Bow Knight	Lance	Bow	Riding	10	-5	-5
Master	Dark Knight	Lance	Reason	Riding	40	15	20
Master	Holy Knight	Lance	Faith	Riding	50	15	25
Master	War Master (M)	Axe	Brawl		70	25	10
Master	Gremory (F)	Faith	Reason		45	15	25

Base stats

On to a hyperoptimization. Units qualify for promoted classes at a particular level and, by definition, their stats will be the lowest at that point. It is then advantageous to stop xp gain at that threshold and let the unit qualify for whatever classes they can and thereby harvest the 'free' stat boosts. An example would be a physical attack build that happens to qualify for a magic class, they'll likely be stunted in Mag and Res and thereby harvest the gains for momentarily speccing into that class. A brawler may not use magic very much, but he'll certainly benefit from resistance.

Type	Class	HP	Str	Mag	Dex	Spd	Lck	Def	Res	Cha
Unique	Noble	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Unique	Commoner	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Unique	Dancer	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Unique	Enlightened One	28	17	8	12	14	10	12	10	0
Unique	Armored Lord	38	17	8	12	6	10	17	8	0
Unique	High Lord	30	16	7	11	13	9	13	9	0
Unique	Wyvern Master	30	17	9	13	19	11	14	11	0
Unique	Emperor	38	17	8	12	6	10	17	8	0
Unique	Great Lord	35	17	8	12	14	10	14	10	0
Unique	Barbarossa	35	18	10	14	20	12	15	12	0
Beginner	Myrmidon	20	7	3	6	6	4	5	2	0
Beginner	Soldier	20	8	3	6	6	4	5	2	0
Beginner	Fighter	20	8	3	6	6	4	5	2	0
Beginner	Monk	20	4	8	6	6	4	3	4	0
Intermediate	Lord	25	9	6	10	10	8	6	3	0
Intermediate	Mercenary	25	9	6	10	10	8	6	2	0
Intermediate	Thief	25	9	6	11	11	8	6	2	0
Intermediate	Armored Knight	30	9	6	7	4	8	12	1	0
Intermediate	Cavalier	25	9	6	7	6	8	6	2	0
Intermediate	Brigand	28	10	6	7	7	8	6	2	0
Intermediate	Archer	25	8	6	8	7	8	5	2	0
Intermediate	Brawler	28	9	6	7	8	8	6	1	0
Intermediate	Mage	25	4	10	7	6	8	3	5	0
Intermediate	Dark Mage	25	4	10	7	6	8	3	5	0
Intermediate	Priest	25	4	9	7	6	8	3	5	0
Intermediate	Pegasus Knight	25	8	6	7	8	8	5	4	0
Advanced	Hero	30	17	8	12	14	10	12	8	0
Advanced	Swordmaster	30	17	8	12	14	10	12	8	0
Advanced	Assassin	30	17	8	12	14	10	12	8	0
Advanced	Fortress Knight	35	17	8	12	8	10	17	7	0
Advanced	Paladin	32	17	8	12	14	10	12	8	0
Advanced	Wyvern Rider	30	18	8	12	14	10	12	8	0
Advanced	Warrior	32	19	8	12	14	10	13	8	0
Advanced	Sniper	30	17	8	12	14	10	12	8	0
Advanced	Grappler	32	17	8	12	14	10	14	7	0
Advanced	Warlock	30	8	17	12	14	10	12	15	0
Advanced	Dark Bishop	30	8	17	12	14	10	12	15	0
Advanced	Bishop	30	8	15	12	14	10	12	15	0
Special (DLC)	Trickster	28	14	12	10	14	12	10	10	0
Special (DLC)	War Monk/Cleric	32	17	10	10	10	10	14	11	0
Special (DLC)	Dark Flier	25	8	6	7	8	8	5	4	0
Special (DLC)	Valkyrie	20	5	10	10	9	9	9	13	0
Special (DLC)	Death Knight	32	10	17	14	16	12	13	15	0
Master	Falcon Knight	32	18	10	14	20	12	13	14	0
Master	Wyvern Lord	32	18	10	14	20	12	15	12	0
Master	Mortal Savant	32	17	17	14	16	12	14	12	0
Master	Great Knight	34	18	10	14	10	12	17	10	0
Master	Bow Knight	32	17	10	14	16	12	14	10	0
Master	Dark Knight	32	10	17	14	16	12	13	15	0
Master	Holy Knight	32	8	15	14	16	12	13	16	0
Master	War Master	33	20	10	14	16	12	15	10	0
Master	Gremory	32	8	17	14	16	12	13	16	0

Character	Final class	Notes
Byleth	Dark Flyer Sword Reason Flying	Byleth should be pretty formidable as a flyer with movement boosts, her preferred sword abilities, and reason magic. Transmute plus the light magic avoid skills could be pretty neat. Since New Game+ allows the relearning of skills, I gave her Seal Strength (defender receives Str-6) to help level new units.
Dimitri	Wyvern Lord Lance Axe Flying	Training Dimitri up on riding gives him Seal Movement which could be helpful - then again, what's movement - 1? He natively has increased avoid at full health, so it makes sense to make him a flyer.
Ashe	Bow Knight Lance Bow Riding	Ashe was a favorite from my last playthrough where he got movement boosts, learned Pass, and could pick locks. With Stride and Impregnable Wall, he could safely get to the far corners of the map even without a buddy casting Warp. Since I wanted to go a different direction and he's somewhat made to be an archer, I decided to take him the Bow Knight route and get that dexterity stat with Bowrange +2. Ashe is also able to bring Seal Strength to the table in NG+, letting my low level magic units class into physical attack classes temporarily for speed and dexterity bonuses.
Lysithea	Valkyrie Faith Reason Riding	Having the greatest magic stat growth rate, Lysithea is irreplaceable. Rather than walking around in robes, I'm hoping as a Valkyrie she can use extended movement, Canto, and the bonus magic range to wreck enemies from a safe distance.
Petra	Bow Knight Lance Bow Riding	Petra is the Lysithea of dexterity. That made sense. She natively has bonus critical chance to enemies with less-than-half health, which could be very useful if I can remember it. I liked her as a Pegasus Knight and I'm hoping that popping off arrows from horses will work just as well.
Anna	Dark Flyer Sword Reason Flying	I wanted to use most of the DLC characters, Anna being the fan favorite among them. She emphasizes luck, which is a weird - possibly pessimistic stat to build around. Since she can gain Pass from riding and has decent dexterity and magic growths, I decided to make her a dark flyer with maxed out avoid. Aside from the normal flyer skills, winning the Heron Cup will give her Sword Avoid, which makes Dark Flyer the right choice.
Yuri	Wyvern Lord Lance Axe Flying	Yuri's personal ability is bonus damage against lone enemies. While this difficulty level isn't great for operations behind enemy lines, making him a flyer was as good a choice as any. He's bad in like all Wyvern Lord skills, so it's gotta be a secret build, right?
Constance	Valkyrie Faith Reason Riding	Constance gets offensive buffs outdoors and defensive buffs indoors. Or the opposite. Either way, she's a magic-focused DLC character who seemed to make sense as a Valkyrie.
Hapi	Dark Flyer Sword Reason Flying	Hapi feels a lot like Constance but with the personal ability of having attacks that are always effective against monsters. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but if she can blast a magic shelled dragon with a tome, I'm all for it.
Cyril	Trickster Sword Faith Reason	Cyril made a formidible Wyvern Lord since Aptitude gives him monster stats. As a Trickster, he gets a big bonus to a random stat every round, so maybe that could be really neat.
Shamir	Falcon Knight Lance Sword Flying	Shamir gets a neat stat bonus after killing an enemy. That might help her survive the occasional counterattack, but it could also be good with the dance batallion that Dimitri's plot unlocks.
Mercedes	??? [Magic]	My #12 slot was kind of a toss up. Since I had leveled Mercedes in my first playthrough, having her get NG+ upgraded faith and reason abilities seemed like a nice thing to have in the early game. That is, physic is a handy spell when the game expects you to just have heal. Also casting high level spells is easy xp.

Hey, you. You're finally awake. You were trying to cross the border, right? Walked right into that Imperial ambush, same as us, and that thief over there.

?

Source.

Hey, everyone, can we please just agree on the following:

• Vaccine - yes
• Vax - sure, if you're in a hurry
• Antivax - you're dumb, but okay
• Vaxxine - let's not do this, there's already a word for this

The WSB v. hedgie class war briefly took a back seat last week as an unrelated institutional investor caused Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to do a Margin Call LARP.

Archegos wasn't a scalp taken by retail investors (as initially rumored), it wasn't even a hedge fund or short seller. It was a family investment firm for a tiger cub that had highly-leveraged long positions in American and Chinese media and tech stocks.

Tide goes in, tide goes out, right? The interesting (though probably not uncommon) story came from how Archegos's brokers handled the situation.

CNBC

The night before the Archegos Capital story burst into public view late last month, the fund's biggest prime broker quietly unloaded some of its risky positions to hedge funds... The basket of shares it was selling... was merely the opening salvo of an unprecedented wave of tens of billions of dollars in sales by Morgan Stanley and other investment banks starting the very next day.

Morgan Stanley handed a bunch of hedge funds the bag on their portion of the eleven-figure portfolio. And to their peers:

CNBC	Credit Suisse said Tuesday that it took a $4.7 billion hit after unwinding losing Archegos positions; the firm also cut its dividend and halted share buybacks.

As Jeremy Irons's character said, "There are three ways to make a living in this business: be first, be smarter, or cheat. I don't cheat."

/u/IwillDecide The SEC doing fine work as usual??

/u/nomad80 I expect a whopping 100k fine & a stern warning

/u/DanyeelsAnulmint Very stern

/u/LJ3f3S Beary stern

Many months ago, Hindenburg Research (short seller) posted a hit piece on Nikola. Nikola is basically the Fyre Festival of electric vehicles, complete with Billy McFarland knockoff Trevor Milton. There were all kinds of great tidbits from the story, but the big curtain pull was the "Nikola One in motion" video that was superb weasel-wording of their truck rolling down a hill that appears to be flat ground.

WSB has long been fanboys of Tesla/Elon and, since it's the internet, they like calling bullshit on things. So the Hindenburg piece was well-liked, contrary to the CNBC-propagated idea that WSB is totally against short sellers and just wants to take down hedgies.

Well, history repeats, except this time it's Hindenburg calling out Lordstown Motors - some midwest company making an e-truck with in-wheel motors. History almost repeats, anyway. The defense of Lordstown/RIDE got a lot of upvotes.


I haven't done any research on RIDE. I did some on NKLA and made money on puts back in the olden days. Regardless of whether Lordstown is legit or a Theranos-level bamboozle, there's some pretty clear astroturfing disguised as DD or, at the very least, extreme fanboyism. In the Nikola days, it was pretty low effort - there was a Nikola sub that occasionally took the bait and ventured into WSB for mockery. Now that WSB is prime time, it looks like companies are throwing legitimate money at "viral marketing" that might just turn into a huge investment boost (see GME's new offering).


The account has two posts. Both about RIDE. "Who do us apes hate even more than shorts?" It's such a sad attempt to "fellow kids" the sub while throwing out garbage like "Never bet against America."

Anonymous Are we saving the bag boys?

/u/spellbadgrammargood its weird how most of the postitive comments are from 2 month old accounts

/u/UnionLibertarian My account is new but that's just because I too got sucked in to Reddit from all the GME hype.

In the Nikola era, if anyone said, "Never bet against America" the first reply would be, "Sir, this is a casino." The post would be removed, the user would be banned. Zjz must have taken a day off or got himself banned again or something.

There were critical comments, but they were downvoted by probably the same accounts that gave the post a bunch of awards right away. Unfortunately, Reddit is more focused on banning accounts with no-no words and trying to wrap their heads around quotations and sarcasm.

/u/brrrrpopop Jim Cramer giggled when Little Foot's mom died in the Land Before Time

/u/gamesketch0 Cold

Still, the noncommercial accounts are good for DD and laughs. Jim Cramer facts have been one of the highlights of the WSB-Cramer drama.


Yeah. More banter:

Reuters

The flows are also raising fears of a pullback from record highs, given valuations are at the highest since the dotcom bubble of the late 1990s, with the S&P 500 trading at nearly 22 times forward earnings. "Goldilocks and melt-up are popular terms this week and we think that can be seen through market valuation," said Emmanuel Cau, head of European equity strategy at Barclays. It was followed by a massive $40 million bet in the U.S. options market on Thursday that the Cboe Volatility Index - often called Wall Street’s fear gauge - will break above the 25 level and rise towards 40 by mid-July.

More market ATHs, more talk of inflation solving the budget deficit, more extensions on eviction moratoria. Then again, I never bet against America.

Source.

In search of immunity

Hey, I got it. First dose, anyway.

It was a bit of a twisting path, to recap:

• December: Jessica (and presumably Danielle) get theirs. Jealous.
• January: There are rumors we'll get it through work and that it all blew up at the last minute.
• February: I become caregiver to both an infant and a discharged patient.
• March: Pretty much everyone I know starts getting their vaccines due to a BMI over 25 or high blood pressure. I'm BMI 24 and my blood pressure is just under what would be considered the bottom of 'high'.

The county eligibility mandate for pre-April 15 jabs.

Dilemma

Even my company sent a broadcast email highlighting that medical eligibility was self-policed. It was an ethical quandary: do I just fudge it since I grazed eligibility in a handful of different ways? As always, I turned to 4chan for guidance.

anon

The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing. To return a shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one which we all recognize as the correct, appropriate thing to do. To return the shopping cart is objectively right. There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart. Simultaneously, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart. Therefore the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it. No one will punish you for not returning the shopping cart, no one will fine you or kill you for not returning the shopping cart, you gain nothing by returning the shopping cart. You must return the shopping cart out of the goodness of your own heart. You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do. Because it is correct. A person who is unable to do this is no better than an animal, an absolute savage who can only be made to do what is right by threatening them with a law and the force that stands behind it. The Shopping Cart is what determines whether a person is a good or bad memeber of society.

The Parable of the Shopping Cart pretty clearly instructed me to not fake my way into a vaccine, even if I'm not one of those Tier 2 plebs. Side note, I think I'm going to start posting my favorite greentexts.

Plot twist

Late March roles around and Jes goes to get an all-clear from her physician. She returned with a signed note that as her caregiver, I should get a vaccine. Almost two months after delivery.

After some more consideration, I decided if I wasn't going to second guess the county thresholds for qualification, I'd remain consistent with a not-particularly-prompt doctor's note.

Actually scheduling the thing was another story. The site linked by the county and everwhere else was something like myturn.org, which typically reported no appointments available. Friends had links to sites like vaccinateca.net and cavaccines.gov that listed vaccine supply at individual superstations and pharmacies. So you could click through to CVS, Walgreens, Vons, Ralphs (individually) and typically be presented with an annoying text chat interface that would query your eligibility criteria. Once you got to the end of the q&a, it'd tell you there are no appointments available at that location, but you could start the chat/data entry process again with a different store selected.

Just some amazing user experience.

And let's remember that my eligibility was not one of the dropdowns, so they'd all tell me to kindly exit their site. My healthcare provider concierge service (honestly the best thing ever) was able to call the county, explain the situation, and get them to say - basically - "just lie on eligibility form" knowing that I had the documentation to bring to the vaccination center.

Jes to the rescue. Or maybe the qualifying criteria she chose put me on a priority list vs the selection I made.


Semi-relatedly, Avenida de la Playa is temporarily closed to vehicle traffic and it should absolutely stay that way. Shore Rider was great for a burger and a rice lager.

		Need mo' baby pics on there!		Connie
Chris	Hmmm, hate to make it look like insta.
		Reading your March posts now. I've got NOK too. Bullish again for the hold. =P
		I'm skipping the gaming stuff. Too much gaming.
	Dunno if NOK will ever leave the 4s.
		Hey... you have a new truck... and a kayak?

Connie is now caught up on everything (whew). That's good for her because I'm super interesting and it's good for me because she had a hot tip on NNOX that could have yielded 60% gains in a day. Unfortunately someone else had the hot tip and that 60% all happened in the opening seconds of premarket. So really, all positive reinforcement on this blog thing.


Easter. She didn't like the bunny hat.


Jes has been doing the play gym thing regularly (thanks Kevin and Cheryl!) and I mostly take her on walks where the most interesting thing is leaves. The high-contrast vision/brain development thing feels a bit like neural network training... which I suppose is exactly what it is. So I'm not sure if pushing her around the 'baby nascar' track in the living room while holding up a mirror (that she stares at) is good for cognitive development or sending her to baby bat country.

This is maybe why people have a second child.


There hasn't been a ton of gaming, but when we blast, there's a lot of C4. Got a full (three-man) squad C4 kill in a house outside of Villa, I put a second one around back to catch them escaping but the first was enough.



Then there was the perfect run, i.e. it included Shelter, sick jumps/shenanigans, C4 squad kill, and a dinner:


I also refined my office setup. Monitor stands for multiscreen/multisystem with my main/gaming monitor on a swivel arm to position in cascade mode or front-and-center. I turned the spare nursery shelving into a rack for tower, amp, woofer, stick/throttle, docking station, scanner, and usb accessories. It's a lot cleaner.


Five drives, two OSes.

Source.

On the heels of my millennial memepost there's been a flurry of millennialisms smacking me in the face with confirmation bias. Well, let's start with my oldest friends appreciating the informative value of the post:

Connie	Bwahahaha! Still reading, but hilarious. Dude, remember the ice bucket challenge? And cursive!?! I think it's education wanting to teach less!
	Oh and this, "Congrats, gen-y, you had a good run, now go raise generation alpha while paying off your historic levels of debt." Haha... good one.
	Oh no. No on the "send it". That's totally climbing terminology.
	Oooh oooh. I understand the "yeet".
		Sebastian's team says YEET!!!		KO
	Liam talks to me in acronyms. It's annoying.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, xennials and gen-x simply should not mix with gen-y, it's unnatural:

Rob	Lady keeps staring at her phone instead of watching [The Wire].

I didn't specifically mention dualscreening, but I should tack it on. Then things got creepily on-point from the gaming crew:

				kshot
		I do it a lot		Unattributed
		lol		kshot
Chris	Fixed:
		Also, oof, LOL		Unattributed
		LOL		kshot
	Anyway, this reminds me of what Dumbledore said to Hermione...
		Use the force?		Unattributed
	Haha who knows??? JKR got canceled for being a TERF.
		Yeah lol
				Cattle

Llamapost about lol-as-punctuation, oof, a Simpsons reply from the gen-xer that was - of all things - Abe Simpson. Either the dudes are trolling me or the social commentary is very real.

		... There's even a setting to tell ios "Yeah, no I actually meant it. I want [live photo] off. You fucking prick."		Rob
		I already had it set. OS doesn't care.
		This is the same sort of shit that keeps me buying Nikon over Canon. When the human says do it you fucking do it you silicon piece of trash.
Chris	Car companies should roll with the chip shortage and make analog models.

They keep bringing back these classic roadsters and selling them as $200k one-offs. Just give me a production 2000GT without six-zone climate control and lane assist. Fuel injection is just fine as long as you leave off traction control.


The Lipmorelos crew was looking at VRBOs for Friendsgiving '21 and I got slapped in the face with a very niche pet peeve that has come up before with investment property searches. The really, really bad photoshop jobs to put a blue sky into images... how have we not done better as a society?

If it wasn't obvious, I decided to tie this in to the car bit above. Anyway, more on Friendsgiving:

		Hey, a couple of its guys are going to California. Zac got into gambling again and he's going to rehab. We want to show him some support before he goes in.		Sants
Zac	Rehab is the name of the pool party that we will be at in Vegas.
	So it's not a total lie.

MacBrover joins the battle.

?

This post is about millennials. It's an exploration of the things that make gen-y unique, both the good and the bad. Mathematically speaking, I'm a millennial, so I'm entitled to meme about them - uh, us.

Source.

Mathematically speaking (but with a higher degree of precision), I'm a "yoomer" or, more formally, an xennial - the intergenerational group characterized by an analog childhood and digital adulthood. Our mentors are gen-x, our subordinates are gen-y, so I'm able to make scientific observations about why each generation sucks. In this case we're just discussing millennials. There won't be one about gen-x because they're all pretty awesome and have to constantly put up with millennial nonsense.


So in the spirit of April 1, social science, lists, and humor, I thought I'm enumerate some of the best and worst millennialisms before their cultural dominance is supplanted by the zoomers. Congrats, gen-y, you had a good run, now go raise generation alpha while paying off your historic levels of debt.


I should make two up-front observations about millennials:

1. They have a victimization complex
2. They hate generalizations

Regarding #1, I'll point out that I have some complementary things to say and also some of my best friends are proper millennials. Regarding #2, remember that generalizations are simply statistical observations. Every person chooses their own path, and being born in the US between 1980 and 2000 doesn't mean you have to contextualize everything in Harry Potter terms.


On the subject of list mechanics, since these items have been ranked in an extremely scientific way, there are both callbacks and calls forward. So if it looks like a topic we haven't discussed or perhaps an autocorrect fail, be patient. E.g. "autocorrect fail" is itself a forward reference to bottom ten item number four. Hilarious, I know.

7. The end of cursive

This was probably a decision made by gen-x teachers and administrators, but millennials get the credit for proving that society wouldn't collapse if we stopped connecting our letters. I'm genuinely curious how you guys came up with signatures if you never learned how many humps a cursive 'm' has (it's seven, by the way).

But since y'all managed to sign your student loan documents I guess things have panned out.

6. The _________ challenge

So this one is a double-edged sword. Sure, these 'challenges' get old real quick and they're centered around getting meaningless social media views. But at its core, a challenge is a meme combined with a feat of strength and sometimes a YOLO. These are character-building, risk-taking, and sometimes funny. It's like walking around a party with 151 teaching people to blow fireballs, except that spectators are safe at home rather than crippled from the anxiety of seeing fire.

I won't watch your challenge, but if someone messages me a really funny or amazing one, I might watch that.

5. Verbal irony

My generation had a knife full of spoons when all you need is a metaphor, or however that stupid song went. Since then, the primary meaning of irony has moved from a difficult-to-grasp logical concept to what is called 'verbal irony', or sarcasm.

I hated this once, after all there are figuratively dozens of synonyms for sarcasm. But verbal irony has grown on me. For one, I found that the Brits seem to use it a lot, so maybe it's been a longstanding thing over millennials left their bubble to make it a thing over here. Second, while 'irony' seems to just be a cheap way to evade the negative connotation of 'sarcasm', the derived term 'unironically' is especially useful:

I unironically like watching crossfitters video themselves running up a hill with paddleboat anchors velcroed to their wrists. I don't need reinforcement for my life choices, but I don't mind it either.

'Unironically' is a great way to clarify your lack of sarcasm while expressing condemnation.

4. YOLO

Yes, "You Only Live Once" has been accurately described as "carpe diem for idiots". But you know what? I think it has a place and I'll tell you why.

You have to italicize carpe diem because it's Latin. Clearly, that last sentence reads just fine in normal font, but a lot of Latin doesn't.

A priori.

I bet you read that and first thought I was talking about a thing. I wasn't, I was saying beforehand, but fancier.

And don't even get me started on cum hoc ergo propter hoc. Yes, you in fact need to italicize Latin for the sanity of the reader. And sometimes to avoid a chat with internet HR. Now some things are known primarily by their Latin, like ad hoc and tu quoque. A priori is a bit more borderline since it has easy substitutes. But using Latin to make a point as basic and understandable as YOLO? As the millennials say, cringe.

Are you not convinced by a typographical argument?

YOLO is also catchier, an acronym, and easy to yell as you're doing the wasabe enema challenge or whatever.

So, good for you, millennials, I unironically applaud YOLO.

3. Sending it

"Send it" is YOLO after YOLO became old, but before YOLO became nostalgic. Where YOLO has been employed to justify wearing mismatched socks or literal nudity, sends are considerably more physical, dangerous, and entertaining. Also while YOLO is a word of encouragement, instructing someone to send it is more of a dare and - as I understand it - provides legal indemnification from any consequences.

Thank you for this expression, millennials, never stop sending it.

2. Memes and the new lexicon (the good)

Millennials did not invent the meme and they rode the coattails of its emergence, but they put the most work into The Meta and deserve credit.

My (sub)generation couldn't do much better than 'duh', 'everything sucks', and 'what...ever' in our youth. As we got older we giggled at 'donkey punch' and 'minivan'. In the workplace, we let the actual boomers convince us to start verbing nouns. None of these were particularly clever and none aged well. While the millennial lexicon is somewhat hit and miss (see other list), next to us they look positively Shakespearian.

While beaten to death at the time of this writing, the simple mention of the name 'Karen' tells you exactly what you're dealing with - or, what you manager will have to deal with. I've already praised the delightful mantras 'ironically', 'YOLO', 'send it'.

Red is sus? Red is always sus. F in the chat, boys. Dicks out for Harambe. Gen-y'ers can juggle a thick catalogue of cultural references while not abandoning film and literature. For example, millennials upcycled a classic phrase to describe their comedic financial struggles with 'yeet the rich'.

What's more, my generation's pager code and AIM shorthand didn't go the way of Morse code, Latin, and cursive. Nay, gen-y took our limited shorthand dictionary and expanded it to include now-common expressions such as smh (shake my head), ikr (I know, right), rn (right now), and tbqhf (to be quite honest, fam).

1. They are the least tolerant of intolerance

I needed to round the list out at seven so I asked Jes for something unironically good about millennials. Her immediate response became my #1, so that probably says something about how bias these lists are.

Here's another roundabout explanation that's kind of like my Latin/italicization one but maybe better.

If you've read the boomer classic Ender's Game, you know that while Ender is studying up on battle simulations, his siblings fight an ideological battle on the homefront. They're so effective at political discourse they become major political figures simply by owning others with facts and logic (in the real sense not the stupid Ben Shapiro sense). In our reality, the internet eventually provided the infrastructure for a similar scenario, but thanks to laws such as Poe's, Godwin's, and Cohen's, it really hasn't worked out quite as dystopically-well as it did in the book. (This idea certainly isn't unique to that novel, but Orson Scott Card was the perfect choice for this.)

Enter "going viral" and the individually-pathetic-but-collectively-impressive millennial consumer class. Thanks to the technology and the economics, we've almost reached a world of cyber-populism where anyone can become an influencer of opinions based on their message rather than their identity. And when something trends, the world changes. Temporarily, at least, things don't trend for very long and millennials have attention spans of goldfish.

So while the message isn't always good and there's a lot of noise, crowdsourced morality has shined through and comprehensively condemned anything-phobia.

Of course, it's not all K-Pop fans drowning out white nationalist hashtags, this phenomenon also briefly destroyed capitalism. Yikes.

7. LOL is not punctuation

The easy fix is to tell your phone to autocorrect 'lol' to '.'

6. Influencers

The internet provides a level playing field where anyone can be a celebrity if they have a funny cat or can make rad Fortnite skins. But where there's celebrities, there's wannabe celebrities.

And they are unbearable. I think. I really have done a good job of insulating myself from that nonsense.

Millennials, please tell me you realize how stupid the idea of a tiktok hype house is. Gen-z, you get a pass since you're too young to realize.

5. Memes and the new lexicon (the bad)

The new parlance isn't all good. We've already talked about how gen-y needs to contextualize everything as a Harry Potter reference. It's like what we do with The Simpsons except, you know, The Simpsons was superb social commentary and not a formulaic magic story written for children.

Chris	Cattle, you gotta use trigger warnings, kshot might kobe that hardware into the wall.
		Oof		Anonymous
		YeEeEeeT		AnonymousTwo
		Pain		Anonymous

Oof? Yikes? Ayooop? These words don't mean anything. Yeet gets a pass.


As you can see from my charts above, baby boomers, or 'boomers', are postwar births from 1946-1964. At least, that was the definition. Then millennials decided that their self-inflicted problems were caused by boomer pensioners and landlords, collectively choosing to other anyone who doesn't compulsively look at their cell phone every ten seconds.

This fundamental unwillingness to understand anything not in their social media feed is rather benign until you have to deal with the "okay boomer" mentality.

4. Semi-literacy

There was a time that misspelling 'potato' could literally end your political career. Back when nuns would smack you with a yardstick if you made a mistake writing in cursive on parchment. Society has overcorrected hard - or perhaps it has autocorrected hard. Boomer humor lol

As someone who frequently punctuates texts with the letter 'm', I'm not going to drag anyone over the coals for legit typos. But c'mon, it's at least worth the effort to learn the meaning of there/they're/their. Not an adequately self-centered reason? It will save you having to call people "grammar Nazi's" all the time. A few more:

• A part is not the same as apart, as with setup and set up
• Bias is a noun, biased is an adjective
• Advice is a noun, advise is a verb
• Loose and lose have never been interchangeable
• People cross borders, not boarders
• Apostrophe, it's not used for pluralization

None of this is autocorrect's fault.

And, of course, we can't forget it was millennials that decided literally meant figuratively.

Using 'literally' to mean 'nonliterally' is okay because Charles Dickens used it that way once so it's okay.

Okay doomer.

3. Generation Me Pt. II

The uncharitable description of millennials is that they're egocentric and have an underdeveloped sense of accountability (particularly with misspellings). A quick survey of social media will tell you that there is truth to this, but such a statement should be qualified just a bit.

As a xennial, I'm familiar with the "you can be anything you want" mantra pushed on kids born after 1980. We all know the story - boomers fought a cultural revolution then raised special snowflakes who could be president-astronaut-doctors, but ended up with a permanent basement tenant. And so you have a cocktail of self-centeredness combined with feelings of crippling failure all fed through the amplifier of a delicate social media persona.


And here's where yoomers and doomers divide. We had an analog childhood where friends were friends, rumors were word-of-mouth, and confrontation was in-person. The bulk of gen-y has had to deal with the growing presence of social media, personal branding, and emotional manipulation. And here they actually are victims of xoomers and yoomers like Zuck and Tom from Myspace lol

2. Gatekeeping, toxicity, triggers, safe spaces, and other problematic things

If you recall, my highest praise for millennials was that they are intolerant of injustice. Well, for any great thing there also exists lazy, copycat pretenders willing to abuse a good idea for positive reinforcement.

Millennials are the center of their own universe - their parents told them so and their social media tells them so. So when something is uncomfortable or offensive for them it's everyone's problem. The best way to convey this, of course, is to refer to the uncomfortable thing as 'problematic'; millennial for, "I can't relate this concern in an objective manner because I am too lazy and unwilling to consider the viewpoints of others".

Since problematic things are highly individualized, it's important to discuss these things in self-supportive teams. This helps build confidence and consensus on the platform. It's not so effective when you encounter another team, or some thot who says, "Sorry Karen, NEXT!" At that point, the entire situation becomes 'toxic' which is millennial for "I'm not going to confront this problem and if you ask me to it will trigger my anxiety".

This is a revolutionary method of solving problems and finding compromise, and that's why any large company has specific manager trainings on how to deal with gen-y.

Gatekeeping is another fun one. If you're not familiar, its use is illustrated in the following two interactions:

Boy: Girls aren't allowed in the treehouse. Girl: That's gatekeeping! Boy: I mean, there boomer-literally is a gate here, and I'm the keeper, but I understand your point about baseless discrimination. As long as you have your cooties vaccine I will permit entry.

Doctor: Your child needs a polio vaccine so he doesn't get polio. Karen: Vax? Yikes! I don't see any medical need for this, he doesn't even ride horses. Doctor: I'm sorry, what are your medical qualifications? Karen: Don't gatekeep! My beliefs on medical therapy are just as valid as yours!

Like 'problematic' and SAD, calling something gatekeeping is employed as an argumentative cheat code that everyone's opinion is equally valid.

1. Appropriation and the birth of the citizen psychiatrist

Millennials literally all have SAD (social anxiety disorder). Social anxiety probably existed in my era, but nobody had it. Or if they did, they internalized it because they didn't want to get made fun of. How mean were we back in the day?

But the pendulum has swung pretty far in the opposite direction. The legitimate issues caused by overmedication and techonology have been drowned out by self-diagnosed SAD. At this point when my brain hears "my anxiety", it involuntarily decides that the person just wants to avoid doing something mildly unpleasant. That sounds harsh, but confirmation bias is involuntarily and so telling me I'm wrong would be extremely problematic.