Due to the massive length of this article (75k words + 78k words in files), i’ve prepared a PDF for offline reading.
I wouldn’t recommend printing it – it’s 141 pages long, with another 70 pages twice in the brochure, and another 15k words text file and 40k words text file. This really is a HUGE story – and i would strongly suggest to take the time to read it.
For those interested in the asset: I’ve frontloaded it, so the information you’re most likely interested in is contained within the first ~25 pages, after which the story becomes more about me and my adventure.
Be warned though…. By the time you’re in that deep, the story will be hard to put down. Please enjoy.
The files will be added to the story where relevant and the story will mention them accordingly. Here’s also a PDF version for offline reading:
A backup of the files, minus the video, is located here:
http://s000.tinyupload.com/?file_id=07603894675608829380
2nd Backup link: file.io/zfSa7tEeWofW
Thank you for your time and attention and i wish you a pleasant read!
An Epic of Corruption, Perseverance and The New Gold.
By Kirian “Deso” van Hest
Prologue
A disclaimer upfront; Not for the accuracy of the information but the length of the article. This article alone vastly exceeds all the other work i’ve done, and furthermore contains files that are full length articles in and of themselves, including a shadowcontracts length and quality article.
Due to its extreme and unusual length, i’ve treated it as a Book (as it is one), and written it a little bit different from my usual style. I’ve written the article in distinct Chapters, and tried to make each one compelling to read on its own. I’ve tried to equal them in length where possible, and readers (or listeners) are encouraged to put the article down and pick it up later upon reaching a chapters end; Though regulators are encouraged to move their ass for once.
I promise no (intended) cliffhangers to make it easier (beyond a title reference), as this is all very high level stuff and can easily get too much in one sitting. But i make no promises as to the ability to stop reading once a chapter has started. You will find that mulling information over for a while in your head and coming back later, even while you wish to continue reading, greatly benefits the ability to absorb it all and follow the many threads of the story. A PDF that (may be freely distributed with due credit) is thus added for offline reading. For the reading, only the main article will be read, as the additional files are too emotionally draining to revisit, and the article itself is long enough. These files are best studied in peace as they provide the best insight into what to do and what not to do when marketing a product or company, you’ll ever see.
For those wondering about the asset itself – i come to that fairly early in the story, so you need not wait long. Meanwhile, i’ll tell the story in a way that’ll also teach a few things about how i actually look for things and research things, as while i’m very smart, that intelligence only comes in the form of discovering these things on my own, as well as having these thoughts on my own. The things i actually do to investigate or generate value i consider simple repeatable skills and experience from repeating those skills, things all can learn – if you’re open to learning how.
Finally, the story is written in chronological order as one might expect, but due to the very short timeframe and the large amount of stuff happening and many of it simultaneously, the timing of some events has become somewhat blurry. I will endeavor to do my best, but upfront i will mention that, from the moment of finding the website to buy the asset at to ending my relationship with the company, a little over a month had passed – making the first Twitter poll on November 26th to gauge investment demand, and ending the adventure on December 28th. Naturally i’ll be as complete as has come to be expected of my work.
Finally, this story isn’t based on real life events… it consists solely of real life events. This is as real as it gets.
Please enjoy, and thank you for reading!
The Setup
Our story starts the not to long before the initial discovery. In the middle of July i had finally gotten my brokerage account activated and worked up the courage of actually putting money in the market. I knew the markets were fairly high at that point, but i also knew whatever i was buying was going to do much better in the future, so i didn’t care much about price. While i was putting out orders and getting them filled, i discovered a Uranium stock i liked very much. Having already invested in companies i wanted to invest in and having only one order to cancel and redistribute funds, i needed a plan.
At the time i was still unknown and i needed a plan to sell the info with no reputation. I decided to make use of a gap in the market i spotted: Share the wealth. Everyone else seemed more concerned with making the maximum amount of money every step of the way while i only needed a little capital which i’d multiply in the markets myself, so i found a way to distinguish myself. And thus, i started essentially working as an information broker.
I’d sell the information on the stock for a 10% finders fee after giving away the information in full – building upon a relationship of Trust. From what i’ve learned of the markets, trust is even more important then actually making money: If your investment makes sense at the time and you’re honest about your intentions and the risks, people understand that sometimes you’re just unlucky. While the stock was good, the relationships that’d come out of being a honest information broker would become much more lucrative in the future.
This because, by the time i found the Uranium miner, i already had the confidence i could keep finding value at the bottom. I knew i was right about silver and gold, since by that time they had both exploded. My Rare earth thesis made sense (also exploded since the Trump Rare Earths decree) and i knew from Peter Lynch that i didn’t need to be right all the time, or even the majority of the time. From the companies that i knew that would do well, i knew this one would do exceptional, and i knew i could find more companies that would do well. And if you make people money once – they will always come back for more.
I got 9 offers, and made 6 sales – no rejections based on the company, but other factors around it (ethics or one guy was broke – i gave him free financial advice instead). That miner has since exploded, and thanks to the extra capital i managed to generate for it, has done quite well for me as well as everybody i sold it to.
I start the story off this way because it will become very important later on. The point of it is the public perception of me and my brand, Desogames. Aside from now being a successful investor (hey, getting it right first time around counts too), i’m well known for my work researching the Comex and the manipulation of the gold and silver futures prices. As well as my work researching Tether and its infestation of the Crypto market.
In short, by the time the story reaches its beginning at the end of November, i had built up a following around essentially doing the right thing at all costs, and making it work too. Even with a scam like Tether, i haven’t shorted it while i clearly have ways to generate extra capital to do so – meaning a loss would come at no cost to me. Instead i hold the opinion that if i have capital available, it’s better to put it into value.
All i want – and i’ve also tweeted this out many times – is to try and save a few innocent souls who don’t know what’s going on and are about to get blindsided by something yet again.
I believe in protecting the weak, sharing information with those who don’t have it, and lifting up the general welfare of all. I recognize some people will always be better then others at business, and they will always outcompete the average Joe. There is no way, with my knowledge and insights, that i’m not better at generating money and value then your average person off the street.
And i’ll be better in any system. Even one where i have to work a little bit harder to get ahead. Scams and get rich quick schemes are to be avoided, because they never add value. If you don’t work hard for your money, you will never understand its true value, a value that a single mother with 3 kids understands a heck of alot better then the rich academics at The Federal Reserve.
This reputation isn’t lost on my followers. If there has been anything that has surprised me since my blowing up on September 1st, it’s that the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. The first interview pushed me from 135 twitter followers to 2700 – and i’d estimate 95 to 98% of all comments were positive, with a large portion extremely positive. I’ve become known for bringing the data as well as understanding it thoroughly, to not make conjecture nor absolute statements – asking instead for others to look at my data and tell me i’m wrong, rather then believe me outright.
And i’ve gone to great lengths making sure that, during interviews, i stick to that paradigm strictly. If i believe something, i’ll say “i believe”. If i know something, i’ll say “i really don’t think that this’ll happen”. I’ve not been afraid to stand behind what i know, i’ve admitted mistakes where i made them (not my problem if people don’t keep up with my twitter feed), and i demand recognition only where i truly know i deserve it…. Though that’s partially due to an inferiority complex and i know i’m underselling myself, but i digress.
Again. All of this goes to describing my carefully crafted and hard earned brand and reputation in full, because it’s the crux of the later chapters. It’s also important as i’ve suggested, and sold, the asset to people who’ve invested in me before. It was also the basis for the people who joined me on the adventure and who i had a duty to protect.
But first – the story comes to how i discovered the asset, and what it actually is.
The Discovery of the New Gold
Now that i had a taste for selling information (and liking the independence it afforded me), and with the feedback from more interviews i did continuing to be overwhelmingly positive – even on the subject of crypto, notoriously a heated debate – i felt emboldened to try again at finding value at the bottom.
While Bitcoin might be wrong in thinking only rarity gives value – it’s certainly part of the equation. I understand Utility value always comes first… But once it’s there, Rarity comes second. So, literally one day, i had the absolutely genius idea of:
“Well… Gold is worth more then Silver because it’s more rare…. So what other Elements are there that are rare? Maybe one is undervalued at the moment.”
My first idea was to check the periodic table, but that’d take too long for my taste. I like efficiency in my research. So instead, i decided to go straight for the literal source and googled:
“Elements Prevalence in Crust”.
First thing that pops up is a website on “precious metals prevalence in the crust”. Well, great, but that’s not what i was looking for. I know those are rare. Whatever, i might as well click on it because i need to know how rare they are if i want to know how rare everything else is. Can’t measure relative rarity if i don’t have a yardstick.
https://articles.royalmintbullion.com/how-rare-are-precious-metals/
It states that, ignoring resource location completely (that’s fine i’m interested in rarity only anyway), Platinum is found in the crust at 5 parts per billion (OK, that’s one yardstick) – Gold is found at 4 parts per billion (Oh really? Thought platinum was more rare. Must be location then) and Osmium is 1.5 parts per billion.
….Osmium? I’ve never heard of Osmium. Why the hell is it on a precious metals website? Regardless it’s clearly rare compared to both gold and platinum, so I think that deserves a google.
Turns out – Osmium is a Platinum group metal! So it actually is a precious metal.
For those thinking at this point i went through the entire Wikipedia with my supergenius and understood it at a quantum mechanical level right away…. No, you people have the wrong idea about what being a “genius” means, and why i say anybody can learn these skills.
The first paragraph off Wikipedia reads:
“Osmium (from Greek ὀσμή osme, “smell”) is a chemical element with the symbol Os and atomic number 76. It is a hard, brittle, bluish-white transition metal in the platinum group that is found as a trace element in alloys, mostly in platinum ores”
I never read anything beyond that when i realized osmium’s value. Being smart means recognizing what effort is wasted effort, and then simply not doing it, because just as you can only spend money once, you can only spend time once. It clearly states: “Transition metal in the platinum group, found as trace element, mostly in platinum ores”. And everything i didn’t copy, my brain doesn’t even collect as information, as it’s superfluous to my goal: Finding hidden value.
Once i immediately understood that it was indeed another precious metal, but one far more rare then gold, i realized it’d do well regardless of what it was or did. As i was expecting hyperinflation, which is a psychological effect in which rarity starts counting more then utility value, i figured i’d just buy it and stick it in a vault, it’d go up regardless of what it was used for.
It’s the same logic i used to predict Rhodium and Palladium going up in 2008 – because they were at historic lows, had already gone up in the last two bubbles, and the bailouts at the time meant the system wouldn’t be cleared – something we’ve seen again in 2020. Eventually it’d go up on its own. And if i hadn’t heard of it, not alot of people had, so once people start looking for rarity… well i wouldn’t have to do much outside of waiting.
Trying to find a way to buy the stuff, i found out why it wasn’t known faster then reading the Wikipedia article: Stuff’s toxic. Finding it isn’t hard, there’s bags of it on alibaba, because ofcourse there are. But every single one has big warnings on it about the toxicity of the stuff.
Well whatever – protect myself once, never take it out of the container, leave it in a vault and just wait. Still low risk low effort high reward, and the toxicity just helps it stay unknown longer so it stays undervalued longer. Eventually somebody will find a use for it.
But even so, as i said it is utility value that gives value first, and even in hyperinflation, if the stuff can’t do anything but kill people, it’s not gonna go up much. It may be a low cost bet, but it’s still a bet.
I figured due to its extreme rarity it’d never be used in mass production. I know of silver’s problems being undermined and overused, gold is already used as little as possible due to humans wanting to preserve it, so something even more rare would never be used in production.
But i’m stubborn, as well as smart. So i googled “Industrial applications osmium” anyway. Literally costs nothing to just ask google (or other search engines). And the very first site that popped up was about something called “Crystallized Osmium”.
Well. Osmium had my interest, but now it had my attention. Everybody likes crystals. Even i bought a necklace when i was a teen (futile attempt to belong, ignore it). That immediately gives it a use case, and one that is not dependent on production: For Jewelry, rarity only increases price, but it places no limits on ability to produce it. For example extremely large diamonds go for incredible amounts of money, even though the earth produces very little of them and thus they will never be used in industry, and they have no intrinsic utility value other then the ability to cut them up into smaller diamonds. But they still sell, because we think they’re incredibly shiny, and they sell for alot because there’s not that many of them.
I’m a human behavior specialist so don’t get me started on how basic all of us really are.
After looking for crystallized osmium specifically, the site i came to was this one:
https://www.osmium-sales.com/en/mid,39962,Monopoly/
While i’ve read the whole article, immediately my eye fell on the following two paragraphs:
“The process of crystallization is not generally known in the scientific community and is not available to other companies. Crystalline osmium is therefore marketed exclusively by the German “Osmium Institut zur Inverkehrbringung und Zertifizierung von Osmium GmbH”. Osmium in its crystalline form is only available to the German Osmium-Institute (mentioned above) from a single source in Switzerland. The complex process of crystallizing osmium is currently mastered only by the supplier in Switzerland.
The complex, dangerous and cost-intensive process is not protected by patent. In order to obtain a process patent, each process must be explained and illustrated in detail. The disclosure in a patent would create a blueprint of the process and thus the possibility of imitation. Even if the procedural patent constitutes protection, costly patent protection proceedings would have to be carried out in cases of infringement. Accordingly, the patenting of the process has currently been waived.”
I understood immediately why aside from not having heard of Osmium, i hadn’t heard of Crystallized Osmium either. Whatever it was, it was being provided by a single supplier, though the process wasn’t patented. This means i was looking at a Technological Monopoly – in other words a monopoly based on a single company inventing a process that is simply hard to do, so others haven’t succeeded at it yet.
Outside of state-supported monopolies, these are the only type of monopolies that are ethical. Society never benefits from monopolies, but, society also doesn’t benefit from not-rewarding hard work and innovation. In this case there’s no anti-competition, as the competition can simply invent the process themselves as well and get a license. Only the difficulty of the act is limiting competition, and that is not something that can be legislated away.
This already told me it was a new thing, which was a good explanation for why i hadn’t heard of it yet. Further looking into crystallized osmium revealed this to be true: The process had been perfected in 2014. Further more the only licensing requirement to get a license. turned out to be mastering the process perfectly, as Osmium is toxic when exposed to air, which happens in an imperfect process. So far only one person had managed to perfect it.
But even so, i should’ve heard about something like that coming to market. Looking further into it, i came across something that never stopped bothering me: Kitco had actually already done an expose on it in February 2019. So why hadn’t it exploded? Kitco is well observed by the bullion industry, and this was effectively bullion. At this point though, having lived through roughly 10 months of 2020, i accepted the preliminary explanation of “nobody gave a shit about rarity 3 months before the gold bullmarket got started”. Which is true.
One thing remained though: Price. How expensive was this stuff, since it was so rare, yet unknown? If i’m looking for undervalued stuff, i gotta know price. And there’s a website for that: https://www.osmium-preis.com/en/
Around the time i found it, it was about 1400 Swiss francs, in a straight line up from the day it got started. Per Gram. Yes; Per Gram. Thanks to the price going up while gold corrected since September, this stuff is about as expensive per gram as gold is per ounce. Since ounces are 31 grams (roughly), Crystallized Osmium was already 31 TIMES more expensive then gold!
And nobody had even heard of it yet! Because i googled where to buy it, and nothing popped up initially, so i thought it was simply too new and hadn’t been brought to consumers yet. Though, since there was a price chart, somebody had to be buying the stuff. Especially if price was going up.
But, i had other things to do and i was already exhausted, so over October i let it rest and continued with other work. Still weird i couldn’t find it, but i tend to overlook things from time to time.
Finding more on Crystallized Osmium and the caveats to buying it
I searched two more times for crystallized osmium, as i just couldn’t let sleeping dogs lie. I knew it was only a matter of time before my uranium miner was going to go up, as more and more positive news was coming out about the sector. Since i’m also only going to get a reputation for finding extreme value consistently if i actually find it available for sale – not to mention i’m not gonna be in the market if i don’t own it – i simply had to find a place to buy it. There was a price chart, there had to be a way to acquire it.
On the first pass around i only found out more about the product itself. It turns out that it shared the same non-reactive properties as gold, so i realized the usecase for it wasn’t just pretty crystals, but it actually worked the same as gold; Being a non-deprecating asset. Those are assets that don’t change in value over time, as their properties don’t change over time. Iron bars rust, making the iron useless as currency (which is also why we have steel alloys these days). Meanwhile, there’s no technological progress in the elements themselves – once refined, they’ll always be elemental. Last year’s LCD TV will be less technologically advanced as next years model, so the value of the object deprecates. Goes for cars too.
I also looked for pictures of the crystals on google, as they had to be naturally occurring. They are, though exceedingly rare. They have a very metallic sheen and are quite pretty – though… grey. It is a platinum group metal afterall. It does look more dark grey then silver. From the pictures i’d seen on Kitco (though i didn’t watch the interview itself as i understood the asset on my own accord) the manufactured crystals looked bluish/purplish in hue. So they looked a bit different, but shiny crystals are still shiny crystals, and since i hadn’t seen blue+purple crystals before, the uniqueness only drove up the value as far as i was concerned.
I also searched for its main competitor: Diamonds. As shiny crystals, which have a utility value as jewelry and are exceedingly rare, diamonds are the obvious direct competitor to look into; And i knew nothing of the state of the diamond market. A quick search yielded this article from July 2020:
The article describes how De Beers made almost no profit after the pandemic caused the diamond sales to collapse. This made sense, since they’re a luxury product, though i would’ve expected them to do better due to money printing and a flight to value. Looking deeper into it quickly revealed the answer: The production process for artificial diamonds had been continually increased in efficiency since its invention, and was now achieving pretty high yields – and these diamonds had started to flood the market.
This made sense to me, as i remember seeing a documentary on the Discovery Channel when i was young on how they’d learned to make artificial diamonds through using shaped explosives. By concentrating all the explosive force onto a block of carbon, with the blast concentrated towards the ground and a heavy weight ontop (that comically blew skywards each time), they showed how they would get a tiny, low karat artificial diamond from the blast. Since you’ll never find me betting against innovation, it was obvious to me that this process had simply become industrialized.
Nor is it hard to imagine the direction this will go. As the hardest material we know, diamonds have a legion of industrial applications. Because of this, industry will always demand the process be improved and expanded. With the current technology, artificial diamonds are already impossible to distinguish from “real” diamonds; Because the process of creation is exactly the same: Pressure. Whether that is machine pressure or pressure from the earth’s crust over millions of years doesn’t matter.
Since this seemed to be the perfect time and place for a diamond replacement, with a new one recently being invented that was literally as good as gold – but one that could not be artificially reproduced because it was not the result of a process, but it was elemental – Crystallized osmium had plenty of use cases to blow up.
I also found more information on its relative rarity. According to websites i found, osmium is about 1000 times more rare then gold, and it takes about 10,000 tonnes of platinum ore to mine approximately one ounce of osmium ore. It’s also only located in platinum deposits, so platinum’s location restrictions apply to osmium as well. Including the societal collapse in South Africa that’s sure to dampen supply during hyperinflation further. Needless to say, i was getting quite antsy to buy the stuff.
So far i’d only found a site where i could buy a pure osmium ingot (for about the same price per ounce as gold, so REALLY cheap), but they’d sold out and haven’t restocked since. I let it lie for a little while longer as the Tether scam started accelerating and took most of my attention, something that also started adding alot of followers to my channel.
But on the second go round, i struck paydirt. A simple google search for “Buy Crystallized Osmium” immediately yielded a first page first link result. At the time, i was baffled because i was sure i’d already searched for such a simple search term, it’s the first thing i do. But, i suffered from memory problems, ever since catching Covid in February of 2020. I went going critical due to an underlying condition as well as receiving a high virus dose; And not receiving care because “if you haven’t been abroad the chances of you having Covid are literally nil” were the official guidelines of the Dutch authorities.
It’s not like i didn’t try to get help (short of it is: 6 GP calls, 4 GGD (health authority calls), 1 ambulance call, 2 emergency room visits, and all i got were drugs against my “autistic panic attacks”). I just wasn’t given any because normal people believed the guidelines over my pain and nobody dared question authority. Ever since then i suffer from memory problems and i retain very little text, so i figured i must’ve just forgotten to search for it.
It seems like a rant (and it sorta is, i’m a damaged man after all of this) but it will become important later when i get deep into the company behind the crystallized osmium, as it’s clearly become corrupt, has hurt me greatly, and it needs to be exposed regardless of the consequences – for the good of society. However i put this disclaimer up front because this is an extremely weird situation, and i’m not surprised it took a weird person like me to figure it out. Let me make this very clear:
Crystallized Osmium is the New Gold.
There is NOTHING wrong with the asset itself.
As Peter Lynch says; The stock does not know you own it. Don’t get married to an asset. It’s not the metal’s fault how it’s treated or sold – it’s an inanimate object. It doesn’t know about or care about anything. It’s how we treat it that makes things ethical or not – cats and dogs do not care for our ideas of ethics. Just like you have unethical Blood Diamonds, you’ve got fair wage-compensated ethical legitimate diamonds.
I’ve looked at the asset itself out of context in every which way possible. Its properties are the same or better as gold. It looks prettier; Gold shines but doesn’t sparkle. Its utility value is the same as gold: Jewelry and Value Compression as a non-deprecating asset, while its arguments against use in industry are also the same; It’s rare and we value it too much to use up. While that may seem not true so far – you haven’t seen how shiny it is yet. Trust me. It’ll change whatever you’re thinking.
So it’s up to everyone themselves to decide what to do. The asset’s already being sold, they are continuing to expand their market, and as i said – there is no way this won’t do well and go up many times over. At $2000 and ounce gold and $2000 a gram osmium, osmium would sell for ~31 times more then gold, while osmium is 1000 times more rare then gold – not even taking into account the production difficulties of its only usable form, the non-toxic crystal form, making it even more rare.
On pure prevalence alone, now that is has an universal utility value, at $2000 an ounce gold, osmium should be $64,302.47 a gram.
And you can 10x that, because of my research on the Comex making me realize gold is currently about 10 times undervalued due to long time manipulation of the gold price.
As i said. I understand value, so i understand undervalued. And in this world driven by pure greed, i cannot fault those for understanding value too for making a purchase, and collecting some smart money before the dumb people burn it all. While i might have ethics high up on the list, i’m no naive fool, and i understand having ridiculously high standards in the current world is not gonna make you rich (well, not without a brand focused on them). As such i’ll now go into the website, and continue the story of my adventure of how i got involved with the company after – and how it turned into a thriller that lead to a unceremonious exit less then a month later.
The Webshop: Buy-osmium.com
The website is as follows: https://www.buy-osmium.com
When i came upon this website, i honestly didn’t look at it much. I could quickly see that it wasn’t much of a website but that didn’t phase me. I’ve been digging through gold and silver miners all year, not exactly people known for their webdesign skills or understanding of the internet. My silver miner, Klondike Silver, had a broken website for half the year. When it got fixed the main picture had changed from 2019 positive results to 2020 positive results – which i couldn’t find anywhere on the website either. It exploded 2 months later and is regarded as a good company – so a badly designed website isn’t an issue for me. All i want to know is: IF the asset is good; Can i buy the asset, and what is the price?
Yes, and fucking expensive. Initially i mistook the commas for denoting kilos, something that i later had to correct with the people i had to talk to, so the design got me too. Regardless that changed very little about the value proposition as unlimited greed has never been my style anyway. I’ll take a 320x any day. As i said, i can just keep doing this.
A gram sold for about 1600 euros. Well. I’d like to 320x that. But… i didn’t have 1600 euros. All my stuff was in the market, and i’m not trading in a sure 100x for an unlimited timeframe 320x. So i decided to replay my original plan: Offer up the information for sale, share the wealth, and use the 10% finders fee to get in myself before it exploded.
Here i’ll take a quick moment to talk about something else that’s bothered me over the entirety 2020: Nobody sees any need to hurry about anything anymore. Nobody cared about the virus until it was too late, nobody moved to prepare for a market crash, nobody is concerned about finding assets before they go up. But the moment the price explodes, literally everybody suddenly is rushing to jump on the train while it’s already halfway out of the station. But everyone wants to be first.
When i realized it was possible to get this asset (and my Uranium miner had already started trading towards the high range of where it was before it exploded), it took me all but 5 seconds to decide to sacrifice the miner as a tastemaker, as i knew this’d end up going more, and if i generated the capital to invest it wasn’t my money to start with – it goes sideways, i lose nothing from the perspective of my starting position (and i’m not buying debt or using collateral, too risky for my tastes). Meanwhile my method of selling information made sure it was each investor’s own choice to take on the risk, i simply lay out what i know, though i won’t hide excitement. Getting the name out there would also attract attention to the miner, sooner then i was expecting as i was hoping for a second round of sales – but meh. I’ve got a nice position and again, i’m not greedy.
However considering what was at stake i wasn’t gonna let it go cheap either, because i wanted to get into osmium as much as possible before the very shaky situation with the Comex came to a head – the revaluing of gold was certainly not gonna be good for my buying prospects of osmium. Lots of cash in a quick timeframe was important. So within 5 minutes, i decided to tier the release.
I’d first see if there was any interest for any large amounts, before moving orders of magnitudes smaller. It is an unfortunate truth in this world, especially with expensive assets, that the rich are where the most money is. Making sure i got a few large sales would make sure i was atleast in it before the information would spread to a mass of people that might easily outstrip the shop due to its rarity. And while spreading information before you’re in yourself may be very noble – it’s also very stupid. There’s ethics, and then there’s shooting yourself in the foot on purpose.
As you go down orders of magnitude in income, you need higher orders of magnitude of audience, so i decided to test it out. The very first poll i made was on November 26th, when i’d already found this asset, and i wanted to test how many people were willing to invest in me. While i may want to be in first myself i still want to spread the wealth as much as i can, everybody should get a chance at wealth atleast. I also knew that i would have to spread the information anyway, if i wanted to get the reputation as a high level value investor. So why not multitask and combine it all?
I made a poll with investment tiers, from $100 to $100,000, for a 10% finders fee for whatever the client invested in either, or both, the asset and my uranium miner. Before anyone starts – i know 10% is low, but as a (previously) unknown information broker, a discount is proper, just as a reputation affords a premium. Knowing your place is important in the information world after all. Also helps to build trust if you don’t charge an arm and a leg, people seem to want to do business with others who ask a fair price. Strange.
I actually got a few high rollers, including one person willing to invest the highest amount. Naturally i wasted no time contacting that person and starting negotiations; But unfortunately fate had other plans and family got in the way. This was fine though, as here’s another important lesson to learn in life: Always have a backup plan. No plan survives contact with the enemy, so if you don’t learn to adjust as well as plan ahead so you have room to adjust, a simple setback can turn into total failure.
During my rise to fame i’ve spent alot of time talking to people on twitter. Just random people in my inbox, getting them out of ETFs and other synthetic assets and advising them to buy physical silver and gold (as well as explaining why they should do that). A few people have become friends, even close friends, and one of these friends i knew would invest a substantial amount sight unseen. Because that’s what you get when you build up a relationship of trust. To not break that trust i won’t be mentioning this person by name.
This person would invest $10,000 in crystallized osmium, netting me a $1k finders fee which would make sure i would be atleast “in”, even if one of the people i sent the information to decided to screw me and spread it themselves. It’s unlikely considering my follower base – but i don’t plan for perfection. It’s only prudent.
However – the PayPal payment bounced, and the purchase failed. As a sidenote, since starting my stream i’ve had multiple people say they are having problems subscribing with PayPal, while that never used to be a problem during 11 months of streaming in 2019 – nor is it anything i can do something about, as it has to be on either Amazon’s or PayPal’s end. Just something to keep in mind, PayPal might be starting to have issues.
In our case at the time, we simply thought that was the end of that. Once i got the $1k we would see what’d happen if i’d try to buy it, meanwhile my friend would invest in the Uranium miner instead. Considering it blew up a little over a week later and earned this person a cool $3k in 2 weeks, we feel little regret about the decision.
But it is here that the story stops being about the asset – and starts being about me and the company producing it. Naturally more information about Osmium will be forthcoming (including how it really looks), as i learned more about it while i got deeper involved with the company. And again, everything i learned about the asset itself only increased its value proposition. I’ve literally found no reason why Crystallized Osmium shouldn’t do well – and this is why the question of “Why hasn’t it blown up yet?” starts mattering more at this point.
First Contact
On December 1st, my friend got an email out of nowhere. It turned out to be the vice president of the company. And while i’d love to keep names out of this as much as i can; there are 3 which i cannot possibly hide due to their involvement in the situation.
The Vice-president was a nice lady called Scarlett, who did sales and was trying to figure out what had gone wrong with the PayPal payment. She and my friend ended up speaking on the phone, and Scarlett asked how crystallized osmium came about, as it was apparent my friend was a pretty random person to just come across something so unknown.
In the conversation, naturally my friend mentioned me. It was mentioned that i’d done alot of research into osmium, and considering my friend is quite convinced of my capabilities, i hear i was talked up quite a bit. As i understand it this got Scarlett interested in my abilities, and they wanted to talk to me directly.
It’s at this point that i’ll start revealing more personal details of myself, since it becomes very relevant to the story. My followers have long since waited for a bio, one i’ve had difficulty writing between the chaos of 2020 and the constant evolving scams i was tracking. Today that bio will be presented in great detail, of which this entire story is the final chapter in my year of hell.
But to start off with, i was very hesitant to talk to anybody at this point. I have been Used, Abused, Sacrificed and Abandoned all my life. Even when Osmium was developing, i was expecting a guest which would signify 2 weeks much needed vacation for me. Unfortunately i already started noticing i was being strung along for my research and insight, so i knew that’d end soon in misery – again. Which triggered not all too pleasant memories from events earlier that year which i described above – though i will add i’ve been warning about calamity since December 2019, and didn’t blow up until September 1st, and the souls i could’ve possibly saved in the meantime weigh heavily as well, so my mental health at this point was already fragile to say the least.
Nevertheless; I was assured that Scarlett was a very nice lady (she is) and i figured there’d be no harm in atleast seeing what they wanted. So i agreed to talk to them and forwarded my email address to send an introductory mail to. However, since i’m severely autistic and i really wasn’t looking forward to doing this on my own, i asked my friend along as a guide. While i may be perfectly able to hold my own, just feeling that hand on my back and knowing its there helps tremendously in reducing stress, by never accumulating it in the first place. It’s already more help then i’ve ever gotten from the government to reduce stress, that’s for sure.
I was going into this pretty blindly, as they said they were “interested” in me, but i can explain for a week all the ways to interpret that. So i just awaited the mail. And as it came, Scarlett explained that they were interested in my ability to promote osmium, and offered a deal as a promoter. I guess my friends enthusiasm must’ve rubbed off. They said they were just launching and didn’t have a partner for the institute in the Netherlands yet while they knew i was from here, so they wanted to offer me a partnership for it. It would mean i would get 3% of sales in my country outright, and 11% of sales i’d broker myself if we’d come to an agreement.
And my eyes widened progressively. o.o O.o O.O O-O
Now, it’s at this point that i should mention my income. I’m pretty sure most of my followers or people who’ve watched my videos assume i must be rich. Clearly i posess a large amount of knowledge on economics and finance; Everybody makes mistakes but i also get a ridiculous amount of difficult calls right with extreme accuracy. I’ve got an audience which is growing. Surely i must make bank.
Well, in the future maybe. But currently nothing could be further from the truth. My income is ~15,000 euros a year, equating to 75% of Dutch minimum wage. I get this income from permanent disability social security; Something called Wajong, designed for people already unable to work when they hit 18 years and thus can never enter the workforce. You could consider it a form of UBI, except you have to be pretty darned disabled to get it. In my case, i got it because of severe autism and repeated mental trauma during my childhood. Trauma i now talk openly about by the way, as i’ve learned to deal with it in a healthy manner – though it still affects me none the less, and care should be taken. Especially after the fucking year of agony i’ve just been through. I can genuinely say i hit rock bottom in 2020, and went through it, and that comparison includes multiple suicide attempts in the decades prior.
Though, despite all of this, i have no debt nor credit history. I simply live frugally: I didn’t turn on the heating in my apartment for 10 years as another layer of clothing was cheaper. I own 2 pair of pants, bought after the last 2 pair of pants developed a hole in the right knee a week apart from each other. I buy dark blue jeans, and they die looking stonewashed (and very hip i guess). When i bought that previous pair, i was expecting to spend €120 on 2 pair – but since it was early 2009, the great financial crisis had ended the stonewashed craze, and i could buy 2 pair of high quality pants for €60 instead. A lesson about living frugally: I didn’t buy 4 pair of pants. I bought 2 pair anyway and pocketed the savings. I don’t need more. Considering that theory held up until they died of daily wear and tear – it’s not a theory.
All of this is to say; If you offer me 3% of sales income across an entire country and 11% of what i broker myself, while i would have no problems selling the new gold as i understand it completely and this is basically just a “get the info out there and coast” kind of deal….
That is life changing.
Now, there was already no way i was going to refuse that once in a lifetime chance. But i did have concerns. I knew the company was a Monopoly, and thanks to my extensive economics knowledge, i know monopolies are never good for society. There are some, called legal monopolies, but those come not from the fact that monopolies are good – but that making a profit on the asset or service they have a monopoly on wouldn’t benefit society; Often due to the asset or service being unprofitable at scale to begin with, or being some core service like utility networks. In this case, my immediate concerns were alleviated by the following line in the email:
“Osmium business is interesting and full of young and motivated people, a clean market with ethical guidelines and great ambition. We are therefore careful with whom we pick for our national representatives, but we are always interested in meeting and including new people if they fit the profile “
Well alright, atleast they’re saying the right things. It’s something new so i’d expect it to appeal to the younger crowd first. And being careful is very food. Naturally though, that means there’s a caveat: They want a one page backstory about me so they know who they’re dealing with.
Oh god. Welp; Here we go.
My 1+8 page background story.
Yeah well i’m nothing if not thorough. I knew from the start that if they wanted me to promote them, my brand and reputation would become linked with their reputation and brand. And at this point of the story, i wasn’t concerned about theirs – Considering they were capable of inventing the literal new gold, i didn’t immediately think of trouble. As the asset was this good, i thought it likely their reputation was also good, and as such…. Well they really needed to understand exactly who they were dealing with.
I mean, i’ll talk myself up a little bit… But my history is ugly, REALLY ugly. My strength and knowledge doesn’t come from having studied alot, it comes from having been through alot and still being able to breathe at the end of the day without picking up a gun. Though the virus made that laborious too for a great length of time, and sometimes still does depending on stress, so now i’m not only a genius but also a mentally handicapped traumatized cripple. Don’t worry – i can see the humor of stacking descriptive titles like that, though i question my investment decision.
I figured honesty is the best strategy. All my life people have told me to hide who i am, to outright lie, to calm down, talk softer, be less excited, while not caring about any of my interests (outside of direct family that is). Intelligence comes with the caveat that i dive deep into anything, because i can’t help it, and i’ve never met anyone with the same level of depth of interest in anything i’ve ever shown interest in. At the same time it doesn’t help i don’t care for the traditional male subjects; Sports, Cars… And i’ve been alone a very long time so i prefer not to talk about the other gender if i can help it.
But i lost it all in 2020, all social relations i spent ages building, gone in a flash. End of July, i hit rock bottom, then i went straight through it. And instead of living for others which i’d done all my life, leaving me alone and with nothing, i decided to give up the emotional connections i wanted so desperately, focus on logic and reason only, and do what all normal humans seem so fond of doing: Looking out for number one first. And if i want to be ethical, kind, honest, truthful and excited – even when society tells me i can’t be – they can go fuck themselves. I’ve tried it their way, and i can only describe it as pure torture. My 6 suicide attempts say as much. Now, we try it my way. And ever since i decided to go that route, it took me less then 2 months to blow up on twitter and YouTube, and less then half a year for you to read this with all the adventures leading up to it.
Clearly, it works, though i’m not less damaged for it. If anything it comes from the inability to keep quiet anymore, because the thoughts of anguish get too strong if i keep it inside now, so i’m ejecting them in a healthy manner (for me, atleast). Before 2020, i still felt others knew better, “experts” and such…. But i’ve given that up as it is CLEARLY not the case. They feel more comfortable going off a cliff because it allows them to feel like they’re flying. Meanwhile i just feel more and more desperate the more i see going over the side of that cliff, so for my own goddamn mental safety, i may still be kind, but i’m no longer nice. I’ve become cold and ruthless to my very core.
And this goes towards myself as well. So instead of 1 page, i sent them a 9 page epic backstory, around 9000 words long (longer then my “QE is inflationary” article). I did so with the thought, if my fucked up backstory scares them off, it was never gonna work anyway, and if it doesn’t they’ll understand care is required. The file is linked below, though i’ll add more in this chapter as it’s only a backstory, but not a description of how certain things affect me.
Please refer to the file called Backstory.txt at this point.
Since it’s part of my backstory, but not in the file as it happened after, i want to take a moment to make clear the difference between Stress and Hard Work, and how it affects my “inability to work”. I did mention my social security is given out to people unable to work before the age of 18, and clearly i’m capable of performing labor. So what gives?
Well, it’s because i cannot work with other humans. My communication disorder makes it really hard to confer with others, and my insane speed makes it even harder. I want to stress; i cannot slow down, just as much as an idiot can’t speed up. Demanding i go slower takes as much a toll on me mentally as demanding somebody who simply doesn’t have the intelligence to do complex tasks to do them anyway. It’s extremely frustrating, and unintentionally so, because i can’t blame anybody for the way they’re born as much as i’m asking people not to blame me for how i am. Even if i’m the smartest guy in the room.
I don’t mind repeating myself if somebody who hasn’t asked me that question, asks me the same question; How are they to know? But if the same person requires me to repeat myself constantly or is holding back simple tasks (though to be honest, i have no reference if a complex task is simple for others or not); Well that starts building stress quite rapidly. Imagine having to walk in slow motion all your life, not because you can’t walk faster or because of any chains holding you back – but because everybody else is doing it and they absolutely refuse to do anything else.
I might not know how smart each individual is, i still know if tasks are objectively simply in and of themselves. I do get intentionally frustrated from time to time too. Some people just refuse to think or use logic in every single circumstance, and we all know who i’m talking about here. At this point i really have ceased to care about the lives of those people because i’ve never as much as detected an ounce of leniency towards me or the effort i have to put in to get simple conversation right, but i’ve heard plenty of scolding if i get it wrong once.
All that leaves just two options: Either i work for other humans, or they work for me. When there is no back and forth, the style of communication changes drastically. Humans deal with orders completely differently from requests. With requests, ego comes into play, and that ego questions my recommendations, Meanwhile i cannot give anything but recommendations as i don’t have the authority to suggest something must be done. The only “rank” i can pull is expertise or experience – if i am not known to have either, say with new ideas as no one has any of either in something new, then i cannot pull rank and i must convince people with social conversation. That has never once worked.
Once authority comes into play, things change. When i am the authority, there’s never a single problem. I’m not kidding, every problem when i’ve been in a leadership role has come from shared authority, when there’s another authority on the same level as me who i have to confer with. Again, being the smartest guy in the room doesn’t work very well if you’re forced to ask the opinion of the rest on everything.
But when people look to me to lead, that’s easy. I give out orders, people follow them. The information’s always good if not the best possible effort that’ll lead to additional outcomes. This is the only time that being the smartest guy in the room is actually a benefit. My behavior still doesn’t change, and i can just as easily get frustrated when people don’t follow orders – but that behavior is far more accepted when i’m in a position of authority.
In fact – once i exhibit that behavior from a position of authority, i gain competent allies, because my tactics are the best shot we have. Even when i don’t know the solution, i’m never too proud to ask advice. Though, admittedly, even i had to grow up. No shortcut around experience, kids! People recognize that and realize my behavior isn’t inappropriate, only exaggerated. I might come off strong, but the people i come off strong against are the ones actively inhibiting progress, so maybe it’s justified. Considering it tends to get results, i haven’t had much complaints.
But when it’s the other way around…. When i have to work for others… shit always hits the fan. There are very few humans i’ve met who are willing to admit their own mistakes or incompetency when in a position of power. Once again, it has to do with ego. When submissive, the ego comes little into play, and decisions aren’t questioned. When equal, ego comes into play, but can be overridden with debate and discourse. I may be handicapped, it’s not like i get it wrong every single time. But it is slanted towards important events: The higher the stakes, the more ego gets into play, as the bigger loss impacts ego more. On small changes i rarely get pushback, and often even commendation for my attention to detail.
When humans are in control, ego takes over completely. If it’s not a shaped ego, or what we call “having character”, they become corrupted; “Drunk on power” as they say. Corruption is nothing more then the loss of control and the inability to admit as such. It can be as simple as a manager who is well out of his or her depth when it comes to the product the employees produce that they’re supposed to manage; But they are incapable of admitting so and thus structurally underplan the time needed for each project, causing structural overruns for the company.
While that might be just a minor form of corruption, it comes in all shapes and sizes, and allowing any sort of corruption to fester always leads to downfall, because that’s why it’s so dangerous: The whole point about corruption is that you cannot possibly control it. It spreads regardless, if not weeded out. And it’s this corruption that has caused me to be used, abused, sacrificed and abandoned all my life. People with authority telling me what’s best for me, when they in fact are woefully ill-equiped to make that decision for me. The position i’m put in hurts me every time, and when i act out in pain, i get “more help to stay normal”.
Slavery, is what it is. Wanting my social labor without giving me my social recompense.
As such i’ve come to fervently hate incompetent authority, and considering i’m still the smartest guy in the room, that tends to be alot of people. Not everyone – i tend to end up a lieutenant in videogame guilds, i have had a handful of people i worked very well with. Each time because of the same reason: I was given “lone wolf” status, where i was basically allowed to roam about, do whatever i saw best for whatever reason i saw, and offer any explanations after the fact, because they trusted me to only act in benefit to the guild, and i always did. And i never shirk the responsibility that that freedom brings: Ask me to explain my reasons for anything: I can, and i will. Even if it’s something i cannot say, i will say i cannot say, and explain my reasons for not being able to do so. The good ones so far appreciated it, and fared very well because of it.
All of this is just to say: My stress stems from the interaction with people in various positions of authority. When it comes to the work itself: No problem. Sure, figuring out something i don’t know causes stress, but a different type of stress. I’m a very competitive person, so when it’s competitive stress, rather then suffer i enjoy it. The difference comes from knowing at the end of the process, if success is obtained, i’ll feel the elation of discovery and success. In that case, the build up of stress is only more enjoyable, as it makes the release bigger. Any person who loves to compete will recognize this.
The only caveat to this is when previously incurred trauma acts up. Having a rough life doesn’t leave you undamaged, even if you sound like it. Some days i can’t work “because i don’t want to”. Other people think that’s just laziness as for a unbroken mind it is; But for me it’s my brain subconsciously protecting me from something i don’t want to know, because if i did, it’d cause me great pain. The reason i know is cause i used to challenge this holding back when i was younger, and i’ve since wised up. The feeling of “not wanting to” is the symptom, and i’d do well to just listen to it and not go looking for the disease.
There is a flipside to this. When i get “excited”, the reverse happens. My mind immediately goes into hyperdrive. I jokingly call it “spinning up the fusion reactor”, but in reality it’s not really a laughing matter. Everybody knows the torment of having a song stuck in your head and not being able to get it out. Imagine having an live orchestra. That doesn’t pay rent, no less.
In those cases i have to work. Sometimes it happens at the end of a long day, and even then, i have to get it out. I can easily pull a 32 hour day purely off the back of excitement. In August 2019 when my depression had cleared for a while and i started getting ideas for inventions, i pulled a week where i had a 32 hour day, followed by a 30 hour day, a 36 hour day and a 34 hour day. I genuinely lost an entire week of time, because i slept half as much as i normally would over the span of a week, so i felt as if half as many days had passed as actually had. Quite an extraordinary feeling. And i wasn’t exhausted at all. My ability to think wasn’t diminished nor did i have a recovery period after coming back down to a normal pattern.
That does hurt like hell physically by the way. After approximately 20-22 hours, my body goes into some sort of high-energy workmode, where my metabolism feels like it’s doubled in speed and my trips to the bathroom triple to urinate. I have no clue why, but this mode allows me to sustain top speed over a day and a half depending on level of excitement – and currently, my limit as to how long i can keep this up without taking any damage is 5 days. After which i have to cool down; seems there’s a recovery time of a few days both mentally and physically, but i never take permanent damage. I do smoke alot; but that’s a function of whatever it is i’m working on and the stress that brings. When i was inventing stuff, my weed use dropped like a brick, while this year, it’s been… well, sky high. It does make me worry.
As far as physical suffering goes the work only creates muscle pains because of the workload. For instance after typing a long document like this one for hours and hours my entire shoulderblade area on both sides burns like a mother. My stomach and core muscles equally so, as i sit slightly hunched over to alleviate my back – back backs are a family trait and the muscle pain is preferable over long term damage. But, well, i’ve learned to turn weakness into strength, and genuinely i’ve been hurt so much the pain just doesn’t bother me anymore. If it gets too much i’ll just cry once or twice, which also feels like another day at the office at this point, and go about my day an hour later. I almost feel disconnected from my body, like the pain isn’t real, so it doesn’t really hurt.
Oh trust me; I know it’s fucked up. But hey – all the help i’ve gotten so far has been to stop complaining about it, rather then to try and unfuck things, so i’ve literally learned to stop complaining about it. Turns out, you can only push a human mind so far.
I have an example of all of this of course (when do i not). All of this was around the time that i was scheduled to do the Arcadia Economics interview with Chris Marcus. On December 1st when i got the first email, i was supposed to go to bed for a 6 hour rest – already short – waking up right before the interview. Right before bed, my friend notified me that the original offer mail had arrived.
I want to stress there was no rush at this time. None at all. Seas of time to respond, so i thought i’ll do that after the interview because that’s the logical and sensible thing to do. 10 hours isn’t gonna make a difference… But i got curious and couldn’t put it out of my head once i knew the mail was there (that’s also why i sometimes take care not to know things or i avoid looking at responses deliberately). So i opened up the mail, and saw the 3% offer. And that’s when i got excited.
I still went to bed, because the interview was very important and i needed to be rested for it. After staring at the ceiling for 30 minutes i realized that it wasn’t going to work, and i needed to get what was in my head out. As they wanted me to promote Osmium, my mind immediately started inventing ideas and ways to do so, and i couldn’t stop it.
So i got up, had another smoke to focus my mind and think things through, made a cup of tea, and sat down behind the PC. In approximately 2 hours i wrote down a ~2500 word business plan consisting of a few simple points to structure a business, with a marketing plan and ideas to increase awareness and sales. This plan is not included with this article by the way… it may yet be of use. It was pretty broad since i wasn’t sure about what they’d already set up, but never the less. I wanted to deliver.
I sent it to my friend to look at as another set of eyes is always nice, and i went to bed for a ~2 hour nap as i still needed rest before the interview, and i wasn’t any less exhausted now.
Had the nap, got up, had another smoke (yeah i smoked like 6 joints in a 6 hour timeframe), got some food, scarfed it down right before the interview, and crushed it hard. Well over an hour of prime data driven content which got nothing but good reviews again. The meeting outside of the recording went pleasantly too, afterwards i had more food (i eat so much bread you don’t even know), another smoke, and collapsed in bed around midnight.
Got up around 10 (i think), and the pattern then was the same as the entire month of October when i filled up my website with 83,000 words of content. Smoke, food, read the news and deal with the dailies, smoke, food, work. Since i had an email to send, i started at 15:00 with facing my ugly background, and finished around 21:00. Made sure it got the 3 draft treatment, and sent the 9000 words on their way, and went to bed for another collapse.
None of this caused any mental stress. Facing my past is never easy, but i’ve done it plenty, and i had hope that maybe this time it’d work out different. If not, nothing was lost. They may have made a killer offer, but i’d rather miss out on the opportunity then suffer another abandonment.
And as i said, always have a backup plan. I’m already used to using good events as a “crowbar” to generate morale to do things i normally just can’t do. Expecting my guest allowed me to finally clean my house for the first time in nearly a year, and this allowed me to write a bio i couldn’t write before, simply because my excitement overruled my pain. If they’d rejected me, atleast i’d have a high quality bio for the website that i was promising.
After it was sent, i figured the length would cause a response to take a while. So i waited.
I’ll continue to write the story as if the backstory has been read by the reader, for the sake of continuity.
The response and an unexpected surprise
As i sent the mail, i was expecting some wait as i know i type alot. Regardless, without feedback i’m blind, and considering i just sent the above backstory to them, also considerably nervous. Since my thoughts never end and i will just overthink things i cannot possibly know, waiting for many days without an answer was…. Well torture, but not one i can fault them for. I know i’m hypersensitive to all emotions, including nervosity, so it’s my problem.
Regardless, a week passed without any word, so i figured i must’ve scared them off, and i started to deal with the resulting depression. As this was happening during the start of December, i was very active on twitter keeping up to date with the Comex – which i previously predicted to fail in December – as well as the Tether problem that kept unraveling at a high pace, and had something new to analyze each day it seemed, continuing on till this day. Needless to say, stress was already high.
Meanwhile my vacation turned into permanent work as my supposed guest hadn’t replied to me in a while and i knew what was up. I told her to not bother coming (because honestly, even at the end of everything, i can’t be certain unless somebody tells me directly so i just assume the best – the reverse is no way to live), and was preparing for a very, very depressed day. This was on December 8th, and it is also the point where events started to pile up in a very short timeframe. Chapters have been short so far, i’m afraid that’s about to end.
And here is also where i get a legitimate lucky break. One of the best things that could’ve possibly happened to me in my entire life, and i’ve been keeping a lid on it for the right time. I was hoping the Comex cracking would be the right time, but this is as good as any, especially since it has become part of the adventure.
Not even an hour after i broke the connection with my guest, i got a message request on twitter. My DM’s have always been open and i respond to pretty much anyone, so i had no problems checking it out, especially on a hazy depression day where any thoughts to keep my mind off things will do.
It was one “Eric S”. Wanting to speak with me with a mail address ending in sprott.com.
Well as i always say, you’re not famous until you’re trolled atleast once. Regardless i’ve spoken to alot of trolls in my day as i’ll literally argue anyone, as long as the responses are interesting.
At the same time – the way i am, i have a tendency to believe everyone everywhere all the time (and i filter truth out through consistency). It was conceivable a billionaire wouldn’t want the public know it was him, the idea that “everyone” is on social media because they want to share their opinion is greatly exaggerated anyway. So my response was simple: Believe, but ask for confirmation, and i went for a smoke since i have no idea when somebody’s looking at what, and i could use one for when this did turn out to be yet another abuser.
When i got back to my PC i’d gotten another request. One “Connor” saying “Hey Kirian it’s really Eric he sent you a picture as confirmation”.
I’ll be honest. I didn’t look at the picture. Trolls don’t go this far, they’re not smart enough to work in pairs. Not the ones i attract at my level of reputation. I immediately knew it was legit, and i knew this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. Naturally – i got excited as all hell and my depression evaporated.
I immediately responded back to Eric positively as you’d expect. Then i got told something i’ll never forget, and if anybody wonders – yes i kept the screenshot.
“I thought your work was so special that I used Twitter for the first time in my life.”
God damn. If that wasn’t an ego booster, i don’t know what is. If any of you have been wondering why i’ve been alot more confident in my calling out of scams since early December – This’d be why. And he wanted to talk to me!
I talked to Connor as well, who offered to help connect us. I gave my email to make sure it didn’t get lost in the filters, but i mentioned i hate email too. No lie as it offers very little ability from me to analyze how somebody is really thinking. Emails are very constructed, meaning people hide their intentions very well, and i get little to no read on them. I barely ever check my emails.
Here i just want to take a moment to make clear what it means for me to be both autistic, yet a human behavior specialist. The way to think of it is very simple: Because i’m a human behavior specialist, i always know all the possible social outcomes even a single statement can have or is supposed to have. But because i’m autistic, i never know which one is currently the right option to pick. In short; i see all possibility, but i have no way of determining reality; Often not until well after the fact. And by that, i mean sometimes weeks of thinking and contemplating and using the passage of time for clarity.
Connor said we could call too. SURE! Makes things alot easier. Intonation and real time sentence construction tells me alot more.
But then i remembered i’m poor and i have a prepaid subscription only – and Eric lives in Canada. That was gonna be quite the short call. So, partially in excitement, i said that “he was the billionaire, i’m poor, how about you guys call me :D”.
Well i’m nothing if not consistent. And to prove my excitement – i completely forgot to give out the country code too.
Few minutes later, i got a call from Ontario. Connor connected me and introduced Eric, who simply said “Hey Kirian”.
I’ll tell you guys right now – it took only a millisecond to recognize his voice, because he calls into the Sprott Weekly Wrap-up on YouTube with the same equipment, and he sounds EXACTLY the same on the phone as in those videos. To the point where it was kind of weird that the video responded to me, if you know what i’m saying. Starstruck i think they call it. Though i can be excited and still be cool under pressure too.
We talked for approximately 20 minutes, a conversation filled with more ego boosters. Among them the quote that “he saw my video was an hour long, and usually he’s like meh, but no i managed to interest him for the full hour” (paraphrasing a bit here). Another fact i’ve been keeping under wraps for the right moment, and the fact why i feel so confident now, even more so then the above compliment;
The reason why Eric Sprott thought my research on the Comex Shadowcontracts was so interesting….
… is because independently, he had noticed the same thing, and had been tracking the discrepancy as well.
I wasn’t crazy. Here was the titan of the industry telling me he’d noticed the same thing, and he wanted to know more about what i thought it was. Naturally i told him everything i knew. But it gets better.
He asked me how long i’d been tracking these things. I said since their beginning on June 1st in Gold and later July in Silver. Since he called for my research, i asked few questions myself, but one that i did ask was “…how long have you guys been tracking them?”
“For about 100 days now”.
December 8th. Month is 30 days. November, October, September. So late August.
….I beat him by nearly 3 months….
I BEAT ERIC SPROTT BY 3 MONTHS!
I WAS FASTER THEN THE FUCKING TITAN OF THE INDUSTRY WHO DOES THIS ALL DAY
HO LEE SHIAT
Damn right my research is special. Now you guys know why i haven’t been taking any lip anymore since December. There is NO ONE who can take this achievement away from me. Whether i’m wrong or right about this thing, i can rightfully claim i’m the premier researcher on the Comex.
And i’ll tell you something else i’ve not said before. The interview he saw was with Chris Marcus from Arcadia Economics. Before me and Chris recorded that interview, we had a chat upfront, in which Chris said to me “Yknow i’ve been doing this for 11 years now and you’re lightyears ahead of me on this Comex stuff”.
Excuse me?
I know i overtrain myself but this is a bit silly now. But even that gets worse, because i kept quiet and he continued, and he made an assumption that i think alot of people have made but is simply untrue.
I can’t remember the exact words, but he said something along the lines “that i’ve been doing this for several years and…” and i had to cut him off and correct him. Because that’s not true.
Before February 2020, i didn’t even know the Comex’s website address. I found it because Zerohedge posted about Comex open interest from time to time, and i wasn’t happy with their update speed, so i figured i must be able to just find this data myself, or atleast the source of where they were getting it. I’ve seriously never looked at Comex data outside of whatever was in sporadic articles on Zerohedge over the years, which hasn’t been alot either. Bloomberg open futures interest from time to time, mostly, though alot of articles on gold and silver in general pass there.
I’m serious here. By the time i saw the Shadowcontracts discrepancy, i’d been looking at the website sporadically (but increasingly so), for about 4 months. And it wasn’t even my main focus, researching and posting about the threat of the Virus was.
In fact it wasn’t until the end of June that i switched my focus from the virus to the Comex. I realized that if i was right, the shadowcontracts would predictably start in July Silver, so i made sure to focus on cataloging their rise and pattern. If they did appear, the Comex would become the biggest threat to society, not the Virus – in its case, the biggest threat had switched from the virus itself, to the politicized response to the virus; And adding fuel to that fire helps no one.
Aside from boosting my ego and my research’s reputation, i tell this story with another purpose too: During the call, Eric said that he wanted to help. As i said, i may get excited, but i still keep my cool. I’d like help, but i’ve heard that one before too. I told him the truth in no uncertain terms: “That i have a thousand ideas for businesses right now, but just no capital to start anything. I’m poor with no credit history or reputation and i just need capital to get started”.
As part of that idea, i also told him about my Uranium miner (that had since exploded upwards 104% in a day for me) as well as Osmium, as i was selling both for a 10% finders fee – and i wouldn’t mind him investing in either. $100,000 is nothing for him, but $10,000 would’ve nearly doubled my net worth at that point in time. I wouldn’t even put all of that in the stock market, as i would’ve used alot of it to take care of immediate needs such as a new computer – my old gal’s end of life i’m afraid. The file system has started to show glitches and windows explorer keeps crashing.
But i’m not going to beg for money anymore, those days are over, and clearly i deserve better. I wanna earn it. Anyways, he said they would confer to see how’d they proceed based on the meeting and they’d get back to me. Later in a mail Eric asked if i had access to the Comex delivery data over the last months and years. Not over the last years, but i do have screenshots of the main page of Comex silver deliveries stretching back to July – and i know the rest can just be found in the Comex’s own historical summary. The screenshots have much more value, as they also break everything down in volume and show daily change as well as open interest as close. The volume alone pointed towards a concentration in contracts in a single month, not something you can see from the aggregate report.
(in fact i’ve LITERALLY NEVER looked at the aggregate report. That’s how they get all you idiots. They hide the discrepancy in the aggregate, but it’s plain as day on the front page).
I mention this because as a researcher, i want to make sure you guys know i consider that data to be the most precious asset i have, as it is something nobody else has, and i wouldn’t just send it to anyone. I did it because i hoped to build a relationship of trust, as i believe people appreciate it if you put in alot of effort on their behalf. A belief shared by very, very few people in society these days, as they’re more inclined to just take if offered without remorse, and believe themselves right because being nice is stupid and it deserves to be taken advantage of. But i digress.
In any case i know when i get excited i flood people with information, so after doing so i decided to leave it alone for a while. Regardless i did send him one mail later, which was about my research into Canada’s CDS, which i sent to all my Canadian friends the moment i found it. Since he’d been nice to me, i considered him a friend until proven otherwise, and friends oughtta know something important like that even if i already spammed them to death previously 😀
But the day wasn’t even over. All of this happened fairly early on in my day. Since i knew my best shot at this time was still getting involved with Osmium, i decided to use the timing of events to my advantage. I sent another mail to Scarlett asking for an update. Not a full update, as i knew it took time, but i’d just like to know whether their opinion so far was positive or not. I won’t worry if i’m told it’s positive OR negative, as i either start looking forward to the result rather then doubting it, or immediately put the past behind me and look towards the future. Not knowing is what does the most damage, as without feedback, i am completely blind as to what i did or what i should do.
And at the end of the mail, i mentioned who i got a call from. Since i assumed the worst, any reputation boosters like that would greatly help. My past may be screwy, but i finally had some proof that my future was promising.
The day had already been a giant rollercoaster, as all this was happening while i’d continue my regular twitter posts and more data kept rolling in as well as the chaos around the elections in the markets requiring attention. So i went to bed and told my twitter friend who was tagged in the emails to keep an eye out and lemme know if i got a reply.
Not long after i got that reply; And it was positive! They were very impressed by my ability to pull through all of that, and were just taking their time to formulate a proper response. Naturally they were excited by my new contact too. My mind satisfied i told them not to rush and i’d just wait for their response in full.
I got it the next day. And to say it was positive would be an understatement. I want to highlight 2 sentences from the mail:
“I have spoken with Ingo. We both see a lot of potential in a promoter partnership! We believe that your ideas and approaches and way of seeing the world and the way things are going are very promising for a business like ours. This partnership could expand to a strategic partnership that is trimmed to your skills and abilities, focused in areas that you enjoy and also, to put it bluntly, match your calling.“
It is here that we meet the 3rd name in the story, the Director (or president) of the institute, Ingo, a name that’ll come back often i’m afraid. I never spoke much with Ingo, only once, as all my contact went through Scarlett, so i have little insight into his personality from a direct contact perspective and it should be mentioned. Never the less the president is the one finally responsible, and it is his reputation that will matter far more in the end in this story then the man behind it, so it’s impossible to keep his name out.
Clearly this is already quite the promise for somebody with my background. Being basically unemployable by anybody due to my disposition, and here was a company saying they didn’t just see value in that, they wanted me to focus on it, and help me “trim” the partnership specifically to my needs. And yes, i know it says skills and abilities, but those don’t come for free to me. And i’m not talking about financial expense. Mental cost is something i cannot overlook.
In any case, they knew my backstory, so no way in hell would anybody think at this point i wouldn’t need some sort of care, and they seemed to offer, so i only got more excited!
The second line i want to highlight is what blew my mind completely:
“In addition, we would like to offer you that we will immediately raise you to the wholesale partner level, and you will get a full 11% on every own purchase and as provision for referral. This is a status you usually have to earn (or you are a jeweler) but we believe your financial market analysis and predictions can really help us, something <snip> has also confirmed to us.“
Not only would the partnership be tailored to my skills and abilities, but they’re offering me a shitton more money upfront?!
HELL YA i’ll research stuff for them! Of course i would! After this much abuse, getting an offer like that?! There’s no way in hell i’d ever turn it down! It’s good! Very good!
….Too good.
Forgive me for being a cynic, a skeptic, and a nihilist – it’s one thing to get a lucky break such as Eric Sprott noticing the same discrepancy and actually getting told that. It’s quite another to be given more money then you could’ve possibly imagined for the most fucked up past you could’ve possibly come up with. Money always changes things, no matter how much people want you to believe it doesn’t.
Now don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean i immediately turn stuff down or act cautious. I’ve come to trust my own ability to think on my feet, sniff out trouble and i have the character to never back down. My speed and analysis also affords me protection: I don’t have to wait long to discover when things start going sideways, where others need some time for a pattern to develop. I’ve learned to trust those instincts and my ability to both come to terms with and correct mistakes i make along the way.
To me, it just means “a mental note”. It is what i alluded to earlier; I believe everyone everywhere all the time, and i have memory problems remembering text and spoken words specifically, but my memory for “concepts” still works absolutely fine. “More money for a storied history and future research” i remember clear as day. And once those mental notes start conflicting with each other over time, that’s when the truth always reveals itself, as the truth is consistent while lies are not. Part of my ability to hold large volumes of data in my head and process it at once.
Regardless i got very excited. And through this all, it already started affecting my brand reputation and business. Naturally, since i was selling the information to buy the asset; If i was given a position within the company that afforded me a percentage on the back end, i wouldn’t need a finders fee anymore. I’m absolutely not greedy and i’d rather get a small percentage of alot of people then a big percentage of a few (and make more people wealthy in the process ^_^).
So i put the offer of selling the information on hold until the meeting for anyone i wasn’t already talking to to wait out the meeting. To the people i was talking to i told them to wait as i could possibly offer a much better deal soon, as well as more information. Since i honor my promises, i had to keep alot of people in the loop, at quite a bit of effort on my part since i have to perform social duties conscientiously; they don’t come to me naturally.
I’d also like to mention i’m very active on twitter, and gathered a following that really wants to see me succeed. My most liked tweet during all of this was one of a personal nature, and i wish to note how hard it is to collect a following these days that really is interested in you and your success, and I consider them to be one of the most precious things i have, so they were kept up to date too.
The Meeting
Part of the original mail was the request to name a few possible times for a Zoom meeting. As Scarlett mentioned if we could schedule sometime ahead, there would be a good chance we could get Ingo, the Director of the Osmium Institute, to join.
Now, i’ve played alot of video games in the past that involved diplomacy of some kind. Not just within multiplayer videogames themselves, but every single clan or guild i’ve been in i’ve ended up either as some kind of officer, straight up the leader, or the most veteran soldier in charge of training the troops. I’ve even left clans because i started pulling towards a leadership role when i didn’t want to. I’m much more versed in high level diplomacy then i seem, simply because i act autistic by choice (because if i don’t, people immediately forget, and i get hurt alot more. Painful in day to day life…. But quite a useful ability in negotiations).
Getting a direct line to the chief and making a good impression is veeeeery good for my future prospects as well as connections, so i replied for Scarlett for them to set the time. My friend and i were to attend, though upon my friends request i’ll write about the meeting (and the rest of the story) as if it were just me. I’ll just mention that, while i clearly was the brains of the operation, the mental support of knowing somebody has your back is indescribably important. There’ll always be stress, but minimizing the amount of stress you absorb from the beginning is how you survive adventures like this, so i would be remiss to mention my friend’s involvement in my mental health.
The meeting was set for 11:00 in the morning on Wednesday December 16th 2020. It’s also here that i’d like to remind the reader that my involvement with the company ended on December 28th 2020. Considering the length of the story yet to come, (about 100 pages) it might seem incredible that all of it took place in such a short timeframe, but this all remains a true story.
As the meeting was called on the Monday before and i already had my business plan detailed to the point where i needed to know more, i just spent the two days being incredibly excited. Little sleep and just hard work trying to keep my mind off things to both burn energy and not have thoughts “idle” in my head; Meaning the moment they’re done, they start over, and every pass through events makes me more excited. I can literally start to shake and have my teeth clatter purely from adrenaline that comes with being excited.
But trust me considering everything else that i’ve gone through i’ll happily embrace the good feelings at full strength too, they don’t come around that often. Though i’ll apologize to any twitter followers i’ve lost spamming the feed when my brain gets stuck in hyper mode 😀 I know it’s all good info and that’s the problem, nobody can remember all of that, so i’m sorry 😀
On the morning of the 11th the meeting took place on schedule; Though i won’t talk about the whole meeting. As i said i have little memory for conversation anyway, and most parts of a conversation aren’t important enough to remember. I do remember some bits; Anything of great importance – though that becomes easier since those things are always tied to events or concepts, which i can remember without difficulty. Think of it as not remembering quotes, but paraphrases.
It was just 4 people, me and my friend on our side, Ingo and Scarlett on the other. As i was now able to see Ingo and Scarlett and talk to them, i started getting feedback on how they were as people. It didn’t take long to find out that they’re just nice people who are starting a business and worked very hard to get this far. Ingo invented something nobody could because he’s simply a genius and his knowledge and stubbornness was superior to the others.
I didn’t detect any malice from them at all. Considering how abused i’ve been, i can detect any sort of intentional abuse right away. Since i knew they were very interested in me promoting them, i knew the more they’d talk me up, the more they were trying to tempt me. Stroking someones ego is the most basic and most employed form of manipulation so that’s the default one i look out for. But no, while they were interested in me as expected, i didn’t feel as if they were “giving me things to get me to cross the line” and get me to perform more, if anything they were somewhat sheepish about letting me go unchained. The spoken words i remember to emphasize this were from Ingo when he said somewhat laughingly “infact we’re worried that you might be too fast for us!”.
Indeed.
While it was the first time meeting, it was also business, and i wanted to know more about the asset from the horse’s mouth sort of speak, so i had prepared about 8 questions to ask Ingo and Scarlett, all about the asset. Whether the products could be standardized to shape and weight, what shape is more efficient to make, the properties of the material (more indepth then what i knew), long term safety as it was a recent product that used to be toxic, industrial applications for the crystals specifically, their current and maximum production capacity, recycling, and finally – Pricing; AKA how was this thing priced on a global scale.
While i’ll leave the manufacturing specifics aside, since i’m at the same time letting the world know about Crystallized Osmium, let me talk a bit about the specific properties straight from the horse’s mouth.
The main thing is Gold. Naturally, if this is going to supplement Gold and Silver as a value compression asset, it has to be non-deprecating. So i asked for its reactiveness, and Ingo assured me that it’s even better then gold. There is this solution gold can still dissolve in (i keep forgetting the name but Scarlett reminded me in the meeting, starts with an E), but no such thing exists for Crystallized Osmium. “You can put a disk in the ground and pull it out a billion years later looking exactly the same” is what Ingo said. So it serves the exact same purpose as gold in this respect.
Its Abrasive resistance is superior to gold. I asked what would happen, theoretically, if i was really careless with a piece of jewelry and scrape it across the wall. After assuring me nothing would happen, Ingo said “If you’d scrape it along the wall, the wall would get scratched”. And i’d like to remind Americans that houses are generally made out of concrete in Northern Europe.
What they were most excited about was the unique security feature the crystals afforded them. Because the crystals are grown on a carbon substrate (necessary since the process happens around 3000C – Twice the melting point of gold), each piece looked completely unique. Therefore, by photographing each piece before it leaves the factory, and since they are the only supply in the world, each piece could easily be authenticated. They even built an online database and system just for this.
Scarlett also showed me some jewelry. Aside from being vice-president and doing sales, she also owned her own jeweler and created jewelry herself. I have to honestly say – she creates the most elegant jewelry i’ve ever seen. In the inner city i live in there’s 3 jewelers in close proximity and i can say i’ve never seen anything in the windows that caught my eye, even though i walk past there many times a week. Having one of her pieces in the window would’ve definitely turned my head. For me, there was no doubt that Crystallized Osmium would end up serving the same markets as gold… It was just a few orders of a magnitude more rare and complex to produce, so any discomfort i felt was merely from not being used to something.
However, anyone can study a good story and repeat it. I’ve met some skilled liars in my day, so not detecting anything off the bat doesn’t have to mean anything. I had to know more about the process to determine if the asset was real or not. Naturally, i wasn’t gonna get that info, as the process itself is a black box patent and a closely guarded one too; As it is what their entire technological monopoly is based upon. Buuuuttt….. I still have to know if the thing can or cannot be recycled. Goes to the amount available for supply, especially with something as extremely rare as this.
I asked Ingo, and got the response i was looking for. I saw him shake his head, eyes glaze over and he just started talking about something he knew. He was very dismissive, even gesturing away with his hand that there was no point, and simply listed a few steps that would need to be undertaken to get to where you’d need to go. At the end he said “it destroys about 80% of the value”.
Now…. The reason i remember the end there, is because i literally cannot remember anything else he said. Oh, i have the visual memory of him talking on camera, as i’ve got a very strong visual memory, practically photographic at times. I remember him saying the words of a few chemicals and their interactions, and i remember him being very cavalier and off the cuff with that information, like it meant nothing.
Meanwhile, i was sitting there with a straight face, as i know the value of one from watching poker games. But inside my mind, my eyes were wide open, and i was just staring blankly at the screen. I have no clue whatever the fuck he just said. All my logic was telling me that he mentioned step 1, 2, 3 and so on. I was getting bupkiss on whatever these names were he was telling me or how they could be connected. Context told me they were chemicals, and that’s it. The names alone were so complex that my mind didn’t even attempt to remember em. And to him, it was nothing.
Realizing the gap in knowledge and intelligence is vital for me if i want to communicate with people. It’s perfectly possible to talk “too smart” for the common man and i tend to do that too often. Not that they can’t handle information, but there are multiple ways of explaining things, and an explanation that suits a scientist doesn’t suit a construction worker. So after that one minute explanation of how it wouldn’t work, i knew all i needed to know: This guy was legit. He’s on my level of genius, atleast, and he’s just focused that intelligence on getting this one thing done, and that’s why he made it beyond all others – stubbornness and intelligence.
After his explanation on recycling, i had not a single doubt left that Crystallized Osmium would end up The New Gold. Because it was. And this guy made it happen. He made history and MADE the one thing everybody was hoping to just find. So to be clear, i make no claims of discovery other then as if i found a vein of the stuff somewhere in the ground – which i effectively did if you consider cyberspace “ground”. As far as i’m concerned his name will be in the history books for a long time. There may have been a whole team working for a long time with shoulders for him to stand on, we all stand on the shoulders of giants, and he’ll be a tall one for others to stand on.
However…
For me, that only makes it easier to build a psychological profile. I have more problems analyzing dumb people, because their way of thinking is more distant from my own. The smarter somebody gets, the easier it is for me to understand their perspective, as i come to share more and more with them. To be fair to Ingo: I’ve never detected somebody of his level. I’ve found somebody smarter, Edward Witten, the creator of string theory. I saw an interview with him where i admitted to my father even i got scared by his choice of words and the purpose behind his manner of speaking. That was a decade ago though; I’d welcome the challenge now.
Simple put… I know myself. So the closer somebody gets, the more i can just think “What would i do” rather then “what would they do”.
And in this case; I know i suffer from tunnel vision, or atleast i used to. Extreme intelligence comes with extreme fascination, the abandonment of all else to dive into what drives you. For me it’s the pursuit of any knowledge i’m interested it, Videogames and Finance mostly. And while my knowledge is extremely general due to it coming from being a human behavior specialist, this too has come at the cost of other knowledge: Don’t ask me to fix a car. I probably could. I won’t.
Not only do i know how little i know about those things, i know how little i care to know about those things. Because my extreme focus on the things i love means i have little room to care about the things i don’t. For example if football were to be canceled tomorrow for all eternity, i really could not care less. Infact i’ll be happy since i live in the middle of the city and championships (used to be) quite rowdy.
However, i know how much football means to other people. So while i don’t care, i wouldn’t wanna see it banned. But that’s knowledge, not feeling. I don’t feel as if football should be preserved. I’ve had to learn these perspectives, but thing is, i’ve always been interested in these perspectives and connecting with people. I also know that, if i didn’t have this interest, i wouldn’t. I mean i just straight up wouldn’t because humans are far far more trouble then they’re worth, and always costs a ton of energy.
So, if i hadn’t had this underprivileged life… Had i instead been stuck in a lab for 40 years surrounded by other geniuses…. I might view the world differently. In fact i know i would. Especially if i’d then beat all of them after so long…. I guess i can relate.
Now, i don’t manipulate anyone. But i can. Despite my disposition towards the truth, i’m actually a grandmaster of manipulation. When you think about it – i suffer from a permanent communication disability. I literally cannot know how you, dear reader, are feeling right now. So how is it possible for me at all to express myself?
Because i know what you’re thinking.
No no no i’m not a mind reader. It’s all based on logic: People really aren’t as diverse as they think they are. We’re all human…. and that comes with certain traits. Ego. Insight. Creativity. Empathy. Measurable qualities of a man, it’s just that they aren’t quantifiable in numbers.
I have Ego, a very strong one in fact. Creates alot of Pride. Therefore, i can measure how much my own ego creates how proud i feel. Since i can measure the relationship between the two inside of me, i know how it functions mechanically in others. The only question is how much stronger my emotions objectively are compared to normal humans, so i can compensate for the difference. AND LET ME TELL YOU! THAT ONLY TOOK THREE DECADES!
I’m 33, by the way.
Anyway, since i figured myself out, and i understand the spread, i’ve figured humans out. And there’s little more to it then that, really.
And in this case, since i know myself. I know Ingo. And i know he’s been working very hard on something for a very long time.
As i said, i don’t lie, because i’ve got no need to lie. Masters of manipulation spin webs of lies, and the difference in skill lies in how many lies they can remember and interweave. But lies have an inherent flaw: It’s really hard to remember fantasy. As opposed to reality, which is easy to remember, since we live in it. This is actually how police solve cold cases: Often, all you need to do is interview people years after the fact. People have either forgotten the small lies they told for social reasons at the time (not wanting to get into trouble most often). They’ve forgotten some details about the truth, but not all as memory isn’t perfect, therefore tell the story slightly different but mainly the same. And those who rehearsed their story at the time, memorized it deeply… And will tell the exact same story again years later, which is an impossibility.
I’ve been searching for truth and nothing but truth for so long (mainly out of survival to try and make sense of it all), i know alot of it. In fact i can spot so much truth in any situation that i cannot possibly convey all of it succinctly, even if i had no communication disorder, which i do so i generally spend an exorbitant amount of time even explaining one single thing. And as my explanations are also subject to the same disorder and it just multiplies the work. If anyone wonders why i’m good at explaining things…. That’d be why. Compounding explanations for my entire fucking life. My followers already know i talk and type ALOT…. I’m still holding back tremendously. I can genuinely keep talking truth for more hours then there are in a day.
My current record is typing 13,000 words in a day (and 2nd drafting it the next, though i rushed that one), and honestly, i need to hit double if i wanna convey all i wanna convey, and quintuple if i wanna hit the speed i hear things at in my head, especially when i’m in a hyper productive mode. Before you think it’s bragging…. just keep on reading the story, it has some major drawbacks too. Nothing in life comes for free.
What all this means in practice is that i start to steer questions. There is nothing wrong with asking a question – but the manner in which it’s asked matters a great deal, just go ask any pollster… documentaries of which i’ve also watched and absorbed. For example, while i don’t remember exactly how i asked the question about recycling, i remember i made sure to put a few suggestions in for “how it could possibly drive up supply”.
This because i already asked about “buying up the base metal” (AKA pulling a Hunt Brothers for those aware of the history of Silver) and Ingo replied “What do you think we’ve been doing”. So i KNEW they had to have thought of other sources of supply, and eliminated all of them, including recycling. At the same time, i understand my own need for explaining things, so i understand Ingo’s need to explain things. Encroach on what he knows, and he will feel the need to show what he knows. So i got the data i wanted in return: His real level of competence.
I started steering the rest of the questions the same way the further the meeting went along. Since it wasn’t hard to detect he was smart, i decided to tell him the story from when i was 14 and did an IQ test. It was an expensive full afternoon one that took 2 hours + 1,5 hours after a 30 minute break, taken by a smart and competent psychologist (possibly the only one i respect) who did this for a living and came across all sorts of smart people.
The story goes that after i was done, the psychologist wouldn’t tell me what my IQ was. I got frustrated, being a highly competitive gamer at the time and having just spent 4 hours on a high score, so i started to argue. I’ve lost about 5 arguments across my entire life (i kept count), so it took about 5 minutes for her to cave and just show me the graph. Yes, i have a graph. Not with me, but i know my mother still keeps the document as i saw it somewhere in 2017. In any case, as soon as i saw it, i understood why she wouldn’t give me a score:
On the left hand side was “social” intelligence. While the test was a very expansive one for what we consider “smart people” and thus measured intelligence deeply, social intelligence is never the less part of intelligence, so there was one part of the test that tested it.
I scored 70. No joke. I’m legitimately a retard, i have it in writing. My EQ as it’s called, is abominable. Basically speaking at the time i was 14 i had no way of connecting with people, and emotionally i still don’t, because while my emotions might be very strong, they’re also decidedly simple. Very little complexity in them.
But… The next one over was 80, not EQ but closely related i was told. Next one over, 100, and just about every other datapoint was around ~125, about 9 of them.
Except 2 in the middle. One was “Reasoning ability”, where i scored 145. The second one next to it, was called “Logic”, where i scored 153.
Now, to me, that sounded really weird. Why is it 153 when everything else is 70, 80, 100, 125 and 145? So i simply asked, “Why is it 153?”. And sitting across from me with her arms crossed she simply goes:
“Because the test doesn’t go higher then 153. I have no idea how smart you are”.
Well that answered the question of why she didn’t wanna give me a number. I do have an estimate however. After that little bombshell i put the graph away and we talked for a little more, and she told me she estimated i took the test about 50% seriously (and i have that in writing too). Since i was now sitting across from her with my arms crossed, i remember at the time my reaction was a chuckle and a “yeah, that sounds ‘bout right”. (WELL I’M SORRY I GET BORED EASY).
Oh, and just to scare you all a little more: On the way out an 8 year old kid was waiting in the waiting room. We talked a bit with the Mom and i mentioned my score (ofcourse), but also that it was only a spike. She said her boy had 153+ across the board. If he’s still alive, he should be 28 by now. I may be the smartest guy in the room… but i’m not the smartest guy out there. By far.
His response to all of the commotion BTW? “BLAAAAAAT”. In Dutch the phonetic representation of a sheep, to indicate he really didn’t care. Hope the lil guy did OK, society’s harsh.
My score didn’t get me anything in life and nobody cared, buuuuut alteast it makes for a nice story at parties. In any case, i told Ingo the story (in a short version) to see his reaction.
After i said the 153 number, he wanted to interrupt me, but i overrode him as the story wasn’t done… But he was very eager to say something. After i told the 50% part, he said what he wanted to say before (so i don’t even think he really heard): He immediately invited me to Germany next year “to have a little competition.”
Well. I haven’t seen that level of arrogance since i was 15 and kicking ass in Battlefield 1942: Desert Combat. And i remember being so goddamn arrogant because i actually had the skill to back it up (Won a best-of-the-best tournament at the time).
But yknow… 15 and what i would’ve estimated at atleast 50 is quite the time spread. That’s what i would call an exploitable opening.
Towards more of the end of the meeting when i started talking sales, i mentioned that i was already building a sales team. This was true as i’d already realized the asset was good (the meeting was to confirm and i could always reneg on a possible promise) so i’d wasted no time acting as if the company was good.
Once the asset turned out to be legitimate, there were only 2 options left:
1. The company behind it was legitimate;
2. The company behind it was corrupt.
And i kept that in mind at all times because it concerned a technological monopoly. There’s a reason why monopolies aren’t good for society, and it’s not mechanical. Mechanically speaking, there’s nothing wrong with a monopoly, it’s just “a very large company with a very large market share”. A monopoly doesn’t need 100% market share before it becomes one, large percentages such as 90%, 80% or even 60% can still constitute a monopoly if the rest of the market is fragmented enough and the one dominant player uses its position to keep it that way. Monopolies are by definition anti-competitive. If multiple large players conspire together we call that a “Duopoly” or “Cartel”.
In this case, there was an exception. Because the company didn’t own the patent to the process, merely one to its implementation. The process itself is well know, it’s merely the execution of the process that is proprietary. You might know you have to run something at 3000C and at a few thousand atmospheric pressures, actually building a furnace that can withstand all of that isn’t easy.
The actual patent holder has only one requirement for the license: You have to demonstrate you’ve mastered the process perfectly. Because if you don’t, the oxygen doesn’t stay trapped in the crystals and forms toxic gas with the Osmium. Due to this unique situation, the monopoly isn’t illegal by default: If you can prove the same, you can get a license too. It’s just that the process is, quoting Ingo’s own words: “Fucking Complex”. I can’t remember him swearing any other time by the way, but i might be mistaken.
In the mails Scarlett had sent, she had mentioned in which countries the institutes where launching. The United States wasn’t one of them, and some of my closer friends came from there. My plan for my sales team was always simple: The moment i got the offer of 3%, i knew i would be able to help my long time friends off the bottom of society. Since i’ve lived on the bottom, all my friends are from there too, and most if not all would never ever see any kind of money they were offering. I knew with my knowledge about humans i could very easily train them to make a few sales, and since i could give them income, their quality of life would finally improve.
Many of them are in trouble in some way or another. My Russian friend went into the year destitute and eating nothing but ramen (luckily he’s doing better now). As opposed to my friend from Hong Kong, who i’ve been guiding to prepare for emigration for half a year by the time Osmium came around and is too short on funds to leave. Just being able to access those two markets through those two would mean we’d all never have to worry about a thing anymore, and i was more then willing to micromanage my close friends. Excited, in fact.
This plan was helped along by their business structure. This structure is very close to a multilevel marketing scheme, with a few key differences. They have assured me multiple times that they have lawyers who looked at this extensively, so at the time combined with my own knowledge i thought it was dicey, but legit. Walking a thin line, but still on it. In any case, their setup mirrored early social media browser games that i’ve played alot, so i knew how to navigate it easily:
You can recruit people and get a percentage of their sales as a referral bonus. Unlike multilevel marketing schemes, it only goes 4 levels deep, there’s no performance pressure bonus, and you don’t have to hold any inventory: It all goes through a central shop which each wholesaler can customize. Since we’d all have to order from a central point anyway, they took a direct approach, and we’d only have to guide people to our shop and convince them to buy, and that’s it.
The only competition involved would be other wholesalers who’d do the same. This was kind of surprising to me, as initially they wanted me as a partner for the Netherlands, so i kind of assumed there’d be only 1 wholesaler per country. This made the most sense to me, as this was an extremely rare asset – already ~€1600 a gram, and it wasn’t even known to anyone yet. One wholesaler would be more then enough to cover a country once it became known, as those sales would be enough for each wholesaler to just hire a salesteam for a salary.
But instead they took a different approach: I asked how many wholesalers they were going to scale up to. They said they had about 200 now, but they were looking at a number between 5,000 and 10,000.
This was quite astonishing to me. It’d be quite hard to get a turnover when there is no inventory! If literally 10,000 wholesalers make 1 sale a month, that’s 10,000 pieces. I’d already asked them about their maximum production capacity:
25 kilos in the next month, with a theoretical maximum production capacity of 500 kilograms per year. There’s simply not more of the stuff coming out of the ground, as they’re dependent on the mines. That’s 500,000 grams.
This means that with 10,000 wholesalers, each wholesaler would have a theoretical maximum allotment of supply of 50 grams.
This made 2 things clear to me. First that they hadn’t got a clue how to sell this. If i were in charge i’d never go above 500 wholesalers, if at all – i’m pretty sure i can do this with a singular institute in each country. There’s no way this thing is gonna get any sort of low income foot traffic at all as a investment asset… But apparently they had no idea about their target market either.
That much i already knew though. I saw there were letters in the webshop. That struck me as baffling: You have the rarest asset on earth, and you turn it into letters that literally look like i can get them at the dollar store down the street? Really? Well whatever, there’s tons of companies that don’t know how to do marketing, and it just means they’re not gonna take off until i’m ready either. I’ll fix a design and product line easy, and since the stuff can’t be reused, it just jacks up the price for later. And i can’t feel responsible for bad decisions made while i wasn’t there.
Secondly it told me i was early. I also knew if i could just empty the shop on my own, which considering i understand value wouldn’t be that hard since the asset’s legit, so if they only had 200 out of 10,000 – that means they were still scaling up, or trying to anyway. And since i’ve played browser games with the same guild structure as this company had its recruitment’s structure, i knew i had the best possible advantage in such games. After all, the quicker your army grew, the more power transferred to you to go around and stomp others who got too powerful on the way up.
That cemented my plan to get my friends in as fast as possible. It’d cost me alot of effort to scan this company through quickly, but if they were legit – and mind you their director was a certified genius so i’m not quick to jump to conclusions – speed was key. Once i’d start promoting the asset i knew it’d gain attention rapidly, so the setup had to be complete up front. I also knew, because of incoming hyperinflation, if i didn’t hurry it could take off well before i was ready. Especially because Ingo informed me they’d just signed their first United States wholesaler the day before.
And it’s that last part that worried me the most out of everything i heard.
When i mentioned i was building my salesteam and that i was already talking to my close friends from Canada and the US, Ingo had a reply:
“Yes and this is a great time to get into America because of Christmas….”
Excuse me?
I didn’t say anything, but i did think alot. You want me, without training, materials, a team, a strategy (made WITH that team cause i’m not simply gonna dictate), or funding cause i’m still poor as shit – And with my history that they knew cause they made a point of how long it took to read the whole damn backstory many times; To jump into the shark infested waters that is the United States Christmas season?! That’s damn near like sending me into battle without weapons and armor with a grenade strapped to my back. Oh sure i can hold my own, but i’ve got limits yknow, and once they break it’s not pretty.
At the time though i was sure they’d be willing to provide materials and maybe a little bit of funding, but to just blurt that out…. That points me towards a lack of care. As i said, up until now i hadn’t heard anything unreasonable, and if anything they’d been far too reasonable for my liking.
One thing i DO know, is that “first impressions are everything”, and you really cannot just jump into Christmas season without any preparation. You’ll sell nothing and the mental strain is enormous. “Here you wanna spell SANTA for $2500?”
I can’t remember what he said after because by the time he finished that sentence i’d already thought “dude’s crazy” and decided to completely ignore it. I was going to have to create my own marketing material eventually anyway, which i knew would be superior to people making these sort of comments, so we could just replace their stuff with mine and then the next batch of trainees would be fine. I’ve learned, and after 2020 confirmed, that if humans don’t see it it’s not there, so until the materials are made, they won’t understand the difference no matter what i say.
But while i’m not quick to judge and i love to solve problems anyway… It can’t get too much. If they really had neglected to put proper care into their company, i’d find out about it. My instincts were already tingling so it was just a matter of time and hard work to do it as fast as possible.
And i don’t waste time. I’ve not mentioned much about Scarlett so far, though she was in the meeting. She was mainly supportive, adding in info whenever there was something to do about sales. “Decently German” is what we Dutch would say, atleast within my family. The webcam also showed she’s a beautiful young German woman, in charge of her own jewelry company ontop of being the vice president of the institute. And as i said, her work really is elegant. I’m a trained classical composer and my entire family is in the arts in multiple ways, so i tend to stare at particularly great art.
Speaking of my family i should also mention that during my 20’s which most of the time i spent without real life friends, i ended up going over to my fathers house every Tuesday, even before music lessons. Simply put, i like spending time with my dad. And one of the things we spent doing, for years, is watching 2-3 episodes of Detective series every Tuesday.
We’ve seen them all. Everything by Agatha Christie, Poirot and Ms. Marple being the family favorites, as well as the old Sherlock Holmes TV show – i think from the 80’s, not that new trash. Though we’ve seen modern shows as well, from Jack Irish to George Gently, and we where very dismayed to learn the BBC had stopped Aurelius Zen, as we thought that was a very good show in the making, but turned out to be too expensive per episode unfortunately. The actor who played him (though i forget his name) is also a family favorite, and plays the evil Nazi commander in The Man in the High Castle; another show we watched. I love movies involving time as well for the same reason; trying to figure out what’s going on. All of it meshes wonderfully with my logic.
Needless to say, i’m pretty good at deduction at this point. And while the connection via the internet is never as good as in real life; i did notice Scarlett had pink hands. Yeah i know, that sounds weird, but what i mean to say is: There was no other color on her hands when she waved them about in my peripheral vision. She was a very pretty successful talented jeweler, but when i looked at her hands, there were no rings. Which i thought weird because she was just so nice – not just her way of communicating but her body language as well. Just about everything about her was genuinely nice.
Now i’m not looking to wife anyone here – i’ve been through rock bottom in 2020 and as i said, i had just a few days prior said goodbye to another exciting prospect so it couldn’t be further from my mind at the time. Oh i’ll notice, but i absolutely won’t focus on it, my focus was on generating all the money i could before imminent disaster. Besides she had a boyfriend, because of course someone like her has a boyfriend. My question was (to myself), why not a husband?
Anyways, with all my data gathered, the meeting was over and i decided to come onboard. Sure i detected problems, but lets be real, there are ALWAYS problems to fix. Again, that just makes me excited, as i’m a problem solver. The more complex problems the better, as it allows me to show off a little, while i rarely get to “stretch my legs” sorta speak on someone else’s behalf 😀
And again. 11% of sales on the back end of the new gold. I’m not greedy, but i’m no fool either.
The last part of this chapter is dedicated to my following. As i said, i’ve taken great care to build up a following that really appreciates me, and the reason they do is because of the massive effort i put in on their behalf. And i know i have their appreciation due to the massive, massive amounts of purely positive commentary and encouragement i’ve had.
After the meeting was done, it was again clear to me. I’d either get filthy rich directly selling osmium, or i’d get an indomitable reputation from exposing the corruption behind the actual new gold, before it got started.
After all… Here was a central authority that conspired to centrally fix the price of The New Gold, as they made clear they wanted one global Osmium price….
…And i’m the premier researcher when it comes to the Comex, the central authority which has conspired the fix the price of the Old gold.
Promotion, Clearing corruption, or Exposing a scam ontop of something extremely important before it got out of hand. Either way, there was no way in hell my reputation wouldn’t grow to insane heights.
So now my followers know why i tweeted after the meeting, “THERE’S NO WAY I’M NOT GONNA END UP FUCKING RICH!”. This story is why.
And the fact that it was easily my most liked tweet up to that point, reaching 80 likes in 3 hours, is the reason why i’m giving the shout out today ^_^ Never forget who’s most important to you, otherwise all you gain is loss.
The Recruitment Phase
With the meeting done and tweet posted, it was time for me to get to work. It’s around here that the timing of events starts getting fuzzy in my mind, because i can easily multitask and juggle many things at once… But that does come at a cost of losing track of time. Not to mention i didn’t have much of a sleep schedule for those 12 days.
Social conversation costs me energy, a substantial amount too. Thanks to training my ability to analyze, the energy doesn’t come from mechanical interaction anymore. There’s been research done into this; Apparently humans have long pathways connecting the front of their brain to the back, and these pathways are associated with ease of social mobility. They’re like highways of the brain, connecting the observation centers to the social centers of the brain.
People with autism have less or even little of these connections. It’s as if the things they observe are disconnected from how they’re supposed to behave – the context isn’t delivered, merely reality. As such it’s always reality i observe, not “what i’m supposed to see”.
And this is a problem cause you people are a bunch of lying deceitful motherfuckers i’ll tell yer.
My perfect example remains the American greeting “hey how are you doing?”. This is an outright lie, as they never care how you are doing. Yet for Americans, it is perfectly normal to start the conversation with a lie. The intended behavior is to get the same response from the other, so that the initiator gets to tell how he is doing first, where the other then is to follow after the story is done, if there is one.
If there’s none, The conversation goes “Hey how are you doing?” “good man how are you? “Good man you?” “yeah i was watching the game last night…”
Don’t look at me like that. You know who you are. There’s redundancy in there and you know it.
THAT behavior is exhausting. WHY can’t you just start with “hey man something crazy happened the other day” and just roll with that. It might just be rose tinted glasses but i seem to remember people were alot more social back in the day (my own country is no different), because i used to be taught stuff on the daily and now i feel like i have to teach everybody else how to communicate.
Getting a response out of some people has been exceedingly hard. I can tell somebody i’m autistic and if i don’t get feedback i’m blind and i worry excessively A MILLION FUCKING TIMES but it just doesn’t seem to register. I’ve had people tell me i’ve been a handful my entire life, and i keep telling them that’s cause they don’t tell me shit and keep expecting me to “just know”.
That’s just rude yknow. It’s just pain rude. We live in an exceedingly rude society compared to just a decade or two ago.
It’s not the fucking swearing.
It’s the fact that nobody knows how to use swearing, when to use it, why they’re using it, and that goes the same for every other fucking word. And rather then try and explain why you should or shouldn’t use it, it’s just a blanket ban on language. Meanwhile, you people just say things, they make no sense but i’m expected to just accept it because “you feel that way” – and it’s stressing me out. Permanently. When you feel different from reality, your feelings are wrong, end of story.
While i suffer an order of a magnitude less with my friends who believe in me and who know me, it’s not stress free by any stretch of the imagination. And while normal conversation is fine and i can talk for hours, when i have to convince them that i’m right, my past comes into play too, as all i’ve ever had to do was prove myself beyond odds. I tend to get a bit… Enthusiastic.
And within 12 days i tried getting ~10 people to join me. Before it blew up i had 5 in and 3 waiting on news from HQ. All because they believed in me, not the asset. In fact the more time i knew each one and the longer they supported me the more readily each one was to join me. And they all thanked me for thinking of them, cause some i hadn’t talked to in a long time. I don’t forget who was kind to me ^_^
But…. I’m no longer Nice. Nor do i give a shit about “Nice” people anymore. If there’s one saying that categorizes my life it’s “The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions”. I’ve gotten plenty of help throughout the years. Psychologists, Pills, i practically shared the principal’s office during the 2nd year of highschool. All help designed to help be become “normal”. None of it designed to help me explore myself or to live with who i am, or to change my environment in any way shape or form to help suit me.
I got beaten up, spat on, then got detention when i did something back, and finally had a psychologist tell me i was the problem. All by people who were very nice to me, and demanded i was nice to them too, because that was civilized, and i shouldn’t act uncivilized.
Just like the paramedics in February 2020 who i called after i got a heart attack. They insisted i couldn’t breathe because i was hyperventilating. I insisted i was hyperventilating because i couldn’t breathe as the heart attack and difficulty breathing came first, and i started hyperventilating to keep myself alive. After they kept insisting hyperventilation was the problem i needed to calm down, while i felt all that was keeping my heart going was my adrenaline, so i called the paramedic a dick.
He immediately took off the measuring equipment (after never even looking at it closely because i had a pulse and that’s all he cared about) saying “that’s not how we treat eachother” and got up to leave. I apologized a thousand times, but he never measured my vitals again. He did take a call while i was just visibly deteriorating infront of him, but he felt it more prudent to explain how i was the problem. I told him to leave and i tried going to the hospital myself.
I made it there but collapsed in agony in the emergency room as my lungs started burning and i felt like i was breathing glass. Nobody helped or approached me. I listened to my instincts, and starting screaming at the top of my lungs instead; More adrenaline, more attention. No doctors approached me, security did though. They all thought i was faking it, because eventually my symptoms went away again, like i told them a thousand times they would because they were intermittent.
But all these people are so terribly nice to each other. Extremely civilized. Every single one of then makes no sound when in pain. I can’t tell you how fucking lucky they’ve all been.
Because, with my background, around February 24th – I realized i was a walking bioweapon in a city that tortured me all my life and nobody would actually believe me, take any precautions and all the while they were literally laughing in my face.
I could’ve killed everybody. And i considered it. I wanted to.
Instead, i went on a final weed run, made sure not to cough or do anything but breathe calmly through my nose, and went into a month of self isolation living off the supplies i’d already bought at the end of January to survive the coming panic. My vents were taped off, and the one delivery guy that passed by because a package was delayed i told to stay away, put the package down 10 meters away, and to protect himself. I did meet him again months later, atleast he was thankful.
I’m writing all of this because it’s important to understand why being nice has no effect on me other then to make me suspicious. I’ve never seen, nor experienced, people more dangerous to their fellow man then “nice” people who just refuse to think. Hitler may have been bad, somebody voted him into power, infact approximately a 1/3rd of Germany did – something everybody seems to forget these days cause it’s easy to hide behind monsters.
So the fact that Scarlett had been exceptionally nice to me, made me suspicious. That she was this wonderful a woman and as i soon found out when i started talking to her on telegram while getting up to speed, she was the best boss i’d ever worked with or even including the guilds, i served with. I’m quite a scatterbrain to people i have barely met and it felt like communication went well, she was very accepting of my ways of thinking.
Now at the start this was going to happen anyway. The way i work should be obvious by now: I gather an extreme amount of data up front, overtrain myself in the shadows, work out plans with backup plans with backup plans, and then start. They say a good start is half the work, but i can tell you, 90% of the work makes a good start. That has only a single caveat: I need that large amount of data. And when there’s a timelimit, i need it sort of fast.
To be honest i didn’t expect to be talking to Scarlett after the meeting. She’s the vice-president. I originally expected her to recruit me because it’s important to know who you’re dealing with, and then i thought i’d be handed over to a lower level contact who’d be my direct go-to. After all that’s how it works in business. I might not have worked a day in the private sector for money, i still observe others at work. I’ve seen good and bad businesses, and the good ones have a solid command structure. Indecisiveness is one of the main killers of productivity, as you end up wasting alot of time working on things that are never used. That’s why leadership and vision are so important to have, because it allows you to identify an objective, chart a course and lead others through.
But i was never handed off. She never gave me any other person to contact or deal with. Well fine then i’ll assume she’s my contact and ask her everything. Since it’s obvious how much i think of, i ask a lot in the beginning. And indeed; Well in the beginning Scarlett clearly told me that “she had other partners to deal with too” and i was taking up alot of time.
I ignored this flat out. Two reasons:
First, again, you can’t send me out in the field without training, guidance, materials or funding. That’s not how promotion works. Just having a webshop link isn’t enough to convince people, and i was starting to figure out why Osmium hadn’t blown up yet. While it’s commendable that they’re willing to deal with people with special needs, they’re called people with special needs for a reason. Even normal people still have normal needs. And i tend to think i don’t ask alot over the entire course of employment since i have to figure so fucking much out myself, i actually do it. Once the initial data’s in i’m fine gimme a break. It’ll be much better then the rest who barely learns and never becomes independent, you’ll end up micromanaging those people at a much higher expense.
Secondly, i wanted to push her buttons. That’s not nice i know, but like i said, i’m not nice anymore purely for my own safety and sanity. As a human behavior specialist i know where ALL the lines are. But because of my autism, i don’t know which line is important to which human at what time. It’d be easier if it was consistent, but people bounce between their own lines all the time as well.
In the end i’ve found that no matter what i try, it always ends up in conflict. Always. Eventually i fuck up. I always end up crossing a line, apologizing, then never crossing it again. If people were more open about themselves it’d be easier but i really doubt most people even know that much about themselves these days. So i’ve basically opted for running into a minefield with steel boots. It may be brutal, at least it’s quick.
And… I received no pushback. None.
That sent up a red flag for me, and a pretty decent one. While i knew i was in the right for demanding the time i needed, the fact my boss said no, i flat out ignored it, and it was forgotten is remarkable. That means i’m already the dominant person in this relationship, because i can demand whatever time i want and get away with it. At the very least, she should’ve said something later, but she just took the explanation of needing alot of data upfront and provided it.
What’s wrong with saying “I’m too busy, we’re still scaling up, you don’t have to rush this much”?
I mean i’d argue, but atleast i’d have to argue, and that is what i’d expect, purely from historical observations, and i’d adjust my behavior accordingly. I do adjust myself, all the time, but to explain that too would triple my wordcount yet again… and i’m just so tired of it.
Since no pushback was given… i must be nowhere near the line. Thus we push harder.
Just wanna take a moment here to say, i may not be nice, but i’m no asshole either. I’m doing all this with a purpose, and had they known anything about autism, they would’ve known. I’m neutral towards all people that i don’t know now, until i know them and i’ve got something to work with. If somebody refuses to give me the feedback i need, my mind tries to logically construct what the right context of the situation is, something that often yields multiple answers, or basically multiple contexts that look similar but have very different outcomes, and i have no ability to narrow it down further without more data. It always feels to me like people ask me to jump while i don’t have legs.
A good example of this was about the first 3-4 days i talked to Scarlett. By the 2nd day, i started to think she had a crush on me! Because as far as i knew, NO ONE was this nice unless they were interested in someone else. Only people you wanna get real close to, you have no problem putting more effort into, no matter how much it is.
A good example of this happened at the same time i was juggling another relationship. As Eric Sprott had said he wanted to help, and i said i needed capital, and he sounded intrigued by the offers i made him on the phone; I sent him an update about the whole situation. That the asset was legit, that i was now a wholesaler and could offer him a better deal. I also told him to drop the finders fee for my uranium miner if he wanted to invest, free of charge, because i believed in this asset and wanted to make a sale, as well as secure trust. I realized right away that if Eric Sprott invests in Osmium as bullion, it’d legitimize the asset overnight. And that was fine with me, cause as i’ve said many times. Stuff looks sparkly as all hell. There’s no way humans aren’t drawn to it. That’s massive utility value right there. Desire. Meanwhile i don’t mind giving away stuff. I don’t care for money anyway, and as i said, i can now keep generating it anyway.
Atleast billionaires respond quickly. It didn’t take long before he agreed to buy some osmium from me! This got me extremely excited as you can imagine 😀 He asked for the specs (One sentence. Why do all these people think because i’m a financial genius and a human behavior specialist, 5 words will do? People mention tickers to me like i’m a library); So is simply said “as much as possible. Millions.”
Which honestly if i had them i would’ve already put into it. I haven’t lied once to anyone throughout this entire adventure; If i was a billionaire, i would’ve put millions in. Don’t tell me at that point people don’t have a slush fund of like $10 million lying around just for out of left field deals like this. Put a million or two in a vault pull a billion out. Simple waiting game, what’s not to love? I mean i heard he had 90% of his wealth in silver and gold in some form or another, i felt if anyone would understand i’d be him.
Besides the dude has got SO MANY private placements in the gold and silver sector, which are gonna many X themselves, so i didn’t see the problem with suggesting a high amount. Since it was also possible for me to recruit people, i also suggested he could become a wholesaler himself. Since that’d give him a 11% discount (if you buy from your own shop you see) which would allow him to accumulate at a discount or just sell in the secondary market for a quick profit. I have watched the Sprott weekly wrap-up in 2020 where he mentioned people called him up to see if he had any gold supply in the depths of crisis, so this would take care of that. There are great benefits to being first, and securing a guaranteed supply in times of crunch is one of them.
Anyways, the reason it’s mentioned here is because Scarlett mentioned she was going on a trip to Canada in January. I forgot if she said the reason for it in the meeting or in a mail, honestly with so much text i went through talking to so many people it’s a miracle i remembered she was going at all. Since Eric is in Canada, she suggested she might meet with him if it helps the sale.
Seeing multiple opportunities align, i suggested i could come along. And this is where i have to explain that travel scares me absolutely to death, because my house in the Netherlands is my only safe zone where my thoughts don’t matter, and if i’m in Canada, even if i were to rush home, in every situation i can think of i’m not gonna be home within 48 hours. Should i really flip out to the point where “i want to go home”, that would be a veeeeery torturous 48 hours. But it’s possible if i have a chaperon. As long as i know i have somebody else to rely on when my brain short circuits, it’s manageable and doesn’t happen. Sometimes i just need to not think and be dragged along. Once i’ve done something once – i can handle myself, as i’ve got data to anchor me.
She readily agreed to bring me along. Which was another red flag for me to be honest, or confusing at the very least, and one reason for why i thought she might have a crush on me. Who in the world brings somebody along on a business trip, after you’ve just met them and their history is questionable to say the least? I mean, don’t get me wrong, i’m still a good guy with a kind heart – But they don’t know that, atleast not from experience. They can’t possibly know that. Not within a week, while they’re so busy Scarlett’s telling me she’s got others to deal with too. That i admit to my problems doesn’t matter, they’re still there and require care.
Now she might’ve mentioned this in the meeting but it didn’t stick so at this point i’d forgotten, but aside from going to Canada for business she was going to a cottage to see her boyfriend for a two weeks vacation. Regardless, she still said we’d have to quarantine for 14 days upon arrival, which… well yeah that’s 2020 for ya, and 2021 too.
Here’s the thing; I’m not up to date on what quarantine means in Canada at this time. What i assumed is we’d get stuck in a hotel together specifically for travelers, had to stay there for 14 days, then were free to travel the country. Yknow, the sensible thing to stop a highly contagious virus from spreading, you don’t let it in and hope for the best. What i didn’t expect is that it means “Just go wherever the fuck you like when you arrive, just promise to stay within the first (few) doors you walk into eh?”
Since i wasn’t getting enough feedback i decided to shape a response; And i’m WAY too fucked up at this point to dare to off the cuff ask the one boss who’s nice to me “do you have a crush on me?” 4 days into the job, just too check. My romantic history while actually trying is… better left unmentioned. I said and make it seem off the cuff “Oh 14 days in a room with weed, games and you?! How will i ever survive!”, using some disarming humor to smooth it over incase i got into trouble. Hey, i’ll apologize, but i don’t have to make it extra hard on myself.
Well, she just reminded me that she had a boyfriend and was going to meet him in the cottage, which from that point onward stuck. Not cause she had a boyfriend but because this suddenly conflicted with everything i told her earlier, and she already agreed to: That i need a chaperon and i cannot be left alone. So i honestly don’t know what her thinking was here, that i just needed somebody with me to survive the planeride? I mean i told her it wasn’t gonna work like that but it didn’t seem to register much.
However i’m not about to pussy out on an opportunity of a lifetime. I suffer torture all the time anyway. If i can convince Eric Sprott to make a large sale by meeting him face to face, as well as the many other ideas i have for business (i genuinely only need capital goddamnit), i’ll gladly take the month of hell. I’ve been to hell so many times, i’ve got a subscription. And the 2 weeks quarantine is a vacation at that point cause if i’m in quarantine, people will stay away from me too. But i wasn’t gonna do it alone, cause seriously, that’s dangerous.
I figured a quick solution. Tom from Palisades Radio, the person who got my public career started, has become a good friend and he was also gonna be in on the adventure, so he had no problem housing me for 2 weeks of games and ganja. Since i’ve already been infected and am now immune (or simply dead next time i get it, either or if fine with me at this point), that wasn’t a problem either. He gladly agreed, which solved that problem.
But don’t think i forgot that she agreed to have me along knowing she’d specifically put distance between us cause she wanted her romantic get away. It was me who came up with a solution, not her. She could’ve said no, again.
At this point it was clear to me: Scarlett’s unable to set boundaries. Oh sure, things important to her like her boyfriend she protects, and her mentioning that first thing also killed the crush theory, which again just made things easier to figure out. But that i can override her request for less spamming, that i she readily suggests to take me along on this short notice without any plan or consideration for protecting my mental health, and that she didn’t say a thing when Ingo wanted to send me into the US by Christmas (Yet they worry i’m too fast for them?), makes it clear to me: These are good intentions, but not plans. She’s winging it, all the way. Their business plan might be well worked out… Implementation is another matter entirely.
And that’s a problem. Because; if i can override her this easily, who else has been taking advantage of her?
That i don’t use manipulation doesn’t mean i don’t know those who do. I’ve had the benefit of their experience my entire miserable life. I guess you could say, i’m a “white hat mind hacker”; The charlatans of the world representing the black hats. I still find the same vulnerabilities in people to exploit, but i catalog them and then present them for review, as i know the very cornerstone of manipulation is that the person must remain unaware that they’re being manipulated.
If the tests at the end are revealed with an apology, people are generally thankful. And that’s only when i’m wrong, which doesn’t happen that often (though it does happen). When i’m right people realize things that were hidden from them for years, because the very speech between normal people is manipulative bullshit; They’re happy for somebody to finally tell them reality, even if it hurts a little. But hell, i always get hurt trying to figure out the bullshit they’re spouting along the way, so i call it even.
Now, i’ll find ways to protect myself and others, because i can’t help but feel responsible. But i know that there are vast quantities of people out there who have no such feelings for others. They will look out only after themselves, because they have their own needs, and all other things are secondary. Infact, this is the predominant opinion i’ve encountered while growing up. It’s normal to look out for number one. And these days, at all costs.
This caused me to start looking at their website and their materials in a different light. It’s one thing to not know how to market things, but if Scarlett didn’t know how her business was being perceived publicly, then the people telling her the current situation is good or beneficial, must be lying. After all it’s fine not to know specific things – i don’t know how to fix a car. So if a mechanic tells me he did a good job, i’ll have to trust him. And i mention mechanics because a mechanic ripping off unknowledgeable customers to overcharge for parts or unnecessary repairs is a well known meme.
The same goes for website designers. I doubt a jeweler or an engineer built the website themselves, so they must have a website guy. And since i’ve done IT, i’m well aware of ego within the IT business. Lots of people think they’re gods gift to computers, while they haven’t got a fucking clue what they’re doing. Oh sure, they’ll get something to work, but the methods they use to get something to work, are so inefficient, you can’t really speak of something “working” anymore. People get confused by the fact that anything digital doesn’t stop functioning when it breaks, things can break partially, or work so inefficiently that they can be counted as broken, while still operating. This will be coming back in a big way later.
At this point i was juggling many things at once. I wanted to see how far i could push things with Scarlett, i tried getting my friends in many at a time and i had to keep them informed of progress as well as hold meetings with them, keep the people informed of my progress, still continue to document both the Comex and Tether; as well as update Scarlett on the situation. She might not like being busy, but if she’s not informed what’s going on in her business, as vice-president, i consider that detrimental to the business. Ontop of that all i did another interview of an hour plus with Tom and another of an hour and a half with Elliot from the early stage investor. Both interviews were taped during talking about Osmium and either getting them in or updating them about the situation. I still thought until the end that Scarlett would see the gravity of the situation eventually.
And i’d already made clear to Scarlett that i can’t hold down a job because i care more about the business then the job: Any problem, even caused by management, has to be fixed. Management not wanting to know of their failings is not my concern. I’d rather get fired then stick with a company like that. By now it’s happened quite a few times. Still don’t care, i know i’m alone. Everybody likes a genius until he’s smarter and starts naming failings.
But it’s also during these conversations i’d learn more about Scarlett, and her perception of me. In one of her mails to friends i was introducing, she mentioned that “not everybody is a workaholic like Deso and me”. And i had to correct her – I’m no workaholic. Yes, i can work insanely hard, but only with purpose. I never intend to keep working very hard, and the last year has just been a sequence of (many) unfortunate events. There’s many things i want to do; But i want to do them efficiently and preferably delegate or automate whatever i can, so there’s other things i can do. I’ve also learned long ago where my limits are and when rest is required.
But Scarlett hasn’t. Clearly. While i didn’t ask because i (surprisingly) don’t pry into private lives, i did get an insight into why she didn’t have any rings on her fingers. That came on Christmas Eve, where she replied to me on telegram – but at the end mentioned that her family was mad at her that she was answering mails when she wasn’t supposed to. This with her off hand comment made it clear to me that she is a classic Workaholic. She can’t set boundaries with anyone, and she can’t set boundaries with work either. I may work hard, but when it’s enough, i walk away. My twitter followers will know i’ve taken days off before, even if my vacation keeps getting postponed (Not beyond the 17th it won’t).
I may not have been in a relationship myself, i’ve had ample opportunity to observe those of others. Especially since i’m a problem solver which tends to draw in women asking me for advice on their relationships with others – which is the problem as they should be talking to their significant other and bring their problems to them instead of me, but i digress. Love is simple. You wanna be the most important thing in someone’s life. That’s a boundary: The abandonment of some things in favor of a person, including work.
If she can’t stay away from work on Christmas Eve when she’s with family, she can’t stay away from work when she’s with the one she’s supposed to abandon work for. Patterns of behavior are a bitch. Naturally i tested this – after i learned of this i told her to not respond to me until after the 26th and even threatened to block her for her own good. She thanked me for understanding, so i know i’m on pretty solid ground here. And also failed that test as well, so i upped it to the 27th.
Anyway, her personal life is her personal life, and i’m not gonna get into that (i never made the above comments to her BTW, so i genuinely don’t know, but i can guess). But being a workaholic comes with certain negative traits, other then not setting boundaries. Maybe it’s because i’ve played too many RPGs and see these as sort of status-effects so i tend to categorize them.
Workaholics are inefficient.
Which seems strange considering many greats from history could be considered workaholics; But i’d argue to look at the incredible mass of people who were also workaholics, but history never recorded their deeds. Clearly; Effort alone isn’t enough. As the reason for this is very simple: Misallocation of Resources. The greats knew how to spend their time – to get into the history books you need to both know where to spend it, AND actually spend the time achieving something.
Ye olde workaholic will always apply the same solution to the same problem: Work Harder. Spend more time working, and it’ll fix the problem. Because they’re a workaholic, spending more time on the job actually feels good, like a rush, because the pain of the problem is always ended by the elation of the solution. Much like food gives a rush because nature wants you to eat, fixing a problem after a long days work feels satisfactory because that is our way of survival: Intelligence.
There’s nothing about humans that is superior to any animal, save Intelligence and Endurance. so naturally, nature rewards us for exhibiting both. The joy of solution is one, a runners high is another.
This fit nicely with my observation that i had no problem claiming more time, even when she said she had no more time. She simply put more time in for me, which lead to her breaking her promise to her family to stay away from work on Christmas – though i won’t claim full responsibility for that, as she would’ve done so anyway, as that’s her very real disability and would’ve just increased the amount of other people to respond to. I wouldn’t hold her any more responsible then a junkie – but that doesn’t absolve her from all responsibility either.
It’s at this point where i’ll stop talking about my further communication with her. During and after Christmas, it started escalating rapidly, as i started getting more and more distressed by the deeper and deeper problems of neglect i started finding, because i realized the ever increasing impact on the relationships with people i hold very dear, and that lead to fear, anger, and hate as Yoda would say. Though i won’t not lose full control and won’t physically assault someone unless attacked myself – i’ve since learned that if i don’t say what’s on my mind and it gets stuck in there… Well i think about death enough as is.
Meanwhile, i started pushing as hard as i could, and i said some things that should have gotten me fired, or at the very least had a stern stern talk with HR about how none of this was OK to say. I would apologize for this, but honestly, the fact that i received almost no pushback on the most egregious of offense sealed the deal for me. At that point, i would like to still communicate, but i’ve got no anchor to know what is or isn’t OK so i just speak whatever’s on my mind, regardless of whether the other person still understands the context or not.
She’s still said things to me after that, but i genuinely ignored them. I realized she had been totally compromised by work at that point and would only slow me down with ignorance and misplaced trust in others, rather then help find and fix some very serious problems that should have sent her in a panic considering their gravity.
Considering they didn’t i felt my only recourse to triple down on getting this done as quick as possible before their other partners either figured out what i figured out, or one of the problems came to haunt them before i was finished and dragged me down with them. After all they did say they already signed another US wholesaler, who has access to the same materials, and lord only knows how that’s brewing behind the scenes.
I can’t see what others are thinking or what they already have seen, but i can make a real good guess as to what they’re going to think when they see something.
On her being compromised i’ve got evidence too; She defended the website people whom she had worked with for a long time over my evidence of their incompetents (and i sent screenshots).
During all this I was receiving materials as well from Scarlett, as i would need something to promote the asset with, and they did have a few things. I’ll get into these things from the next chapter onwards, so be warned: That’s when everything i’ve written so far triples in length, as my work on their materials is as thorough as anything else i’ve done, despite the ridiculously short time span it was written in. Combined it’s about 70,000 words – approximately double this article to this point. Each piece will have its own chapter because of this.
Aside from the “programmers” as she called them she defended Ingo as well, but not in a healthy manner. The first material we’ll get into is the Brochure i received that they were handing out to partners for information on it. They did mention it wasn’t meant for customers, but none the less it’s a document they handed out many times before, and they have no sight into how it spreads from there, or whether a partner uses it for promotional material. It certainly is written as promotional material, which is logical, as it’s a brochure.
When i started work on it and discovered how badly it was written, the first thing i told her after analyzing about 6 pages and finding legion of mistakes, was that it was a “total mess”, and she said she felt a little offended by that.
I cried for an hour because she said that. Simply because i was already so stressed out at that point it caused an overload and i had to “empty the reservoir” sorta speak. The overload came because i still considered her a friend at the time (around the 23rd) because of how nice she’d been to me and the opportunity she’d given me. After all i had no way of knowing yet that my larger concerns were founded on anything more then conjecture, and so far all the brochure was just a poor translation. I wasn’t out to destroy her, i was trying to help her. And as you’ll see, a “total mess” was extremely generous. So i burst out crying because “i’d hurt a friend”. I told you, strong, but not complex at all.
Regardless after justifying my words and continuing work and my language became more and more abrasive as i found more and more problems, she mentioned to me how it was fine for me to say these things to her but that i should watch the language around Ingo because he had “a fragile ego”.
Well, to a human behavior specialist, that’s basically paydirt. So that’s the problem. He’s being “protected”. I’m being protected, that’s why she’s so nice to me: She’s mothering me. She’s trying to look after my feelings, not my concerns, and she can’t know my feelings because i keep telling her that, it is literally my disability. Meanwhile Ingo thinks everything he does fine because of his ego which his being protected and enhanced. He’s surrounded himself with yes men who won’t tell him, knowingly or unknowingly. He doesn’t need to be corrupt. Ignorance will do, as that’s a sure path to corruption in and of itself. When it becomes Willful Ignorance, it becomes corruption.
I have no qualms about breaking that spell, though still, they gave me a great opportunity so again i don’t want to be unkind. So while i was on Page 15 of the brochure (out of 70) i wrote a multi-paragraph disclaimer above the Brochure Changelog, to try and soften the blow. I didn’t alter the text itself, because truth is truth. And at some point, again, if i don’t voice my thoughts they become unbearable. And i know; The truth will set you free. It hurts shortly – but suffering the consequences of incompetence will hurt forever. But i did increase the humor and changed the way i worded things a bit from that point onward, costing me even more personal effort.
More evidence came from the Website, which will follow the brochure, as during writing breaks i kept looking at it with an increasing perspective of incompetence, so i started finding more and more flaws, down to just plain criminal violations due to neglect. One of the first flaws i found would allow me to drop their main storefront bandwidth usage by 70% in 15 minutes. Yes – it’s that bad, and i’ll explain it in full.
And since i’d done a community college level IT education where making this important a website in this way would literally get you punched in the fucking face, i didn’t take it at all kindly that she defended the website guys by saying “they’ve been working very hard on the back end”.
Oh god. The back end’s compromised too isn’t it? Oh well… First; The Brochure.
The Brochure
If you haven’t taken a break in a while; I suggest you do, because this is going to be VERY long – and it’ll be the best masterclass in marketing you’ve ever read. Because it has the perfect example of what not to do, a very good example of what you should do, and a MASSIVE changelog of 40,000 words explaining every single mistake and change in great detail – Not just written as a log of changes but as a explanatory document to people who clearly don’t understand a single thing about public perception or marketing… And when it got really bad, just straight up therapy for me.
I’ve a friend – who taught business for 15 years with a major in marketing – review it, and it was awarded an A++. This chapter can easily be used in any university lecture on what and what not to do. The only disclaimer i have to put up front is that again, due to the extreme level of stress (as well as incompetence), that the language gets quite strong. Nor have i used my usual second or third drafting process on the Changelog to make it more understandable or read better, as at the end i never wanted to look through it again (and really, i won’t, so don’t expect it in audio form).
Atleast i can promise a bit of humor along the way. It’s a good way to release tension every now and again. The files are about 11 pages down of situational explanation – so again, take a break if you need to! I’ve already written this yknow. It’ll be here when you get back.
First the background. As i understood it, this brochure was sent to partners and wasn’t meant for customers. While that may be fine, impressions are still impressions, and i doubt that this has never been sent to a potential partner either. The brochure itself also mentions events, and while this asset got started in the German speaking countries so i assume the German version has been given out there – i cannot possibly know how widespread this thing has become. Since there’s outdated information in there by a few years, i have to assume its one of the, if not the main document of the organization, that got translated once but not looked at critically again.
I’ll tell you the problem right away: it’s a very, Very, VERY POOR translation of German into English. Furthermore it’s written in one of the most condescending and patronizing manners i’ve ever seen. I doubt i’ve personally ever reacted to any document so strongly in my life, and had i not been on a mission to save dear friends and my pristine reputation i would’ve never gone this far. I would’ve seriously just trashed the whole thing, and the company, by the end of Page 1.
In short, this document should have never seen the light of day. What worries me more is that i speak very little German (but being from next door Netherlands i understand the grammatical structure more or less), so i have no clue about the German version of the document. While i’m sure the grammar mistakes are gone, i doubt the condescending behavior has, because i’ve found a very high amount of quite literal translations – because they remind me of how a Dutch person would literally translate Dutch into English.
I also let Scarlett know this, as one of my opening comments after i started work on it was “it reads like a German translated it”, and she said it was translated by “a native English speaker who’d been living in Germany for a very long time”. Well it shows. Google does a better job, and i wish i was lying. Oh and yes, i suspected Ingo translated it himself, but i never got told who did it directly, even though i asked several times. Had she been honest with me i would’ve probably changed course, from writing a changelog to just going straight to Ingo and letting him know the problem. I’m pretty sure things would’ve gone differently on that path… But yknow, egos need protecting.
Mine too.
I got working on the brochure in the first place because i’d gotten my Russian best friend involved in the company, and one of the first things he said when looking at the website was “oh i could translate this”. Since they had no Russian version of the website (we checked), meaning that market was entirely open (and i’d love to get my hands on it), he offered to translate the brochure as well.
Scarlett offered to fairly compensate him by the way, but she did constantly ask others to quote her a price. The same happened to me when i got the idea to generate some quick money by translating the brochure and website to Dutch – Clearly i’m good with words, work fast, and i have capital needs, and she’s offering generous compensation to my friend. I’ve translated some work of my father before, for classical music composition, so i’m not entirely inexperienced. This is also how i came to look at the brochure closely, rather then my previous assumption of “it’ll do but i want my own material anyway in the future – i just need sales first to afford to make it, cause i’m broke”.
I told her i’d literally never worked a day in my life (as far as a salary is concerned) so i had absolutely no idea about the value of my work, but she continually insisted i’d give a quote anyway and never offered me a quote herself. My friend had the same problem as he did know quotes from other companies, but they varied greatly with location, demands, work etc.
As you’ll later see – that came back to haunt her, because that caused considerable stress on me to try and calculate something i can’t possibly know. Nice my ass. You’re only nice if you’re willing to put in the effort to back up that claim and actually put the effort in to listen. Otherwise you cause damage you’re not even aware of, and you think you’re a good person for doing so. Don’t think i don’t know that quoting others a price is another boundary! Her excuse was “you can learn alot from another person from the price they quote”. Yes, indeed, including if the other person refuses to quote any price without offering a satisfactory explanation why i should know something i can’t know. This is guidance too, one of the simplest forms, and she flat out refused to give it.
So let me tell you what happened when i started work on it, and progressed through the file, before offering everything in full. I’ll highlight the biggest errors with the biggest impact, though the entire document is a clusterfuck. I changed 90% of it on the first pass. Less than 10% was error free, and that’s just text, not even markup, design, pictures etc.
There’s an grammatical error in the very first sentence on the very first paragraph on page 4. “Since 2014, Osmium is tradable…”. For non-native English speakers: Something IS tradable today, but something HAS BECOME tradable SINCE a certain date. That sentence should read “Since 2014, Osmium has become tradable…”. And even then, it’s not true, because it’s not Osmium that has become tradable since then. It’s Crystallized osmium that was perfected and came to market then. The base metal was found and became available for purchase ages ago. So it’s a lie too.
I pulled 3 more problems from the very first paragraph. Just the first paragraph on the first page with text.
At first i had just glossed over the text because most of it i already know and the marketing speak isn’t interesting to me. But when i tried translating the first paragraph to Dutch, my brain errored out on the very first sentence multiple times. I know multiple ways to translate a sentence, but none of the ways of rewording it in Dutch made sense. So i figured the problem was with the brochure and i needed to pay more attention – When i did and just read beyond what i was working on, i saw the entire first page was just filled to the brim with errors a highschool student wouldn’t even make.
Its then that i contacted Scarlett about the problems with it, told her it was a mess, and said that it was better if i fixed the brochure in English first, because at this point i’d spend more time guessing what they actually meant rather then translating it to Dutch. Besides, the quality of my writing and work should be apparent by now, so i honestly don’t wanna associate myself with poorly written stuff. It really doesn’t reflect on me, my reputation or my brand. Not to mention if the Dutch version is high quality but the English is low, considering 95% of Dutch people speak English, it’d be a problem. The moment people can compare, they notice. I can’t remember what she said, whether i got the go ahead or whether they’d talk about it – Because by the time i’d reached page 3 i knew i had to do it.
They might not understand it, but i do: There is such a thing as negative press. They say “there’s no such thing as bad press”, but that’s not entirely true. If others report on something you might or might not have done – and it’s nothing egregious like rape or murder – THEN there’s no such thing as bad press, or i should say, publicity.
When you make yourself look like an idiot, it is very much bad press. Infact i would say it is negative press, because people talk, and you’ll lose customers before ever even reaching them.
And they might’ve asked me to promote them, as i told them from the very outset, if i’m going to promote them our reputations will be linked. That means they will benefit from mine and mine from theirs…Or one drags the other one down. They seemed to have little concern for this, i guess they figure they can always find more wholesalers, but i very much care. This is my life, my future and my sanity we’re talking about!
This caution is not without evidence either. Both my Russian friend and a friend from Hong Kong were willing to join me on the adventure. When i discussed them (on separate occasions), In the case of Hong Kong Scarlett mentioned that they’d already had a wholesaler in Hong Kong, but that he had quote “Turned out to be a lazy disaster”.
While there is no way for me to verify his performance (although to my friends credit, when i told him this he said “oh do they have his phone number? maybe i can call him”), i can tell you, if he handed this brochure over to anybody in a former British colony, his reputation would be in tatters. He’d be a laughing stock. It’s easily that bad.
Similarly, when my Russian friend came up in conversation Scarlett mentioned that “they’d already had people try in Russia but they weren’t making any inroads”. Had she bothered to speak to any Russian, she’d know why. I simply asked my friend how many people spoke English in Russia. He said “about 10%”. Surprisingly low even for me, i’d thought a quarter, but not unexplainable due to the west’s isolation of Russia.
Again it was pretty clear that these people have no idea on how to run a business, so i wasn’t surprised they’d try to sell something in a non-English speaking country, with English. Similarly, i can tell you that the Russians that do speak English, actually speak it very well, and that includes all of the rich ones. My Russian friend has got no problem following me in any of my conversations with him, even though i often reference memes or use American slang. Any Russian businessman being handed this document would act friendly, make them leave feeling good, then burst out laughing because of it and throw their stuff in the trash while telling all his friends to stay away.
And in Russia, if they don’t know you, they don’t trust you. They don’t trust you, you’re dead on arrival. You’ll never get anything done.
So whoever they sent into Russia with this they basically again, sent into battle without weapons or armor with a nade strapped to their back. And to be honest, i went to great lengths to not joke about it in any of the documents or to their faces, but here at the end of it all i just have to let one slip out: HOW VERY GERMAN OF THEM, ISN’T IT?! HUH?! Y’ALL KNOW WHAT I’M SAYIN!!
*cough*
Yeah no don’t get me started, i live in the EU and am well aware of its structure. The US might have the reserve currency of the world, Germany has the reserve currency of Europe; They made the same mistake of getting too greedy, now the TARGET2 imbalance is coming for them. The Italians are pissed (compare the German and Italian stock markets since 2008 to find out why) and they’ve realized they can spend unlimited amounts of money and the ECB will have to buy the bonds, or the EU dies, the Euro dies and German industry dies with it, while the Italians will devalue and be fine.
Rock and a hard place, see ya in 10 years! Personally i’m betting on War before the Eurocrats change course. Historical Precedents. Alot of em. All of them. Watch for the Italians shifting stimulus spending towards military spending instead of social spending before the collapse of the currency!
To return to present matters, the document manages to get progressively worse after starting off with three mistakes in the first paragraph and a mistake 4 words in, as unimaginable as that sounds. To any non-native English speakers it might seem fine, but once you see my 3-drafted version side by side, with the changelog to support it, you’ll understand how native English speakers will look at this document. And how fucked my reputation would’ve been had i used it.
Again to anyone interested in marketing, translation or anything that includes the perception of normal people in the English world – who know these things by nature, but simply cannot put them into words succinctly – studying all three documents side by side will be well worth the trouble, because i know value, and i know i could easily charge thousands per lecture, or hundreds of thousands per marketing report, just to teach others whats i’ve basically already made.
Before i show them though, there’s 3 other problems i wish to highlight other then the language, because a poor translation pales in comparison to the additional problems i found. If it was just that, it’d been fine. While the first two are noticibly weird and very bad for public perception, it’s the third one that sent me into a virtual panic (i may not panic but i can still worry excessively when there’s due cause, hence virtual); Which caused the stress and sent me into a working frenzy, the after effects i’ll write a chapter about as well. It shows a level of lack-of-insight that must be company pervasive, and thus, meant i would encounter even bigger problems later on. Hence the rush.
Average people might be stuck in a loop of a day, i most certainly am not, and when i encounter a big enough problem i already know i’m going to find a pattern of these massive fuckups later – And i’d better get my ass in gear now. It’s also what lead me to make massive demands later, again not because i’m greedy, but i realize that words are empty and actions are what matters. If they didn’t show penance for this, they’d be in a world of shit no matter what i would say.
To handle the least egregious thing first; There’s not a single page on Value Compression in the original brochure. See, Crystallized Osmium is perfect for the “gold above gold”, due to its rarity, superior performance in the areas that matter, ease of verification and even its superior utility to gold: It’s even shinier!
.As i wrote in my version, just as Gold allows investors to compress a warehouse of currency down to a single bar, so too does Osmium allows investors to compress a warehouse of gold down into a few easily securable disks. It will never be as secure when you have to secure an entire building, when you could be using the very same building to secure a vault, which secures a vault, which has a vault with these disks. The concepts are all the same, it costs labor to produce these things, and there just isn’t alot of it. The only reason why it hasn’t taken off yet, is because it’s new, and people have to get used to the idea of being able to hold a gram of something worth tens of thousands.
It’s not unprecedented. Scorpion venom is a well known expensive liquid: It costs $39 million per gallon (or atleast it used to.. i won’t bet against innovation). Since a gallon is 3.785412 liter (and in metric stuff’s interchangeable, thank god), that comes down to $39M/3.785412L= $10,302,709.45 per liter, or, $10,302.71 per milliliter. If scorpion venom didn’t have a expiration date and thus was non-deprecating, you could compress ~10,000 one dollar bills down into a milliliter of fluid. So that Osmium can do the same thing to $10,000 per gram where gold needs $10,000 per kilo, isn’t all that far fetched.
But nothing in the document talks about this. It talks about the rarity of the metal over and over, but never what that actually means. Which is weird, because when i mentioned value compression to Ingo in the meeting, he said “Yes, yes, that’s what it’s all about”.
In fact, from the document it shows that their only concern is making the stuff even more rare. It talks of Osmium pearls, which are a spherical 3D structure where the crystals grow on the surface to create a round crystallized sphere. Apparently, it’s so complex that 90% of all pearls fail.
The problem is that the document uses this fact to talk up how rare and exclusive the pearls are. And it’s not a good look if you’re proud of 10% yields on a material that’s literally 1000 times more rare then gold. Especially if you preface it with the fact that recycling destroys value and the failed pearls are lost. It then proceeds to get even worse by explaining more pearls in the oven means progressively lower yields, and then being excited by that, emphasizing rarity yet again when demand increases.
Now i could bear all this is it was just another asset, but this is the literal new gold, and – most importantly – they’d roped me into this adventure by saying they wanted to run an ethical company for once, focused on sustainability. Scarlett and i also talked about how we were gonna use osmium as a power base: Once my initial work was complete, i’d get alot of passive income, which i could then use to fund more harebrained adventures that were likely to fail but would provide great value to society if they succeeded; Without losing investor money. Scarlett talked about how she had the same thought, only then to use Osmium as an income for environmental and sustainability projects.
I’ve seen nothing in that document that promotes sustainability; But i’ve seen an excessive amount that promotes wasteful behavior. Rarity has an opposite side too yknow; you should want to preserve rare things, not try and make them even more rare!
Which leads me to the second point, and here is where it starts to get weird.
Naturally, as it’s a brochure, it has alot of pictures in it. You wanna show off the asset, and you wanna show it off in the best possible light. There are plenty of pictures of jewelry in there, as you would expect, and i don’t object to those. In fact i’ve made it clear on multiple occasions that they should feature much much more of Scarlett’s jewelry, because it turned my head and i’m sure it would turn everyone else’s.
But there are also other pictures in there, as they’re also selling this as an investment asset, as well they should. And these pictures are…. well, i found them disturbing after seeing so many of them centered around the same theme:
The models. And specifically, the model’s faces.
Look at this point it might seem unbelievable how many different areas of life i’ve touched but that tends to happen when you fail at alot of things as well as come from a highly creative family. You pick up alot of fairly deep but still general level of knowledge about everything. And as it turns out, my father used to do photography when i was younger, even built a darkroom in the garage before the digital age (and later in a closet), my sister’s got a very expensive Canon camera as she’s also into photography (of animals, no surprise), and i’ve shown talents for it as well: Whenever there’s a family trip for my sister’s benefit, i’m in charge of the camera, and just recently in 2020 my father gave me a new smartphone for my birthday, specifically with a good camera; As technology had now progressed to get decent quality shots with a mid-range phone, and he simply wanted to see “what i’d come up with and what i see”.
A pandemic, that’s what. I’ve got alot of pretty sunrise pictures from my balcony though. Reflects beautifully off the building i stare at all day.
Back to the brochure, and how you take a picture. Something every photographer will tell you, Photography 101:
“The subject is in the center of the shot”.
Yes yes i know there’s plenty of exceptions to that, but that’s why it’s the first lesson of photography not the last. You can put it another way too:
“Framing Matters”.
The reason why that’s the first rule is veeeeery simple: Whenever a person looks at a new picture out of context, say when it loads on a webpage after never having been there, or turning a page of a brochure, the very first thing they look at when they spot the picture in their peripheral vision is the center of the picture.
This is Primal. When we were living on the plains, any movement could be a predator and would deserve immediate attention. We search for the source in our peripheral vision, then look at it directly with our focal area; The area of your vision that has a much higher resolution then everything else. You can even see this area: close your eyes and cup your hands over them so light can’t reach them, then relax your eyes and stare blankly ahead. You won’t see total darkness, you’ll see tiny spots, but you’ll notice there’s a dime-sized area directly ahead that has as many spots as the entire area around it combined.
That small disc is the only part of your vision that’s actually sharp. Everything else is blurry. But you don’t see that, because literally, you never look there directly. Since that area of vision moves with your eyeball, it’s nearly impossible to see (but with training you can see “within your vision” and focus on things outside the area directly ahead; As a gamer it’s required even). Because of this, we always center focus on any object that grabs our attention, for purely identification purposes.
Even once identified, our mind is not done with centration. Next we divide areas into halves, and check the center of those first. You’ll find many pictures you come across where the model is actually in the center, but clearly not the subject – they’ll be small or out of focus. In the vast majority of these cases you’ll see two objects that are supposed to be the focus at the same time, both occupying the center of each half – with slightly more skilled marketers using something that points to the object beyond that center area, putting more focus on each object by telling the user where to look, and thus to look.
In the case of the brochure, and this is the case on the website as well, the clear focus and subject of every single picture is the model’s face or in some cases the whole model. And when i say the models face, i don’t mean the model’s made to look elegant to lend credence to the asset. I mean they’re pictures of pretty women. OH and yeah there’s osmium too.
To the point where it starts becoming a real detriment to not just the asset, but the name on the cover: Ingo Wolf. Whether he translated it or not doesn’t matter, he’s the director and its his name on the cover. People will associate him with these pictures.
There’s not just 1 type of offense here, there’s 3:
1. First off, Nepotism. One of the models i’ve been told is not a model at all, but “Ingo’s friend” who he wanted to involve in promoting the product. Well that’s fine! More then fine, because the solutions i suggested (which i’ll come to later) involved using her more, not less. My entire salesteam were my long time friends!
But there’s a way to use friends, a correct way to both their and the asset’s benefit, and a wrong way. And what they had done was clearly wrong: Every picture with Ingo’s friend either barely showed Osmium, or it occupied so little screenspace it was barely visible at all!
Photography 102:
“Always dedicate the most screenspace to the most important asset. Size matters.”
If you wanna focus on a fountain you don’t photograph it from across the garden. You make a portrait. So if the gift box pictures on the website feature Ingo’s friend in full human size, holding assets that are measured in grams…. Everybody’s gonna know it’s about her. Ya can’t see even see what the hell’s in the box!
And this is not to her benefit! Infact, when i showed the website to one of my salesteam she immediately went for the gift boxes and said “OH i want one!” – Which is exactly the response you wanna have… But then she said “The girl holding the box looks stupid though xD She looks like she doesn’t have a clue what she’s holding but she knows its expensive”. Before anybody says anything: This person actually sells crystals for a living and has for years.
She’s right. Ingo’s friend looks like a fucking moron. Especially in the picture with a pearl they included in the brochure, because she’s not a professional model, she doesn’t know what face to make, and because the pearl is framed in such a small and insignificant part of the picture – while the picture itself of course occupies a massive amount of screenspace because Ingo wants to show off his friend….. You basically have a really big face staring at you with a really dumb look on it. And its just embarrassing, because i know it isn’t the intent.
I wish i could sugar coat it, i really do. But these are their own mistakes they made through blind ignorance. I don’t know what caused them to ignore these stupid, stupid mistakes. But i can only surmise it’s the same thing that has caused so many to become corrupt before: Actually hitting paydirt. I’ve got nothing against Ingo’s friend. If anything i’ve got something against the photographer that lets this happen without pushback. I have a really hard time believing these photos weren’t constructed this way at the direction of someone – if Ingo didn’t straight up make them himself, which would end up being even worse.
Since i’ve so far only spoken in the abstract (the files are in the next chapter, but hang on, it gets MUCH WORSE before that, or this) let me just dive in deep and show you the worst picture of them all, so you guys can finally get an understanding of how big this cluster fuck really is.
Oh yeah no, you thought i was exaggerating didn’t you? Better hang on to your seat, shit’s about to get WILD! If you haven’t taken a break in a while, now is the time, because boy oh boy is the action about to pick up.
The second problem is not just the models faces. I could almost forgive the picture above because it contains the asset in the center on the left; Though because the face occupies such a higher percentage of the picture’s screenspace, it clearly is the subject, as it’s highly dominant. As a result, i have to say i don’t know where she’s looking, but it’s probably at my soul leaving my body. The picture haunts me.
I’ve mentioned that the assets are barely visible in the other pictures, this isn’t the problem in itself. The problem stems from osmium being so rare that virtually all of it is very small in size. And here we encounter another problem stemming from them not truly understanding value: They have no idea what this could possibly be used for, so they’ve taken the best thing they could think of.
Gluing it to people’s faces.
I wish i was kidding. Many of the pictures do feature professional models, but they’ve got the osmium on their face like its cheap glitter. Not just me that thinks this, another salesteam member remarked he couldn’t see the osmium in one picture and thought it was glitter.
They have something, a thousand times more rare than gold, either on or stuck to their face. I’ll add another picture to emphasize. This one comes from the website; Though i could just pick another one from the brochure. At this point i want to show that this thinking is structural, and not just a singular mistake.
Note that there’s an entire page in the document about these splitbars. Their intended use is the same as 100 gram gold bars with 1 gram increments. Meaning in times of crisis, you’d break off 1 gram of gold and use it to pay for groceries or something similar, without having to find somebody to exchange with.
I’m pretty sure you too can see the stupidity of sticking something that can be used to pay for basically a car in a crisis, ontop of a model’s face. Sideways. Consistently.
I understand size comparison is needed with something so small. That’s why you have somebody hold it in the palm of their hand. Or place it on a finger. We all have hands, we know relative hand size. There are hand models too yknow…. But they don’t necessarily have a pretty face, now do they?
I would like to stress at this point, that i was still looking at this as a way of fixing the situation rather then bringing the company down. I always knew it was a possibility, and i made sure to position myself in a way to do so, but it was never my intention. Merely an inevitability for threatening the future of me, my family and my friends. I gave them every chance and opportunity to see the error of their ways, and I WILL NOT be expected to behave “normally” under duress, considering i have no fucking clue what normal is. As such, don’t expect me to be normal either, so when I say i don’t seek out a war path unless i’m forced to, you can take that to the bank; Regardless of what others do in a situation like this.
Plan was still simple. Do reshoots, ASAP, and update the design of the website quietly, and send a mail round after the fact to partners that their site’s been upgraded for them. Then pray the old stuff doesn’t come back to haunt ya – with an apology already written incase it does. It’s not always a net positive to apologize up front and draw attention; But when it’s found out it’s always a net negative not to.
But…
Problem number 3 negated that whole strategy. I found something so egregious there was no way, NO WAY, that it wouldn’t come back to haunt the company and get it to just get canceled into oblivion once they did started drawing attention. Something so big i could only think of one way to fix it:
Hire me as an Ethics Compliance Officer, issue a full and extensive apology up front to all partners, explain that it came out of error in translation and not out of malice, show the steps undertaken to fix it and the very real expenditures made to do so – because people don’t believe it if you don’t put your money where your mouth is – and hope that my reputation for ethics carries the day. This was an order of a magnitude more effort then i had originally anticipated to put it. But for the asset, which i continue to say really is the new gold, i’d be willing to. A hellish 6 months, especially after the entirety of 2020… But it could still be done.
Which offense was bad enough to cause me to consider such lengths?
The following, on page 66:
Yeah.
Yeah no.
Yeah no That’s racist.
That’s reeaaalllly racist.
That’s basically saying “Come look at our Instagram account we’ve got the right amount of darkies on there!”
I checked first thing: The Instagram account was gone, thank god. Couldn’t find any. Somebody already realized it was a bad idea. The internet might still remember but lets hope it doesn’t because unpopular stuff doesn’t get cataloged nearly as much as people think. But that also makes this worse: They know. SOMEBODY in the organization KNEW it was a bad idea, very likely for the same reason as i do, and got rid of it. Regardless, it’s there, in the brochure that got sent to me and i knew got sent to others.
They never update their materials! Most likely because the person who should be doing it is swamped with work, while Ingo thinks it’s all fine and doesn’t care cause he’s finally enjoying fame and fruits of his labor.
Now don’t get me wrong. Nothing wrong with cultural diversity. But it’s VERY WRONG to draw attention that you’ve got “the right facial colors” within your company! Alot of companies show that they’re diverse but they – well atleast until recently – do so in a non-invasive manner: If you have a bunch of models praising something there’s no real reason it couldn’t be people of any, or multiple, colors. But again, it has to fit the narrative of the picture: It’s fine to show a white family when promoting a stroller. It’s fine to show a black family with a stroller. It gets suspicious when the black and white parents have got an Asian kid trying to tick boxes. Especially if there’s an Asian family following them. Without a stroller. Or kid.
I understand what they were trying to do. They were trying to not get slaughtered by the woke mob because Ingo’s a older white German male with a very nice pretty successful overworked white female jeweler as his second with pictures of pretty women’s faces everywhere.
He doesn’t understand public perception, but he does understand that “not being racist is important”, and he thinks he’s showing it by having many models with different races. That then get pictures taken of their face. What is it with him and faces cause it’s everywhere.
Point is. He doesn’t understand that what he’s put down there is racist. Which is what makes him a racist. Real racism isn’t old men in bedsheets. It’s being inconsiderate for someone’s situation due to that person’s race. And yes, even positivity can be racist: Affirmative action, selecting a candidate based on race over a candidate that is superior on paper, means that the candidate selected on race is not expected to make it somewhere else, and must be supported. Things you are gifted do not come from your own labor, thus cannot be said to be truly yours. They can be appreciated; But never as much as something you worked for.
Would those diverse models still have pictures of their faces taken if the company didn’t feel “the need to show that they’re not racist”? Would they have made it on their own merit? Or would the job have gone to a white face instead, because it was no longer required to have culturally diverse faces?
Now sure – there’s plenty of people the above sentence seems innocuous to. But i can also think of A LOT of people to whom it wouldn’t be, and if i may be honest, alot of them are in the United States, where the above sentence can quite easily be considered toxic waste in this environment. And infact, considering Parler literally got nuked off the internet a few days ago, i’ll gladly upgrade that analysis to “nuclear waste” at this time.
I cannot possibly be seen associating with this.
Therefore at that point the choice had become easy: I’d distance myself from it within the company – keeping in mind that at this point i’d also confirmed how outdated the material was so i expected even more trouble – and got to fixing it as an independent unit within the company, dealing with issues as they came along, and using my stern reputation as a way to launder their STUPID, MORONIC mistakes. As i said. It’d be a fuckton of effort. But if they showed remorse, and undertook real action and investment to fix their mistakes immediately, it could still be done.
There is always a way!…unless you don’t want to.
Because of my research on the Comex, i wasn’t about to let the new gold be centrally controlled by a corrupt authority, let alone the price, just like the last one. I mean it when i say it i care more about the company then my own job, and in this case the asset, because it is so good and will become important in the future – especially while staring down hyperinflation, with people like Warren Buffett unable to allocate his funds to Gold or other commodities as it’d blow up the entire economy. If this was another EV company or Crypto i wouldn’t have bothered.
If they wouldn’t listen, or refused to see the gravity of the situation, i’d expose the corruption. And the test for that was dead easy: They knew of my past. They knew of my troubles. I’d even explained parts of autism to Scarlett best i could and told her to read up on it, as she SHOULD HAVE DONE after learning of my history, and looking what it means to have an autistic person in their employ or even associated with them. Guess i’m not culturally diverse enough.
Oh – and just because i didn’t get a salary, only a sales commission, doesn’t mean i wasn’t in their employ. Sure, they have lawyers who made sure it was all legal. I was to set up my own company and work as an independent contractor. This because they couldn’t pay out the commission to a private account but only to a company account for tax reasons. Yknow, fine with me, i need one of those anyway when i start making multiple companies myself. It’s quite common.
But what the lawyers didn’t figure out is order and timing. They’re not there to run a business, you pay them, they deliver work, and the implementation is your problem. I may need a private company for payouts – I still signed onboard as a private person, and as a private person, i was already capable of making sales… i simply couldn’t access my cut of the money generated by those sales… but they sure could.
Since my labor provides them with income, that means i am in their employ, as a private citizen. Ysee, if they wanted to employ me as an independent contractor… I’d need a business first. If that was the requirement, they should’ve waited with bringing me onboard, or not enable me to make sales until i have one. Why do you think legal documents are so incredibly laborious? You get the words or order of operations wrong, and you get ripped apart in court by any competent lawyer.
Order of operations is very important in the world of legality. I may not know the letter of the law, i understand its spirit – And we’ll come to other legal violations outside of endangering my health, and what might soon even carry jail time under hate crime laws. The future is not looking bright.
We’re approximately around December 26th at this point, and i kept finding stuff until January – Even stuff they don’t know about because they’d ended contact by then. After all, that was the test: See my behavior as personal anger towards them, rather then distress over an external situation. In the latter, they’d be capable of admitting their mistakes by showing they could show concern for my health. Or in other words, if they believed something else to causing me to act this way, they’d worry, and ask me “if it really was this bad”.
If they thought i was overreacting, thus they couldn’t see the gravity of the situation, then they’d end up breaking with me like everyone before; And i’d expose the corruption to people who could see the gravity of it all: The public. Unfortunately, my pristine reputation for ethics and doing the right thing at all costs, even in the face of great wealth, requires it. I can’t hush this away because the risk it comes back to haunt me at the worst of times cannot be overstated. Not in this timeline.
Though honestly with the rest of the problems i ended up finding around this time, i would’ve most likely broken with them anyway shortly after. There’s only so much a single man can do and the other materials i collected make the situation even worse then mass cancellation by a mob. I could’ve ended up in jail, and there’s a good chance both Ingo and Scarlett will end up going to jail, purely for stupid mistakes they made long before i even entered the picture.
As the above nuclear waste was found on Page 66 of 72 (as i said, it gets progressively worse, it was a real treat i tell yer), i’ll start the next chapter containing the brochure files with a little bit of explanation on how to read them. The changelog alone will be more then everything written so far, so take your time and consider the chapter a whole separate sub-article.
And seriously; Take your time. There’s another ~16,000 word sub-article to follow, and that’s not even the full picture, because the website alone is going to be another sub-article in length within this document. There’s more then double everything written yet to come outside of that file.
Oh and if you complain about the length of all of this to me i’ll won’t deal with you ever again, period. People always want in depth research, until they actually have to expend effort to absorb the knowledge given.
To pull all this off within the time that i did took a Herculean amount of effort, mental pain and even physical pain (since i pulled ~16 hour days sitting behind a keyboard writing and translating ~11,500 words a day), so i’m sorry if you can’t get the full story in 30 minutes and have to maybe put the article/recording down a few times – you can fuck right off. Those same people will binge watch a Netflix series or read through Fifty shades of grey within a day just as easily.
On with the freakshow!
The brochures, the changelog and my style of writing
First let me offer the files and then the intended way to read them:
For the PDF, please see the other files attached named Brochure…original.PDF, Brochure…Deso.PDF and Brochure_changelog.txt.
Again i would like to first off apologize for the text files, as they won’t be as neatly formatted. I’d put them in word documents, but i genuinely never wish to look at them again, as well as preserve their originality as matter of evidence. They did receive and read the changelog, so you will be seeing it as they saw it.
For the full experience as i had it, i would first suggest opening the original brochure alongside the brochure changelog. I have not gone through 3 drafts of the changelog, but i have for the brochure, as naturally it needed to be quality. I’ve described all three drafts separately in a continuous read in the changelog, so my suggestion is to keep the old brochure and the changelog side by side until the bottom of the first draft is reached in the changelog. This is clearly indicated, i think is about halfway through.
After the first draft, i’d suggest changing the brochure to my version of the it and starting from the top, while the changelog can be continued from below the end of the first draft. At that point i’m correcting my own mistakes, and it’s more beneficial from a writers perspective to see the end result and how i got there. Trust me; After seeing the massive amount of work this was as well as the blatant mistakes, it’ll be hard to forget the old document, even across a few days.
Besides it’s interesting for my followers, as they only get to see my work after multiple written drafts or some time to collect my thoughts before an interview. This time you can see how i get to the final result in its entirety, and it’ll show that i make mistakes all the time… But i simply admit to them and fix the problem, which is why my work is so high quality, and i’d gladly give the advice out to any creator working on scripts or other sort of written work to apply the same method. The same method has been applied to this article as well.
The entire changelog was written to not only fix mistakes but to teach both Ingo and Scarlett, two people clearly without any concept of marketing, how to do marketing and more importantly what not to do ever again in the future goddamnit. //I’ve described it in full in the changelog as well <DRAFT 2 EDIT: the explanation here turned out to be much more detailed then in the changelog, so i’m changing this to:> While i’ve described it somewhat in the document, i’ll go into more detail here because i’m sure it’ll help budding creators in their process, and i’m always happy to increase the general quality of work out there. <DRAFT 3: Reads good! Leavin it like this>
I write all of my work in a multistage system:
– First, i collect all the research in my head. People considerably underestimate what a wonderful filter the human mind and forgetfulness can be. Sure i take a few notes from time to time, but to be honest, writing them down helps me remember it better if anything else, and i rarely actually look at my notes.
As i’ve mentioned before, Lies don’t stick, but Truth does, because Truth is based on Reality, and reality is… well, always real. The more often you hear something, the better it sticks. This fact has often been used for mass manipulation, but there’s a flaw: Individualism. When individuals observe the same event, they describe it in their own way… Even if they don’t fully understand it.
In other words, if a charlatan propagates a message, you’ll find there’s generally 2 outcomes: People who believe in this message either parrot it verbatim (which is always a dead giveaway for manipulation), or they describe it in their own words which make no sense at all – because they don’t really understand what it is that they are describing, and thus are easily ignored.
Messages that either get repeated verbatim or that make no logical sense are very easily forgotten, though in the repeated message case it’s sort of a twilight zone: I haven’t completely forgotten, all i remember is “i’ve heard this (many times) before, i’ve ignored it before for this reason, so i can ignore it again”; And it just doesn’t stick. The opposite is also true, when i hear something that makes sense, i’ll remember that it made sense, even if i don’t remember it verbatim.
Because repeated sentences do stick, i might forget it a time or two, but by the 3rd time i know whats up, and afterwards it just confirms my suspicions. Because the charlatan wants the message to be parroted for this very same effect, lies and scams become real easy to pick out: The more people that repeat the same message, the increase in likelihood it’s a scam; Or at the very least overvalued to all hell.
Narrative can be used against itself.
At the same time, human failings can also be used to find truth. Individuals always fail in some way, but they all fail differently. Two humans looking at the same subject might both be right and might both understand large parts – but there’s always some part they haven’t fully figured out. Makes sense, otherwise how would it be possible for humans to improve themselves in a craft throughout an entire lifetime?
These flaws are apparent even for people dumber then the person describing the subject. Often you will read a text which makes alot of sense, except for one or a few parts. This always scares the dumbest off, as they will take the excuse of a single flaw to discredit the whole document. Honestly i’ve come to welcome this so i don’t have to deal with those people anymore. 7+2=6. Now fuck off.
Making a few minor mistakes doesn’t invalidate the research, as long as there are no major contradictions or oversights. High level research is complex after all, and it’s impossible to get everything right. But rather then take the black and white approach of either the mistakes don’t matter or they are all that matter, to me they’re simply more mental notes.
Then, when i hear the same information from another individual again in their own words, often it corrects one or two mistakes, or fills in one or two gaps in another individuals information, while wrongfully contradicting one or more other parts due to ignorance. The information that’s repeated sticks better, while the answering of any questions i had feels good. Because it feels good to learn something and know you’ve become smarter.
Lies feel bad. I don’t like being lied to. Purely on feeling alone, i can filter out truth by just reading perspectives of a few people. Being trained in consistency, i can easily pick out inconsistencies within a single person too. My thoughts can create feelings and my feelings can create thoughts. This provides me with several orders of magnitudes more information processing capability then most people, as i can compress thoughts into feelings. If information makes me feel good enough, i remember it clearly, and it always turns out to be the truth…. Cause i don’t ever wanna feel bad again (gotta admit, turning many traumas into a strength here, not the way i’d advise getting to this point).
i simply never remember the lies.
If that sounds both retarded and genius; I’d remind you that’s exactly who i am. Derp.
As a result, the First draft is very simple: it is one continuous thought written down on paper. It’s basically an unload process, and because i write everything entirely from memory the process of writing it down is very quick (yes, even at the current length of 73k words in this document). Sure, i’m a highly trained videogamer, i spent alot of time chatting as well and i prefer to chat by text, so i can type incredibly fast on my own.
Regardless, you’ll find that “writers block” is the largest obstacle to a strong workflow. Sure, all writers know about getting stuck for a few days. I experience the same even with this method, sometimes i just can’t understand something and i mull it over excessively, but i don’t really get anywhere. The benefit of keeping that process in my mind until i’m satisfied is i can mull things over FAR FASTER then i can correct a document with my fingers.
This doesn’t reduce the time spent by the way. Trust me, wish it did, but for some reason reality always demands payment in time. Regardless, the increase in speed can be used for depth instead: By the time i’m done thinking i’ll have considered many orders of magnitude more material then those who have to spend time writing, reading and improving notes, without reducing efficiency – it’s far more efficient if anything.
With the added effect that it makes me really good at thinking things through, because it’s literally all i ever do before i open my mouth, and have done for a very long time.
When i reach the bottom of the first draft, there’s plenty of information missing, though 90-95% is often already put to paper. The first draft serves as an anchor for me, as all the information in it might’ve been in my mind, it’s never structured. And how can it be? I have no less problems remembering events at the start of the adventure as i do at the end of the adventure. Recalling events decades apart takes milliseconds for all of us.
With the first draft i build the rails that’ll guide my future self. Once thought has been committed to paper, two things happen: All the superfluous information disappears from my head, as well as the thoughts that are left anchor in place as far as the timeline goes. The document itself becomes source material that i can reference; Since i know what’s at the end, i know how i should word the beginning better. You can create your own future-knowledge, as the first draft was written as somebody reading it for the first time – When you read back what you’d written for the first time – which then serves as the rails for future you to not change things too much with your knowledge of what’ll come on the next page, and you can weave things together properly.
I can still remember the details, i never start forgetting until the job’s done (and i don’t wanna deal anymore). But there’s a difference in my mind between active, and passive memory. I can’t actually remember passive stuff – something has to remind me. While active stuff i can think up at any given time, which are the words and events i write down in the first draft.
Once the first draft is written, those details are in the paper, and the paper can serves as a trigger for memories that have gone into passive memory. So i can stop being concerned with what i wanted to write, cause i already have, and i can always read it back to myself. All it requires is a little bit of trust in the past version of me, that he performed diligently and didn’t screw me over by slacking. So far past me hasn’t let future me down.
All of this frees up my mind to shift my thinking slightly. Instead of” what do i want to write”, my concentration changes to Did i convey what i wanted to write?, as well as, Did i forget anything?
Of course i do i forget stuff all the time. But if the rails are there, finding an empty trackswitch or a couple of missing boards along the way is alot easier to notice. As long as the rails lead to where i wanted to go, i’m happy, and considering i frontload all the “writing effort” in my mind, i have to say i genuinely enjoy reading back my own work once it’s written. Though only while still drafting, cause i do get sick of it eventually.
When i start the second draft – which can be immediately after the first since i just reached the bottom of the document and i no longer have a clue what i wrote when i began after hours of typing – i perform, what i like to call, Humanization.
My mind’s too fast for my own good sometimes. I encounter sentences on a regular basis where half the sentence is just missing. This because i was thinking it while i was writing it and no matter how fast i write, i think alot faster, as well as make typing errors all the time, forcing me to go back in a sentence as well as in my thoughts. Since i’m reading alot more then i’m typing during the second draft, my focus is different, and i pick those mistakes out alot easier.
Aside from filling out sentences and thoughts, i often forget entire sections, or come up with a novel way of looking at the data that would make a great addition. During the second draft i do jump around on occasion, though i prefer to still work in continuous thoughts. Here, knowledge of what comes next starts to help to improve the quality: After i create the structure of the document, i remember it clearly, so i remember what information is located where even if i forget the words.
Since i now possess this information, it starts interacting with everything else i know, and thus i also am able to realize things i’ve forgotten more clearly. It’s basically a game of spot the differences at that point between what i feel like writing, and what i’ve actually written. I will admit – my passion and depth of research on the subject highly affects the size of the drafts. I remember for my Shadowcontracts article, the first draft was ~38,000 words, the 2nd draft ~39,500 words and the full version somewhat over 42k, while the difference atleast in ratio between the drafts of other articles was much larger.
Also i just make the whole document more readable. Changing commas into period commas, or changing an italic emphasis into a quotation emphasis. Since again i’m not typing thousands of words per hour i’ve got much more space in my head to do multiple things at once. While it’s not the most important thing that something reads effortlessly in the second draft, any obvious mistakes might as well be changed right away.
What i try to avoid the most is start and stop reading, and those involve a majority of those changes. How to filter this out is incredibly easy: Just Read. While i don’t know if it’s true for all people (should be for most), when i read a text, i actually hear my own voice in my head speak it to me. So, if i read a text and it doesn’t read fluently, the voice in my head chokes like you would reading the text out loud. If the text reads fluently, the voice in my head never chokes or loses focus. I’ve come to learn not everyone hears their thoughts in their head, so if you’re one of the people who don’t, simply reading the words out loud gives them voice enough.
Once i reach the bottom of the document for a second time this way (hence second draft), i once again go to the top of the document. While i can do a third draft immediately after the second just as well – i always make sure to atleast take a break between the 2nd and third draft. Usually i go have a smoke, make some food, read some messages on twitter or some news on the internet. Give myself time to forget a little to improve the quality.
Always remember that, no matter how often you see a document, some one else will see it for the first time every time. The best written story is one which you can’t put down from the first moment you pick it up, and the way that is achieved is by never forgetting others don’t know what you know – you have to tell them.
IF ONLY YOU MORONS COULD KEEP THAT IN MIND WHEN I SAY I’M AUTISTIC, ffs.
The third draft makes sure this becomes reality. The first and second drafts can be considered the Alpha and Beta version to use game development technology. First comes the concept, then it has to be feature complete. The final version, the release version, has to be polished to a tee.
The way i do that is simple: I resolve to not change a thing after the second draft. By that i mean, by the time the second draft is done, all the information i want to convey has to have been put to paper. If i feel like i’m missing something, i’ll spend more time with the second draft and just put it away for a day until i can figure out what’s missing. Generally a nights sleep or some time off will do it – i’m just not seeing the trees through the forest.
I’ve learned this as well from my father while studying music. Once you’re happy with a composition you put it away for atleast a week, to make sure the music clears from your ears and your memory. Once you’ve spent time on other music or things and you’ve got a fresh look again, then the final version is made by cleaning up everything that sounds dirty to a clean ear.
For writing a final draft it’s the same, and that is why the break in between is so important. The time in between drafts is less important, because of how human memory works: We only retain 20-25% of written texts, while we retain about 70% of auditory information and 80% of video assisted information (saw a video on that in highschool). Therefore music takes longer to clear then text does, while i would spend even longer leaving video aside – to the point where i’d rather hire an editor to go over my work when its done and change anything he doesn’t like, for production speed’s sake.
That I won’t like the editor’s changes, changes nothing about how the public perceives the video. If he can make it better, i won’t argue… But the comments better be positive , s’all i’m sayin’. Anyways lucky i’m not an editor so i’ll just leave video in more capable hands from the outset.
There is only one objective of the third draft:
I must be able to read the whole document, front to back, without feeling like stopping once.
Meaning all the commas need to be in the right place for even the voice in my mind to take a breath every once in a while. Sounds silly, but because remember the function of language: To Convey Information. Just look at the previous sentence: Only one word is cursive, while the words behind the colon are all Capitalized, even though according to traditional grammar rules, that’s wrong. Also the comma behind silly isn’t necessarily needed since the sentence is short already. But it serves a purpose: It puts a break in your mind where i want it to be, to emphasize “sounds silly”, as well as structure the sentence to read more pleasantly. Without the comma it feels more “rattly”, like i’m rattling off facts. And the capital letters lead to start and stop reading, where i want it to happen.
Surefire way to lose somebodies attention, rattling off facts without restraint. Something nerds will never learn it seems. Meanwhile, if you now look back to the paragraph above out of context… It’s quite a wall. Still, it reads like a short paragraph. Why? Because if it reads good in my head, it reads good out loud. Even better: Because the voice in my head is not bound by the mechanical failures of my muscles, it doesn’t stutter, it doesn’t crack, the intonation is always exactly as i want it to be. If it reads proper to the voice in my head, it reads proper to somebody experienced in reading, both internally and externally.
My level of language also matters, and here i’ve simply said Fuck it. I’m sorry, but i’m smart, slowing down to a lower level is as hard for me as it is speeding up for somebody else, and i seriously have a limit to how stupid i can go before I don’t understand things. I can’t ever shut my logic or reasoning ability off, and there are some real fucking stupid people out there without any. I know my stuff can be a hard read. But i’m sorry, you wanna be intelligent, you have to think. Luckily though i keep hearing people go back to my stuff 6-7 times because they want to, and never because they think it’s badly explained, so atleast i’m doing something right in terms of readability.
There have been times where i did make major changes to a third draft. Either because i forgot something important after all (PHEW!), or because i simply feel i can still drastically improve the quality with a rewrite of an entire section. “Writing is erasing” is what i’ve heard my father say many times. In these cases though, i always start restart reading from the very top.
Continuity and Consistency are two of the most important words any writer or creator can pound into their head. A mediocre continuous story that’s consistent will be experienced as a far greater work of art then an interesting story which is choppy, has plot holes and feels constantly like sections should be read multiple times before they make sense. Form over Function is very important for writing, as ugly as it sounds.
The ugliness just comes from a world used to thinking in black and white terms, and “form over function” has come to mean “form at all costs even to the detriment of function”, which is again just plain stupid and illogical. Makes for good sales numbers when shit keeps breaking though.
Once i’ve made a major change, it’s important to know if the story still makes sense from top to bottom, or if you have to rewrite any more sections in order for the story to stay continuous. Especially in long form documents, you might think you forgot to write something, but it’s actually already in – just in a less logical place, so it didn’t stick, or maybe it simply needs a little bit of repeating later on. Just as i’ve added sections in third drafts, i’ve also trimmed them down again in the second reading of the third draft, or just moved entire paragraphs and then rewrote the story around it.
Though i don’t start from top to bottom on trimmings. If you’re so close you know a minor detail change is all it takes, it also affords the security of knowing with that last change, it’s complete. So from time to time – especially on complex stuff – i do like to “Bank” a story up onto a point. Meaning, up until a certain page i consider the story finished, and i resolve to not change a single thing again. Many writers or creators get stuck in endless revisions, and this is to be avoided. Once you have done your best – it’s up to reality to decide if it was enough. Any mistakes you made, as long as you admit to them, will serve their function in upgrading the quality of your next project – something you won’t ever get to think about if you can’t let the previous one go and stand on its own.
I do have a 4th draft at the end, but it doesn’t involve changing the text any more: It’s a spellcheck.
I’ve turned off ALL automatic spellchecking in LibreOffice which i use for the longest documents, while i still prefer to just type in Windows Notepad. I’ve realized we’ve become a slave to “the red line”, meaning we spend too much time thinking about whether we made a mistake or not because the computer tells us so, according to some arbitrary rules from some central authority who thinks they have final say in these matters. This leads to start and stop thinking, and absolutely kills creativity!
That’s not what language is or how it evolves! Language isn’t created by committee!
Language is created by people having a certain style that catches on, or new words that are created to describe a context that never existed before. And that’s just societal, that’s outside of words created during the invention of new technology and capabilities that also never existed before. Why do we speak of “Files” when we’re talking about code containers?
Cause out of every definition people used during development, that one made the most sense to relate the code containers to the average person: at the time, people used files in filing cabinets, and it was the most relatable thing for something that literally never existed before, the digital file.
But again, what we understand under “files” has changed to match the computer era. Anyone would consider an executable “a file”. But print it out to put in a file cabinet, aside from the fact that it doesn’t fit, it’s total and complete gibberish. Oh sure, what the coder codes makes sense to those skilled in coding…. But that’s not what the compiler spits out so that the computer can read it too.
NO ONE HAS INFORMED ANYONE ABOUT THIS CHANGE! IT JUST HAPPENED!
Why? Convenience, simple convenience.
You might’ve noticed or thought that i use alot of contractions in my text (like alot instead of a lot). This is no mistake – i’ve deliberately added them to the spell checker so it would stop bothering me about em. Why? Well it makes sense doesn’t it? I’ve got a hyper fast and intelligent mind. Why wouldn’t i use far more contractions then the average person?
And maybe when people read my texts, see that the language as well as information continues to be extremely high level despite the “wrong” contractions, maybe it catches on to where more smart people start using more contracted words in English. Since smart people generally have higher status, stupid people will follow, and then you’ve got a societal change. That’s how language is invented and evolves. Similarly new generations will just invent or repurpose words to distance themselves from the previous generation, whether that makes sense or not. Kids will always rebel.
Trendsetters make language. And the people in control of the red line have no imagination beyond wishing to be the trendsetter, without having the capacity to do so. So they bicker and make minor changes back and forth that nobody asked for, nobody cares for, and nobody can remember anyway, so it’s left up to the red line.
Meanwhile people don’t realize that just cause the red line says its wrong, doesn’t mean it’s actually wrong. Language is FAR more flexible then people these days think it is. As creepy as it is to think about… But yes, that thing really is designed to promote doublethink and induce doubt. Since creating a WordPress site, which is the main blog platform these days, i found that the spellchecker is atrocious in what kind of contractions it considers OK and not OK. Far worse then spellcheckers i remember from my IT education in 2007, where we had to learn and use Microsoft Word 2003 extensively (because if secretaries couldn’t find an option, we had to know, apparently).
This is incredibly important to realize! Because once you start eliminating contractions, you GREATLY simplify language! Contractions require knowledge, because it requires you to split one word into two in your mind: You need to understand both to understand something is a contraction, as well as understand why it got contracted and what the purpose of that is.
This’ll was considered wrong. But this’s perfectly legit, as is that one. Yes, as’s would work too, but i wouldn’t use it. While it may be confused with the English word “Thistle”, as it sounds virtually the same, this is only for spoken words. To read a text you have to see it, and there is no confusing the two visually. Meanwhile, as long as you haven’t mentioned the topic of grassy fields or bushes, people won’t suddenly think about a weed out of context.
But that’s not good enough for the grammar Nazi’s. To make matters worse, there’s British, American English, and “Cyberspace” English: Basically an approximation of American English but because it contains the entire English speaking world, made words are used interchangeably and it’s influenced by alot of direct translations out of mother tongues. Memes can also cross the language borders easily due to their visual nature.
I can tell you, as a non native English speaker, keeping apart when i should be using then and than exceedingly difficult and frustrating, and every time i make a mistake, simply saying “Then=than” on twitter DOESN’T HELP! IF YOU CAN’T EXPLAIN THE ERROR IN THE CONTEXT, AGAIN, FUCK OFF!
So i’m just gonna end up using “then” everywhere, carefully try to use than a few times, get it wrong, then retreat to comfort. If it catches on and enough people on the internet get sick of this shit, the language will change. Simple as that.
I’ll close the argument by saying that Shakespeare could have NEVER EVER written any of his work in Microsoft Word. Purely the frustration of the program working against him would’ve been too much. No committee ever told him to stop inventing half the English language!
I still use spellchecker at the end to get rid of common mistakes (THOUGH IT DOESN’T KNOW THE GRAMMATICAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THEN AND THAN EITHER! WHAT GOOD IS IT THEN?!). I tend to type separate instead of separate, as i mostly tend to type as the voice in my head sounds, so that leaves me with some commonly made mistakes. Anything can be a tool, neither good nor bad, even a really dumb spellchecker. But i’ll tell yer, i’m getting quite sick of adding words to the dictionary. I thought this thing was supposed to spellcheck me?
Anyways, sorry for the diatribe, but it’s important for writers to understand that its extremely important not to let anyone else influence your continuous thought. YOU put in the time, YOU put in the effort, YOU did the research, so YOU write like YOU damn well please!!!
If you write like that, then only let someone else pick out the common mistakes (and just plain errors, again, don’t think you’re perfect either), the work will be VASTLY higher quality then when you let others determine your work for you, even if that’s AI or algorithms.
Finally, the successrate of my method, because naturally people will wonder if it’s just a fluke: In the 2 months since i published roughly 83,000 words on my website across 4 articles with this method (with the recent uranium miner article pushing it to 96k) and i’ve been linking my articles to just about everybody on twitter even if they weren’t interested – i’ve not had a single bad review of a single article, atleast to my knowledge.
If there are people who think poorly of the articles i’ve not run into them at all (or they blocked me previously :D), and i really prefer it that way. Though constructive criticism is always welcome!… If it’s constructive. If ya tell me you don’t like something, better be able to explain why as well. “feeling it” isn’t good enough. Gotta explain why you feel the way you do.
Even people who disagree thank me for the thoroughness, and i’m fine to agree to disagree and let time be the decider. I really have been surprised to not have encountered even a single troll, and i can only conclude the work is of such a high level that it scares them off. Trolls don’t pick fights they know they can’t win, which honestly is sensible advice for anyone to follow. Even i only go as far as to pick fights i’m not certain i can win, but there’s still a high degree of probability and usually involves me saying “Well, it’ll take alotta work, but….”
While this approach may be specialized to writing, i’ve developed this process out of general experience. My approach to creating compositions, videogames and their mechanics, and even just solving problems are all variants of a multistage approach, where the first stage is invention, second is refinement and the third polishing. I won’t say it’s universally applicable (for pure inventions for example i prefer total and utter chaos that comes with total freedom of thought), it’ll work for 99% of all jobs out there. Sure, alot of it is simply doing, but that doesn’t mean you can’t plan to improve, and thereby improve much faster.
At this point, i’ll continue the Osmium story, as there’s much more to come. But i will write it as if the reader/listener has read the brochures and their changelog, since at this point in the adventure i was done with atleast half the first draft, so i knew how bad the situation was, just not what i was going to find. But find problems i did. The Partner brochure is one thing, as they said it wasn’t meant for customers per se.
But a main store front…
The Website and their programmers’ incompetence
Now, i’ll be honest. When i found it for the first time, i was so excited to buy Osmium i didn’t even look at it. All i remember looking at is the menu, the investment bars, and then the numbers on the right side. I never look at marketing pictures (at least when it’s just me) because they have no effect on me what so ever; I get all my information from the product and its statistics. People lie anyway.
Naturally, when they made me the first offer, things immediately changed. When i started making a business plan to increase sales, i looked at two things: What aren’t they doing yet, and what are they doing wrong. You’ll find that 99% of the time when sales are flat it’s because the company is either not doing something they’re supposed to (like not marketing to their target audience), or doing something they’re not supposed to (like marketing to the wrong target audience). From the outset it’s not hard to see the website’s badly designed, so clearly that’s what they’re doing wrong.
But hey, i’ve spent a good part of 2020 looking through junior mining companies and let me tell you – a bad website design in the bullion space really doesn’t phase me anymore. They’re selling a very premium asset, they can afford a couple of grand on a properly designed website once i tell them how to do it. Atleast, that was mid-December.
By the time i was midway through the brochure it was pretty clear to me that nearly all problems were stemming not from not doing something they’re supposed to be doing – they’ve got some materials, a website, and a desire to expand after all. They’re actively trying to, in any case. But they were doing an extraordinary amount of things they shouldn’t be doing. And as i’ve said before, it goes to a pattern of behavior: If they’re structurally incompetent, the website’s poor design is more then just “making do as a startup”.
This suspicion was also increased by the fact that the back end looked solid from the outset. Atleast technologically, they’ve thought everything through, especially considering how they’ve decided to do security and verification for the crystals. I didn’t have a problem onboarding or accessing my shop settings, everything loaded snappy there. Maybe again the UI design could’ve been better, but that’s an easy fix, if the tech is there.
So the fact that the front end looks like dogshit by comparison is…. Highly suspicious.
During one of my writing breaks i decided to just take a deeper look at the website and reconsider how i was going to convince these two to change the design. At the outset i thought i’d just work with what i got, break it to them slow, and if they pushed back, just go with my own website shop design (which is a possibility, but again, i need money) and outcompete everyone else. In the end they wouldn’t care where the money comes from since we’re all wholesalers within their company, and i’m not gonna be hold responsible for other people’s slacking.
Part of my method of collecting my thoughts is i just talk to myself like a crazy person. Well, that’s how it’d look like if anyone had ever seen it. I imagine having the conversation in my head, with my imagination asking me the questions in the form of whoever it is i’m supposed to be talking to on whatever it is i’m working on. Naturally, i have to be able to answer those questions, so i answer them to my mind. The talking out loud is just cause i’m home alone, no one to see, so i can be myself for once. In the actual conversation i’d just use the structure and conclusions of the thoughts, while being a bit more….tacit. I have these simulated conversations in my head all the time, since “outside views” help me focus. I would explain things differently to different people after all.
And so it was during one of my writing breaks when i went through the website design on the main page from top to bottom. Since time was of the essence and i was in a hyper-productive mode anyway, taking a break was “working on something else instead for a while before switching back”. Well if i can’t relax anyway i might as well multitask and get more things done.
Now, i won’t talk too much about the awful design here. In the next chapter there will be another ~16,000 words document called “Preliminary marketing review” that will go deeper into the website as well as a few other aspects of their business that needed immediate improvements – naturally explaining exactly how to make those. They never got to see that document, as i was told they didn’t want to speak to me again a few hours before i was going to send it, as i was still going to draft it twice. Too bad. Instead you dear reader get it raw.
Instead, what i wanted to talk about was the sheer incompetence of their IT staff. In fact, i found them to be so incredibly incompetent, i’m very much worried about the back end of their systems. Efficiency is one thing – Security is quite another. Just cause something loads fast doesn’t mean a bad actor can’t rip it apart in seconds, and often the faster it is all the easier, since security measures slow things down somewhat.
What i discovered reaching the bottom of their webshop, buy-osmium.com, is an “I Love You” configurator where you can select letters (and numbers by the way) made out of osmium, with a heart in between, and calculate what the price is going to be of the set.
Yes i know it’s stupid. The default I+heart+U costs €916 at the time of writing. The cheapest is the I, which costs €38,78 for the cheapest of them and €66,26 for the most expensive. Since they cannot be standardized in weight either, to give a single price at the end is bullshit and misleading too, and you know what you get for the cheapest one?
0,024 grams. Yes, that’s correct, 24 milligrams. AND it’s the densest non-radioactive material too, so that 24 milligrams will be as compact as can be. To make matters worse, there’s only an up close picture of the letter on the website, without any size comparison, so there is no way to determine how big that I actually is. Oh sure, it lists the dimensions, but when you’re selling something new and the picture looks HUGE on the website – people aren’t going to be looking at the tiny numbers of measurement.
The I is ~6 millimeter by ~1 millimeter. Wanna know how big that REALLY is? The protruding tip of an office ball-pen i have next to me, i measure with a tape measure to be 4 by 2 millimeter.
You would barely be able to see this thing on a wristband let alone without any attachments. But you wouldn’t be able to tell from the shop:
As stated, there are no other pictures. But you can zoom in on this one though!
But here we also get to the problem that set me off immediately, and sealed the deal on me for how incompetent their website guys are. Because, if you look at the above picture closely… First of all, again, whoever photographed the most sparkly thing i’ve ever seen with completely uniform lighting is the dumbest photographer i’ve ever witnessed, but OK.
What i mean to say is, the picture looks crap. I don’t mean, it’s a badly photographed picture… i mean the picture itself looks horrible. We live in the age of 4K pictures, and as a gamer i have a very good 2560×1440 144hz gaming monitor with HDR (one of the few things i do spend money on since i stare at the bloody thing all day every day).
Look at the white areas on that picture. I know it’s a very small object, but when you zoom in that far, it doesn’t matter. There’s supposed to be alot more detail there. Instead, some of the white areas look positively flat. Which is weird for a crystalline object, there should be miniature variations everywhere, which is the reason they can’t standardize it by weight in the first place.
Why does it look so washed out?
Well there’s ways to find out, after all as i said i’m educated in this. You can look at any website’s source, you can just save it locally (which happens anyway, it just copies it from your cache), you can even look at pictures without downloading them. Incredibly easy too! Just right-click on any picture on any website (i’ve got no advice for Macbook peasants), and click “view image”. It’ll just pop open the image in another tab in its full resolution, or if that exceeds your desktop resolution you can click to zoom in to the full resolution.
Really simple! I even found out that Twitter DOES upload full resolution pictures this way… But they never show it and only show the compressed version. In any case, i did that to the letter A in the I-Love-You configurator. And let me show you exactly what popped up in my face:
No that’s not resized. Background’s White too by the way, not transparent. What you are looking at, is a 1487 by 1526 pixels 300 Kilobyte JPG. It’s so big i can’t possibly represent the true size in the PDF, and if you’re looking at this on my website… right click > view image.
It’s not just the Size that’s the problem, when it’s full size i can clearly see: The picture’s blurry. JPGs have a Lossy compression, meaning they throw away data that you can never recover. This because JPG is a very old format, and in the old days alot of the “quality” of a picture couldn’t be seen anyway on primitive screens and resolutions. These days, we use PNG, as it’s lossless and therefor much higher quality. Also, PNG supports Alpha, or transparency, while JPGs do not.
This looks like a picture that was far too zoomed in, or like a JPG that has been resized multiple times. Due to it being lossy, every resize throws away more and more data, like a copy of a copy of a copy made by copying machine. It looks like absolute dogshit and this is NOT how you sell a shiny! This is not how you sell anything!
Oh but that’s just the start of it. As i said, bad photographs can be changed by a simple reshoot. That’s not what concerned me. What concerned me was the 300kb part of the picture.
That’s the A. The entire alphabet is in there, plus numbers. That’s 36 by my count. 36X300=10,800kb. That’s alot of kilobytes for a few pictures you never see!
As i said, i’m actually educated for this. Not to mention that back in those days, from time to time me and my friends would play “the hardest game on the internet”, which was just a webpage with 100 pages, each with some sort of moon logic clue on how to get to the next one, and everything was permissible: Having to look in the source, in the files, on another website, downloading pictures and inverting colors, whatever you could think of you had to do. The idea was to crowdsource the solution, though by the time we got bored the community hadn’t gotten further then page 16.
Simple solution to see what the site transfers every pageload: Ctrl+S to save the entire website locally. As i’ve stated before, this just copies whatever the website downloads to your computer anyway for caching purposes as well as to run code to actually show the damn thing. There’s plenty you don’t see – PHP scripts never get sent to the browser and run serverside for security purposes, so the code you see isn’t the whole story.
But i wasn’t concerned with the code, yet. i was concerned with Bandwidth.
WEBSITE DESIGN 101: MINIMIZE THE BANDWIDTH USAGE!
Maybe even my shit education was better then the modern educations (if their programmers ever had one, which i doubt) simply because back in those days, bandwidth was alot more limited. Aside from website design options also being more limited (HTML5 hadn’t been invented while CSS was just up and coming, so everything was regular HTML, PHP, flash and Javascript), people’s connections simply were an order of a magnitude slower, even in well connected countries such as Northern Europe. 56K modems were still in sporadic use, though most had been upgraded to ISDN. Even so – Even the top tier broadband cable only hit a few megabyte a second. Which was already way better then the 250kb/s cable connection i started with in the year 2000.
And that’s also the reason why initially, i hadn’t noticed anything: My computer’s already at the end of its lifecycle, so some websites load slow anyway, while i pay for a very fat pipe since internet is all i do: I hit speeds of 50 megabyte per second often. In that case, loading in all the images, as long as the other side has the pipe for it, is barely noticeable.
My fears were confirmed after checking the size of all letters and numbers after downloading them:
That is a whopping 13,2 megabytes that needs to be transferred every uncached pageload.
The moment i found it i started to strongly suspect both Scarlett and Ingo are digital technophobes: They haven’t got a clue about files, file sizes, bandwidth, bandwidth costs, or the average person’s connection. They’ve never even though about datacaps in the US, i can guarantee you that.
And yes… Yes, the damn thing is there on Mobile too.
Welp, there’s your problem. Site’s been unusable on mobile since its inception because people are trying to load in half a YouTube video on a mobile connection. This thing’ll load slow on WiFi.
There’s more letters selected than shown in the screenshot, but i wanted to capture the biggest letter until that bottom unselected file: At 253 kilobytes – that’s the main front page banner.
There’s only 4 files outside the screenshot. Just about every file in the calculator is bigger then THEIR MAIN BANNER which is supposed to be the eye-catcher of the site. And this fucking calculator is far FAR down at the bottom where 99% of all visitors will never see it. AND TO TOP IT OFF IT’S COMPLETELY POINTLESS TOO!
Well. To be quite frank, i had a fit to Scarlett on Telegram. I told her, and i will stand by this, I’d punch whoever made this thing in the face. Because i swear, if i made THIS kind of wasteful piece of shit for even a first year project in my community college education, *I* would’ve gotten punched in the face. If i was lucky.
Just to make clear why: File size increases exponentially with resolution. Just think about it: A resolution of a square picture of 100 by 100 pixels yields 10,000 pixels. The same square at 200 by 200 pixels yields 40,000 pixels. So for ever 1 pixel you add to both axis of the resolution, the file size goes up by 4 pixels. So – 1487×1526 pixels yields 2,269,162 pixels that all need to have their data saved, because the computer needs to be told how to show it again.
But monitors have different resolutions. So, generally you use pictures that are slightly larger then they need to be, so you can keep the relative size in the design stable by reducing scaling on higher resolution displays. If you put more pixels within the same screensize, you need a larger picture to show the same physical dimensions on the screen. At 4 times the resolution, a 100×100 picture would appear 4 times as small on a equally sized 4k resolution display, as it does on a 1920 by 1080, or 1080P monitor. If you want the relative size to the user to be maintained, you have to make it atleast 400×400, or increase the picture’s size by 400%. This is generally why you design for the highest resolution on down.
The scaling is achieved in the website’s code so you don’t have to save a million different versions. So, it doesn’t really matter what resolution your pictures really are – the website will make sure they’re the correct size on each monitor via code. The only no-no is to make the pictures too small, so that the highest resolutions have to scale it up. Upscaling always looks ugly compared to a native resolution, as the computer has to make a best guess on data that isn’t there.
There wouldn’t be a problem if the pictures served some other purpose: If there’s a larger scale version needed somewhere on the same page, you might as well cache it on entry for a smooth experience after. If it’s on another page though – you don’t load it until you need it.
But these bigass pictures are only used in the configurator, which displays them in a much, much smaller resolution. So there’s no need for them to be any bigger then say, 200×200.
So at a resolution of 200×205 (to keep the weird aspect ratio), the 300KB JPG is reduced to 21,6KB. This is a 13.88 times reduction in file size.
Should the ratio hold exactly, that’d reduce the 13,2 megabytes worth of pictures down to 950 kilobytes. And since their entire website, sans video as it’s not loaded until played (i’ll get to it momentarily), is 15,2 megabytes – it’d be reduced to approximately 2+1 megabytes instead.
Thus achieving a 5 times, or >80% reduction in bandwidth costs, with approximately 15 minutes of work. And because Scarlett pissed me off by defending these CLOWNS, i actually timed how fast i could resize about 40ish pictures. Screwed up a few times, still finished by 11 minutes 39 seconds. From that point onward it’d be a FTP upload left, and done. Since the website scales pictures down and i left plenty of room on my 1440p monitor, a simple swap would do.
And i told all of this to Scarlett IMMEDIATELY after i found it. And i do mean it took me 20 minutes to figure out and report it to her. Because unlike other people, I don’t waste time when i spot something like this. EVERY SINGLE PAGELOAD ON THEIR MAIN STORE FRONT CONSUMES FIVE TIMES TOO MUCH DATA!
You goddamn right i’d punch a motherfucker in the face! Kick em in the nuts too.
I can’t remember exactly, whether Scarlett responded on the 23rd or the early morning of the 24th, but she did respond, and her exact response was “I’ll let the programmers know”.
Which isn’t exactly the response i expected mind you! If somebody brought this to ME in the position of vice president of a company, I WOULD BE MORTIFIED! People would get fired the next day i assure you. Somebody tells me i’ve been overpaying for bandwidth costs by a factor of five since inception, whoever’s responsible will be lucky if he’s not gonna get sued for misrepresentation in order to get hired. At the time it just resolved me to make it clear to this woman how big this problem really was. But you know… This is why being too nice in business is such a fucking detriment. She probably was more concerned with what her programmers thought of her, then the actual website design or efficiency.
Well, that was before i figured out she couldn’t tell a JPG from a PNG. If you have no clue, you can’t tell if you’re getting screwed. And again, this is why being a workaholic is also a detriment: If you’d stop solving everything with “just work harder”, and started working smarter instead, you’d delegate the menial tasks so you have time to learn about these things and hunt this sort of stuff down within your organization.
But i guess it just feels better to take that one more call, or answer that one more email, or just level up one more time before bed, huh?
Well atleast the programmers knew now, so we’ll see what comes of it. I had to get back to working on the dumpsterfire that was the brochure anyway, but this was just more stress ontop of the pile for what should’ve been a simple design job.
I didn’t expect to have to perform a Spanish Inquisition.
After i found out about the website problems, i decided to start working on the preliminary marketing review file that will come in the next chapter. Simply because between the brochure, the website and the marketing mistakes all over the place there was too much to work through one by one. So that’s what i spent Christmas eve doing, writing about 15,000 words in a single day. While that’s my typespeed, still count my speed lower as without 2 additional drafts it reads as a mess, so they have to be included.
With that done, i continued work on the brochure. So as i was telling Scarlett not to talk to me again until after Christmas, my Christmas involved writing the marketing review on the 24th, Working all day on the brochure on the 25th and 26th being unable to relax in between on Christmas – just spent 3 hours at my fathers trying to watch a movie, but it turned out slower then expected so it ended up uncomfortable. The day after, on the 26th, i basically had the same problem. Except because of family issues i also got to see my sister break down and cry. Afterwards and after a movie, it was back to work.
It may have been brutal, but for me, i was working for my family, friends and a future otherwise impossible to attain. One shot, One opportunity. Initially it was work to try and get them off the bottom of society, but as i found these problems, it became work to protect them. Not just my friends who joined, but if my own reputation would be ruined because of this – something i worked so hard to build in 2020 – then i’d have nothing left. I’d be stuck on the bottom forever with no way to generate capital, and with the troubles coming in the next decade that is not a good place to be.
I saw my future destroyed before my eyes, exactly like when i was 14 and i had to drop out of high school due to repeated mental breakdowns because of bullying. I remember that day clearly.
Whatever. More suffering for me, i’m used to it.
As we approached the 27th, in the morning i checked the website again – Nothing had been changed. Since i by then had reached the bottom of the brochure (but still needed to draft it twice), i was already considerably more pissed off by the “diverse faces” statement. So the fact that, for 3 entire days, this easy to fix solution that took 15 minutes wasn’t applied, made me absolutely fucking furious.
Clearly Scarlett doesn’t understand in IT that you’re supposed to be ON CALL 24/7 for emergencies like this. Now it’d been different if it involved an entire website redesign, but that wasn’t the case. Again, i’m trained for this, i know these things. Simple rescale and swap will do. 80% bandwidth reduction. 15 minutes. Don’t even have to change the file names or types so nothing in the code needs to be changed. Even the lowest level on my education – which were some stupid motherfuckers let me tell you – could handle this. Especially considering i gave “the programmers” exact instructions on what to do – though maybe with even more expletives then i’m using here because again, fucking furious.
When i asked why she hadn’t chased this down, Scarlett responded “didn’t want to bother them during Christmas time”. While she’s replying to me with her family getting mad at her for doing so on Christmas eve. Woman are you fucking serious? And yes – i wasn’t nice to her anymore at this point. I speak my mind, and you piss me off to this degree, you will hear it, because it is VERY hard to accomplish.
After scolding her and unloading a bit to friends as i can’t even describe the level of stress i had at that point, while explaining the problem to a friend, i saw the picture change in resolution. They’d updated it! Good…
…oh no…
…oh no no no no no….
…AH FUCK THESE INCOMPETENT GODDAMN IGNORANT MOTHERFUCKING ASSHOLE FUCKING FRAUDSTERS!
THEY ACTUALLY FUCKED UP THE RESCALING!
ITS STILL WAY TOO FUCKING BIG!!!
OH AND WHAT’S THIS?!
Oh great. I hadn’t even checked the source yet, because there was no need. But apparently, they fucking changed something in the code, because that wasn’t there before. Either they forgot to add a source, or they added sources, or whatever the FUCK they did – it wasn’t necessary. Simple picture swap, get em down to 200×200 resolution just to be on the safe side while i do my review. A fucking trained monkey could do it.
GUESS THIS MONKEY ISN’T TRAINED! And to make matters worse, now that i had to inspect an element, i actually saw the code: It’s limited to 100 pixels in height, and 100% in width.
That is an asinine way of coding things! 100% width, but 100 pixels height? What are you gonna do with a picture that’s 300×50? It’ll stretch the height to double while completely resizing the entire element to fit 300 pixels! You don’t know if they’ll ever upload a picture with a different aspect ratio, so you EITHER limit by percentage (which’d be the smart scaling thing to do) OR pixels (which is when you want to keep ratios steady even on different resolutions – you might wanna scale the whole page wholesale). BUT NEVER BOTH!
Further more, since it’s limited to 100 pixels in height by code, WHY THE FUCK ARE ANY OF THIS PICTURES MORE THEN 100 PIXELS IN HEIGHT?!
That screenshot above isn’t a saved one, by the way. That’s from January 14th. I told Scarlett about the above fuckup on December 27th. WITH screenshots this time so the fucking idiots couldn’t fuck it up again! The site’s been “broken” for more then 2 weeks now.
And for those 2 weeks it still drained far too much resources. The entire website’s ~6,8 megabyte now, when it again could be just 3 megabyte, so i can STILL drop their bandwidth costs by more then 50% in 15 minutes. AND fix their bullshit code.
Oh, but that 3 megabyte was based on 200×200 pixels. Since the height is limited by 100 pixels and aspect ratios are a thing, that 92kb letter A need not be bigger then 6,8KB.
And it’ll look like crap, because you shouldn’t resize JPGs more then once, and always smaller. Cause it’s a lossy format, and if you try to generate detail, you’re going to end up with one ugly picture.
Regardless it does show relative size to somebody unfamiliar:
The cross on the left is my resize. The cross you’re looking at on the right is 102,14kb
102,14KB / 6,26KB = 16.31 times too big.
So NOT ONLY are they aware of the problem, they tried to fix the problem, managed to do so so incompetently that the problem persists, and they actually managed to make it worse somehow by screwing with the code, then left it like that for weeks.
But i’m sure they’ve been working soooooooooo hard on the back end. Probably reading “coding for dummies”.
That sealed the deal 100% for me. These people have been getting screwed sideways every way you can think of since day 1 because they have NO idea how to run a business, are completely trusting of anyone and anything, are far too concerned with their personal wants and needs to look out for, or critically towards ANY part of their organization, and as a result, it has already become corrupt to the very core.
I don’t make idle threats. When i say you better hire me as an Ethics Compliance officer and let me do a full sweep, or else… i don’t say that lightly, without cause, or without realizing what i’m asking for. I didn’t ask for a fat six figure salary cause i want to get rich – the sales by my team will do that for me easily. I asked for it because, if other people ask “what are you doing to change your ways”, you can say, “We’ve got this guy with an iron set of ethics which we just gave a bunch of money and unlimited authority, and he’ll fix our dumb mistakes”. And that is literally your only salvation at this point with this depth of fuck ups!
Let that be a lesson for all future businesses as well. There’s always a way out, unless you close the door on yourself because you think it can’t be that bad.
Well – they wanted their name and asset known to the public, happy to oblige, though i think again i won’t be compensated for my efforts by them. They never paid me for the work delivered so far either – though they were adamant in wanting to offer fair compensation.
Well i’m not so naive as them, and if won’t get what was offered i’ll take it myself. I warned them. Either hire me to fix your shit and my reputation, or i’ll lift myself up by your smoldering corpse. Shame it has to be this way, but i guess humans really don’t learn. This has ended up just another scam on a very long list made in 2020.
AND AGAIN, IT’S SUCH A FUCKING TRAGEDY CAUSE THEY ACTUALLY FOUND THE NEW GOLD!… and then raped it with greed and vice. Well; Not on my watch.
Before we move on to the next chapter, i have to talk about the last element on their website, that’s also discussed in the marketing review, but i feel the need to highlight here as well. Because it again, goes to show how little these people understand about digital technology, and why that matters.
The Video.
On their website, below the soul absorbing face banner (that, in widescreen, is luckily far enough to the side that it doesn’t matter that much, and the asset’s closer to the center – showing you how simple framing can help even an awful picture be acceptable), there’s a video. Now; Because of the high quality thumbnail you might be forgiven to think it’s actually a good video.
It’s not.
I haven’t watched it beyond ~15 seconds and i can guarantee you no one in the history of mankind has. Why? The reason is very simple, as i discovered when i downloaded the entire website:
It’s an 11 minute 50 second video, totaling a size of 32 megabytes.
Yes it’s fine to think about that for a moment even if you know nothing of video files. That’s kind of low, isn’t it?
It is.
In fact. Windows is kind enough to tell me that the frame width is 640 pixels, with a height of 360 pixels, making this a 360p widescreen video.
And it’s at this point that i would like to point out, that NTSC – The analog TV standard introduced in the United states IN 1954, has a digital equivalent resolution of 640 wide and 480 high – in the digital age this has become known as “Standard Definition”, or 480i.
Their video is a lower resolution then 67 year old technology.
That tech is older then the director himself (best i can tell).
I can’t read the disclaimer at the start of the video. No i mean, i literally can’t, because on a 1440p 27’ monitor, the letters are too blurry even for me to figure out, and i figure out patterns all day.
Aside from the abominable resolution, because the movie’s so long, it’s also compressed to high heaven and back. The data just isn’t there. The bitrate’s 370 kilobits! That’s even below Google’s streaming recommendations for 360p, which are 400-1000kpbs!
I didn’t even ask why they did this. Because it’s obvious: They’re trying to save bandwidth because they’re hosting the video file themselves; Otherwise i wouldn’t have saved it locally when i told the browser to download everything. I’m very familiar with these resolutions and compression rates because i worked with them as a kid in the early 2000’s.
Which goes to show just how fucking stupid these people are. They don’t understand, nor see the need to hurry to drop their main storefront bandwidth costs by a factor 5 – but at the same time know they can’t afford the bandwidth for their main selling attraction, so they apply such ungodly amounts of compression the Osmium looks like fucking shit!
Yes, i’m a genius, ofcourse i asked. “Why not just upload the video to YouTube?”
Because they were worried that Ads would get in the way.
…………
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
You can turn those off. You’ve ALWAYS been able to turn those off. Even as a non-partner, though that >only recently< got changed. But as a Partner, you have full control. I watch many channels with vids with 0 ads even on mobile (relaxing sleeping sounds, shoutout to The Relaxed Guy!) so that has literally never been an issue.
INFACT WHY DON’T THEY HAVE A YOUTUBE CHANNEL IN GENERAL TO UPLOAD ALL THEIR MARKETING MATERIAL TO?! YOU ARE TRYING TO SELL THIS SHIT AREN’T YOU?!?!
Yup. Analysis complete. I’ve figured it out. I’ve come to realize the answer to the question i had at the very beginning of this adventure. Why hasn’t Crystallized Osmium exploded yet if it’s legit?
Because these fucking morons have been going OUT OF THEIR WAY to make it look like a massive scam!!! And they have no clue!!!
Well i can tell you, they’ve honestly done it. They’ve managed to piss me off. No one has ever managed to do that to me. Because my feelings are so strong, i’m always told to calm down when i just get annoyed. Sometimes i get frustrated, and people already have to let me go because they can’t handle it. On some very rare occasions, i’ve become full blown angry, which is quite a sight to behold… But it’s also the last level where i’m still only defensive. Words, in the end, don’t hurt – it’s the intent behind them. And for others, i’ve always restrained myself cause the problem’s with me.
But past that is furious, and that’s where i am now. It’s one thing to offer me a future, abuse my capabilities, and then toss me aside… story of my life. But because i thought i could finally offer my friends a future, as well as secure it for my family, help the world with its value compression problems, and THIS is how they treat that opportunity?!
And as you’ll see when we get to the legal violations chapter – i still feel very justified in my ultimatum. I won’t be going to jail for these people… But they most likely are.
And to show the true depths of the injustice; There’s something i’ve been holding back. So far, i’ve only shown the ugly pictures and materials that they created themselves. But during my conversations with Scarlett, she sent me a 14 second 284mb video. Yes, that’s 132 megabits of bitrate, it’s basically uncompressed. Apple TV 4K streams can reach 40 megabits.
However, in this particular case it’s worth it and there’s a good reason why i overlooked it: With near raw footage, being able to see even the smallest of minute details… I was completely mesmerized.
WHY THE FLYING FUCK ISN’T THIS ON THE WEBSITE?!?!
Oh right, they don’t understand file size or technology. Luckily i do, so i’ve compressed the video down to a 1080P video. Though, my website’s limited in bandwidth too, so it’s only 600kbps in bitrate. Still better then their video which has a 370kbps bitrate. Which also shows why You-tube is still so big; It’s still far too expensive to do it yourself. However, with the short length, it’s enough for my purposes.
Here’s how Osmium really looks like in real life:
For the PDF i’ve added a still from the original video, though no static picture does it justice. Because of difficulty uploading large files for SOME sort of mystery reason (i really hate my ISP) i’ll have to upload the video later.
What the video shows is Scarlett simply moving a white light flashlight over a couple of Osmium disks with “naturally” grown crystals. From what i gather they’ve got the process under control enough to grow structures, even 3D structures, but they can also have the crystals grow more naturally. While this means they’re not as usable in jewelry and are mostly display pieces or investment products, it does show exactly how the stuff looks like – the structured crystals are just smaller.
I’ve only shown the original video to one other person (as it took an age to transfer with my cable upload), my Russian friend. He had the exact same reaction as i’m pretty sure all of you had.
This changes the game. It’s real. There’s no way people won’t be attracted to something THIS shiny.
As i’ve mentioned before, the main use is jewelry, Scarlett makes the jewelry and it looks beautiful and elegant too. You can buy that too, on her own companies website:
Yeah i told you guys, i would have no problem selling this. It’s not that Osmium isn’t good, it’s that these fools have been actively holding this thing back. They’re absolutely not aware that they’re actively creating and encouraging a negative reputation for themselves. They’re staring at the rarity aspect with blind greed, even trying to enhance it, becoming the very antithesis of sustainability in the process.
Bravo. Even with my full intelligence running at 125%, i couldn’t possibly have thought up a way to fuck up even harder then this company. This is beyond unreal. This can only happen in reality through the folly of mankind.
But it gets worse.
OH YES IT GETS WORSE STILL!
There’s still a question that arises from this clusterfuck:
Why hasn’t their NEGATIVE reputation spread?
Again the asset’s still good. They presented themselves to Kitco in February 2019. That’s alot of eyes. Considering how ludicrously badly they’re running the business, why didn’t anyone else figure this out beforehand? I mean, if my internet connection hadn’t been top of the line i would’ve figured out the website data usage on the first day. People love to make fun of companies like this… Why hasn’t anyone?
Found an answer to that too, though again, after they already informed my friend they didn’t wanna speak to me anymore, so too bad. Guess they’ll read about it in the papers, if that.
At first, i wasn’t going to mess with the website’s optimization for google, Facebook etc. This because my Russian friend is also a SEO specialist and would take care of it. But by the 28th while i was still waiting for them to reply to the email with the brochure, i got curious and decided to see if i could figure out why this level of incompetence hadn’t blown up in their faces yet.
So, i decided to try out a free online Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) tool, and see if it brought up anything interesting.
This is the PDF it generated:
As always i’ll describe the important parts. I’ll skip the 21 items that passed the test and just handle the 6 major errors and 3 minor errors – which is already alot considering it’s a free report and not a paid for in depth analysis.
The image attributes aren’t that bad, 5 missing out of 60, and you might not always want to make a picture easily indexable by a search engine. But the next one down is where the trouble starts.
Text to HTML ratio is extremely low, below 10%. Since i’m not a SEO specialist, i have to google these things too. But it’s very easy to find out why that’s a bad thing:
https://www.woorank.com/en/blog/are-text-to-html-ratios-important
From the first two paragraphs:
“What is a Text to HTML Ratio?
Most web pages are written in HTML code that is used to display the page content (usually text). A page’s text to HTML ratio measures the amount of text on that page compared to the amount of HTML code needed to display it. For those of you that are part of a marketing team or run your own business you needn’t be phased by this as it can as we outline below.
What is the Ideal HTML to Text Ratio?
A good text to HTML ratio is anywhere from 25 to 70 percent. This percentage refers to the visible text ratio, as opposed to HTML elements, image tags and other non-visible information. You may notice that many high ranking websites in search results have visible text. This has become especially apparent since search engines, such as Google, released the Panda update which placed importance on content-driven sites.”
There’s two things we can learn from this. First off, Google thinks its important to have lots of text compared to the HTML needed to display it. So that already impacts their search ranking, which really isn’t good for their main store front. And while that might not sound important – Articles such as this are mountains of text, mention Osmium a bunch of time, and require almost no HTML to display. Any articles bury the actual shop right away, and i don’t think they’re spending the money to buy an listing on the top of google (and i don’t use google anyway). By itself alone it’s almost enough to explain why i didn’t find the shop the first two times i searched for it: Every other site with any sort of text about Osmium buries crystallized osmium many pages down. Until i searched for “Buy Crystallized Osmium”, which hits the exact right keywords in the right order to bring up “buy-osmium.com”. People can’t even find the shop when they look for it!
The second thing we can learn is that the website is UNGODLY INEFFICIENT! Because there’s almost *NO* text on there. There’s the store intro, the text below the video and the links at the bottom, that’s it. It should require very little code to show that. Besides that, the rest of the store doesn’t look that fancy, so it shouldn’t take that much code to display it. Honestly i think it’s that damn calculator again.
The website isn’t printable or doesn’t have a printable version, which is a shame if you’re selling something, but not necessarily a problem. But then we hit a big one:
“Open Graph is a term created by Facebook developers to describe the ability for some social networking software to interact across different platforms. This allows different websites and applications to share information about a user, their interests and even their friendship network.”
I understand why people wouldn’t want open graph on their personal websites, but on a storefront, it’s a goddamn requirement. HOW are you going to get your website discovered on social media if you don’t interface it with any social media?! We might not like Facebook’s dominance in the marketplace, reality is they’re there, and everyone is still using them. So when you’re actually trying to reach those people, by having Facebook’s software recommend your stuff to their users – you’d better integrate it into the system.
There’s no W3C validation. Description is: “Check the markup validity of Web documents in HTML, XHTML, SMIL, MathML, etc. A basic check every website needs to go through.”
Well it works properly in Opera, Chrome, Edge and Firefox, but at this point that’s luck, not craft. Even I did a W3C validation check on my own HTML 1 website in 2006! The fact that it’s not there means they have not made sure the website works on multiple browsers!
And on page 7 we come to the core of the problem. Nothing under social. No twitter data. Nothing. Zip. Zero. Bupkiss. They have NO social media presence for their shop! Oh sure, there’s a Facebook page linked in the brochure, but you’re trying to sell this shit. Infact if there’s a Facebook page for the institute it’s even worse because then you have the opportunity to cross link and promote, and just don’t.
There’s no one who hates social media more then me. I’ve never had a Facebook account. Always refused to get one. I also don’t use Snapchat, Instagram OR Whatsapp. To the point where Scarlett said they used Whatsapp for business communications and telegram for secure communications, tried me to get using it for that reason, and i still refused to start using Whatsapp (IF YOU’RE ALREADY MAKING THE DISTINCTION THAT ITS NOT SAFE WHY KEEP USING IT YOU DOLT! “safety unless it’s inconvenient” is a very bad attitude to have).
And on that, considering Whatsapp recently changed its privacy policy so that they’re allowed to share all contact details with Facebook and every other thing integrated with it – those business contacts of Scarlett and all their metadata are now in the hands of Facebook. Which is why it’s so important to keep up to day with developments and not get buried in work.
I made a twitter account because i saw value in the ability to announce stuff on a central announcement platform when i started work as a streamer. YouTube is, as i said, unavoidable – while Twitch is quite a different community and basically my peoples – gamers. But i don’t feel much need for anything else.
But i’m no fool when it comes to my businesses. I’m planning to make Facebook pages and integrate social elements in all the websites that are supposed to sell something to people (and keep my personal website clean ^_^). Like it or not, when you’re actually trying to reach people (instead of majestically waiting for them to come to you <_< >_> ) – you gotta go where the people are.
While the speed of the website is good, as one would expect since they must be paying for a pretty good pipe to load that calculator as fast as it does on my connection, there’s more issues:
Apparently, they failed on “Make Javascript and CSS External”, and the references say there’s a total of 1 line of inline CSS. Again, i’m not a website designer or a SEO specialist, so i don’t know what that means. And yet again, a simple google gives an answer:
“Does that mean I should use JavaScript to load JavaScript and CSS files ?”
“No, it means link them with link and script elements so they can be downloaded once and cached for subsequent requests. However, loading assets with JavaScript can often be a good idea too. “
I’m gonna go ahead and say these people never had a good idea about code in their life, so i’m going to bet on the only other possibility: Not a goddamn thing on that website is caching.
Point is, not only have they been transferring many times more data then has been necessary, because none of the pictures cache locally, the ENTIRE website has to be reloaded in Every, Single, Time.
At this point if i was looking at the website on mobile or with a datacap i’d damn near sue to get my data back. This is just downright criminal. I mean i can assure you if any of my old friends from IT college were reading this article, at the start they would’ve been laughing at how bad the design and code was, but at this point they’d stop laughing and just felt sorry for me, for having to deal with this nightmare. I can honestly say a 12 year old could design a better website, and many do on the regular.
If you’re this stupid, just get a fucking SquareSpace website. Nothing wrong with a decent SquareSpace. This is just an embarrassment for everyone involved. I’m pretty sure even the reader by now feels some vicarious shame.
And i’ll just end this embarrassment the way it should, with a screenshot of the Traffic section of the Free and easy to generate Search Engine Optimization report:
Which is about as empty as the foot traffic in the world’s inner cities in March of 2020. There’s nothing. The site is a complete blacksite as far as the internet is concerned. As far as i know it’s been up for years.
Well there you have it. That’s why it’s still an unknown, why it refuses to take off, AND why their gross incompetence has been able to go on for this long. They only think they’re selling this, when in reality, they’re doing everything in their power to stop this from going up, simply because they don’t know what they’re doing or that they’re doing it.
At this point there’s little more i can say about the website’s incompetence in this section. More will come later, but that goes beyond bad design or wasting data, as i found straight up law breaking violations, which i’ll show shortly.
But what i will mention is why all of this is so goddamn important: The partner accounts are all linked to this webshop. I onboarded into the system, as did my friends, and we had our own webshop at the same address with a deep link, so all our data was connected to this website.
And if the frontend is THIS badly coded, there’s no way in hell the back end is secure. When i left the company i requested our accounts be removed and all our data deleted – and they seem to have complied as i can’t log in anymore and my shop reverted to default. But, my shop deeplink still works, though reverted to default. If my reference code still works – They’re still using my brand. While they may have deleted my data, if my reference code still works, they’re infringing on my brand. I’m not gonna check myself, but I don’t think the code will be hard to figure out.
It all seems to run smooth, but with my connection i can’t really tell. Point is, efficient and secure are two different things. ALL commissions are located there! If the site is hackable, it wouldn’t be hard to change that, as the connections to their system won’t be secure either. I more or less hope they’re using an industry wide Content Management System and haven’t decided to build all this from scratch – otherwise again…There’s no way that’s secure.
And, their crystallized osmium verification system works with a central database with pictures.
While their method isn’t flawed, the point is, pictures can be very easily forged to perfection with Photoshop. There are many people on the internet who are capable of this. Not to mention people can just forge a piece and insert a new database entry if it’s broken enough. And while their central database might be very convenient for their customers – it also means one central point of failure to the whole system: If that database is found to be insecure, all pictures need to be verified, and that means taking pictures of all pieces in the wild and send them back to compare against the source picture – if both match they’re still valid. That’d be a massive undertaking, and you’ll never reach everyone. It’d break the entire system of trust.
Not to mention personal data of everyone involved on the website itself. Spaghetti code always leads to security vulnerabilities. Needless to say i asked them to remove my and my friends accounts and all data forthwith the moment the company didn’t want to speak to me anymore. And again, atleast in terms of data, they seem to have complied.
Before i get to the legal mess all of this has created, there’s one more document to go through; The Preliminary marketing review.
The Preliminary Marketing Review
Written between the 24th and 25th, i’ve basically written everything inside except for the product line section in one go on one day. The plan was to draft it three times, add stuff i forgot and make it a bit softer to read, but i received word via my friend (who had become the go between by then) on the 27th that they no longer wished to speak to me because i’d threatened violence. Which confuses me, i think it’s because i threatened to punch the website guys, but at this point i’d kick em in the balls too. Twice.
Regardless, i wrote the review not to just to highlight problems. It should be obvious by now that i’m not just a critic, i’m a problem solver. Sure, naming the problems is important, as well as being able to describe them: You gotta know what the problem is after all to solve it. But i ALWAYS atleast try to offer a possible solution, even when i admit then i’m clueless at what it should be. At the very least, i can offer a very heavily disclaimed guesstimate. Critics only critique.
Here too i have to put a small disclaimer upfront: This document has not been drafted, was approximately 15,000 words long before i added the product lineup section a few days later, written while under extreme duress. I haven’t read it back, nor do i ever wish to again, so the style will be alot more chaotic and less cohesive then my other work. The changelog is higher quality without drafting, because it wasn’t written as a story – rather as line by line “live” analysis for somebody who also saw the document for the first time, so i spent more time thinking about what i wrote on the first pass. Though had the experience not been so stressing i would’ve probably drafted it too, atleast a second time.
The preliminary review though was written front to back from memory at extreme speed, so that means i’ve skipped half a sentence at places, some information may be redundant, or i would’ve rewritten entire paragraphs to be more understandable. If contact hadn’t been ended, i would’ve taken another day to go through 2 drafts and i would’ve sent it on the 28th or 29th.
The information contained within is also a bit more direct then the other document. Not in terms of language or passion, but in terms of information. As i said, the only way to solve problems is to name them, no matter how ugly it is. Unlike the changelog, since i finished the first draft before the 26th where the real insanity started, I’ve tried my best to soften the blow better.
Also i should mention that my intention was to send this document to Ingo Directly. At this point, i’d already realized Scarlett was either protecting him (through the “fragile ego” comment), or she’d already learned not to name problems out of fear for her job. I have no such fear, i tell you what’s wrong, and you either appreciate it or fire me for it. If it’s not the first, i’ll gladly suffer the latter, and i’ll continue the fight in another arena.
EVENTUALLY i’ll find somebody who appreciates me for it. Though the bookies think it’ll be past 2030.
At this point i’m not gonna filter out more personal stuff at the cost of more stress, as i’ve already put in far more effort into this then i ever wanted to or saw any need to. The public wrath they bring upon them is their own because i tried as hard as i could to make them understand the severity of the situation (again, with a communication disorder), without forgetting anyone along the way. Though i won’t be held responsible for people not talking to me either, that’s on them. If they’d ask, i’d explain, always, but i’ve found people don’t wanna ask anymore and feel more comfortable just assuming. Well so be it.
The text file can be found here:
Again, for marketeers or business people wanting more insight into how better market their products across an entire business rather then just a single brochure, that document is another piece of gold that could serve as another university lecture in and of itself.
Presentation isn’t limited to pictures or words. Your product lineup must also match your marketing narrative. For the experienced marketers out there, let me make one thing very clear:
The product always comes first!
There is a way to market everything. But the best way to market a product, is a good product. Had Ingo and Scarlett not been incompetent to the point of actively creating a negative reputation, had they just been middling or mediocre at marketing, the asset would’ve sold itself, guaranteed.
The best marketing is a competent product.
It’s a common mistake that companies make. Because the marketing guys actually know human behavior, they are naturally convincing. In many companies that have since fallen from grace and become defunct you see the exact same pattern: In the beginning when they’re growing, the engineers have the say and good products push up earnings.
Eventually beyond a certain size, marketing starts taking over. This because even mediocre products aren’t as great as the headliners also start selling well simply due to brand recognition. From that point onwards it starts to be more about the brand then the actual product, because even bad products that have big cost savings applied to them in order to increase profits, also sell well initially, as long as they’re marketed under the power of the brand.
Research and development expenditures start dropping in conjunction of increasing marketing expenditures, and eventually a competitor which is still in the engineers phase start outcompeting the established company. But because by now the marketing division is the biggest and thus in control, their answer is the same as always: “More Marketing budget”. For a time that works, until it doesn’t, earnings hit reality, and the company slips into obscurity.
With that said, as is proven now, you can even hold back the perfect asset if your marketing is bad enough!
If anything, this entire adventure’s might’ve been worth it for that little nugget of knowledge alone. Cause it forever proves that there is NO asset good enough to exceed poor presentation. Not even the literal new gold the entire planet has been looking for for millennia.
Makes for one hell of a story too, if i do say so myself.
I’m certain that any reader who’s having trouble selling something – be it a product, or themselves; As when you’re a content creator on YouTube, twitch, or a podcaster and you’ve never been able to “break through” i’m sure you’re wondering why – anyone will gain some insights into public perceptions when comparing the problems i’ve laid bare with the solutions i propose. With that, i’ll again assume the document has been read, and continue to the worst of the worst:
Straight up Felonies
For the Non-English speakers, Felonies basically means serious crimes, or instances where the law was provably broken in a serious manner. This part in the story takes place around 28th of December: The day before and after contact was ended, and i found more problems that straight up made clear to me that they’ve just plain broken the law and are at the minimum looking at massive fines from the EU – and most likely, considering the amount of incompetence, probably some jailtime. Though maybe probationary.
Let me make this clear up front: I am not a lawyer. I’ve not looked at legal texts – i’ve got enough problems as is. So i am not clear on the letter of the law. But as mentioned before, i most certainly understand its spirit, and it’s only the exceptions to the rule that are mysteries to me as they rely on precedent that might not always make logical sense. But then again, this section is not to prove a case – it’s to tell the regulators and actual lawyers where to look, why it’s a violation, as well as provide more entertainment to my followers. How bad can it really get?
Lets start with the big one: The Technological Monopoly.
Well first off monopolies aren’t illegal by definition. There are whats called “Legal Monopolies”. Generally, they’re state sanctioned monopolies that deal with infrastructure or unprofitable societal goods. But it’s also possible to have a legal monopoly if you invent a new technology on which you then obtain a patent. As long as the patent is valid and you don’t license it – you’re in sole control of the technology.
Yes this is as bad for society as it sounds. But – it’s the compromise we decided to make to reward inventors for their inventions. It has lead to some major holdups though: Because the patent on the steam engine belonged to James Watt and he wanted to be the sole supplier, the Industrial Revolution started 25 years later then when it could’ve: It started when his patent expired, everybody could produce his superior steam engines, and they became ubiquitous.
Simply put, he alone could not possibly produce enough steam engines to feed a worldsized industrial revolution, and for profit motives he also overcharged and sued competitors, thus keeping the market small.
If you ask me… The idea of patents is good, but i feel it should only give the inventor the right to exclusively license the technology, not to exclusively build and purvey it, where a compromise must be reached between the inventor and the company wanting to build it.
But that’s in general – for this company it doesn’t apply, as the situation is a little bit more nuanced. They aren’t actually the holders of the patent to the process. They have a patent to its implementation. Instead, they have an exclusive license to the process patent, as they met its requirements: Prove you’ve mastered the process, and Ingo has. If anyone else proves the same, they get a license too, and Ingo would have to compete. This also explains his oversight in pursuit of money: Once a technology has been achieved its only a matter of time before somebody copies it. It may be complex, but if there’s enough money in it, somebody will throw a billion dollar research division at it and figure it out… And not always in a nice way either.
This is further supported by the way by Scarlett’s comments to me that they worry the most about the Chinese market, due to the Chinese copying just about everything. Not me saying this, it’s Alibaba, where badly produced crystals can be bought, BUT DON’T DO IT THEY’LL KILL YOU! They have warnings about being toxic everywhere, and again, it’s the reason why the process has to be perfected before obtaining a license.
However. This doesn’t exclude them from the general rule about monopolies. Because they can be so incredibly destructive to society, there’s a simple rule: If unethical behavior or other misconduct is proven, they are no longer considered legal and must be broken up.
A simple google search again confirms as much:
https://www.classlawgroup.com/antitrust/unlawful-practices/monopoly/
“A monopoly is when a company has exclusive control over a good or service in a particular market. Not all monopolies are illegal. For example, businesses might legally corner their market if they produce a superior product or are well managed. Antitrust law doesn’t penalize successful companies just for being successful. Competitors may be at a legitimate disadvantage if their product or service is inferior to the monopolist’s.
But monopolies are illegal if they are established or maintained through improper conduct, such as exclusionary or predatory acts. This is known as anti-competitive monopolization.”
Well, i think the improper conduct is by now proven. And it doesn’t have to be purely excluding competitors either. It’s not a “Get a patent and do whatever the fuck you want” kind of deal. If you misbehave while still small, how that’s gonna work out when they have enough money to hire entire divisions of lawyers? Because of things like what happened with James Watt, some changes have been made along the way yknow.
Lets run through the list anyway:
– They have no vetting process or control over who they enlist. This proven by Scarlett telling me i didn’t have to tell her or introduce all my salesteam to her and i could bring them onboard by myself. At that point i could’ve brought in anyone i wanted to, including hardened criminals.
– The people they do enlist have no protection for their mental health or reputation within the company. Scarlett mentioned that “They hadn’t had problems with the brochure so far but most of their partners are non-native English speakers”. In other words; They have no way of knowing what they’re handing out, or how a native English speaker perceives their material.
– It’s very possible they’ve already ruined peoples lives. Scarlett mentioned a “Hong Kong wholesaler who was a lazy disaster”, “partners in Russia that can’t seem to make inroads”, “Partners that make 10k to 20k a month and partners who sell almost nothing”, and lord knows what else i didn’t hear about in their 6 year history. While i will not hold the company responsible for sales performance of individuals – they all still signed up to sell the product and personal performance is their own responsibility – it’s beyond reasonable at this point to assume not all of this underperformance is due to individual performance; And it should be investigated by the authorities. One only needs to look at the falsely accused to see how long an undeserved reputation sticks.
– Due to Scarlett’s overloaded responsibilities she has no time or insight into the actual state or health of her employees. It took until after the brochure changelog was already finished before she got mad enough to tell me to “Take a fucking break”, and she was “going to inform Ingo cause this got out of hand” literally right before i sent the completed files. I talked excessively to her on telegram and made sure she was updated along the way. While i won’t fault her for anything i said between the midnight on the 25th and the 27th as i told her not to respond – there was plenty of time outside of that window to take my side of the story, and assume it was the document setting me off, not some autistic fit.
For this i have one damning piece of evidence: Telegram. While i understand that it takes time to respond to texts when she’s swamped and i take time to look at responses when i’m busy… Telegram works on the basis of phone numbers. She literally was looking at my phone number this entire time and never called once. Yes you can’t call with telegram but you can punch the number you see into a keypad on a mobile can’tcha?
There’s no other choice for me to conclude that whatever was on her mind, it was not my health, until it was far FAR too late. And here’s the kicker: Since they signed me onboard as a private citizen, and thanks to an accountant dragging his ass – i never registered a company. While i may not have made sales, from the moment they onboarded me to the moment they broke contact, i was in their care. I checked the boxes with the contracts after all.
And as i stated. While i might not know Dutch law, i do know there are strict rules for employing mentally handicapped traumatized cripples. The government encourages you to employ them, there are even benefits available! But it is not the Law’s job to see to it that you claim the benefits or that you obey it. That is your responsibility. And this company failed in their care for me, as well as everybody else in their employ because i’m not gonna hog the spotlight on this. The Americans call it “Criminal Negligence”, and it carries jail time.
I will describe the effects on my health more extensively in the next chapter called “The Aftermath”, as i wasn’t done with the company at this point, as i wasn’t done uncovering the corruption yet.
– Speaking of the onboarding contracts, they are unclear and leads to people not knowing what they sign. The boxes containing the text are TINY – And for me they don’t include the English document for the privacy policy, while containing both the English and German versions for the terms of use within the same document.
When i onboarded, Scarlett did mention to me to read all the documents. I mentioned i couldn’t find the English versions, and she did say “strange they should be there”. AND THIS IS WHY YOU KEEP A TIGHT LEASH ON I.T.! Because now, you’ve violated the law out of pure laziness. I don’t need to know the letter of the law to understand one of its fundamental principals:
It’s highly illegal to make people agree to something they don’t or can’t understand.
Here’s a screenshot of the onboarding process as it still is since January 14th:
I’ll be honest and say i waved that right when i onboarded, because these damn boxes are everywhere, it’s always written in hard to understand legalese even for me, it contains tons of stuff not applicable to me in any situation, if you don’t accept you can’t get in, even if 99,9% of these things are so generic you couldn’t possibly accept any of them if you’d actually read what they allow the company to do if they could be carried to the vaguest of extremes. I haven’t thought for a moment during all of this that they had any ill intentions anyway. But that’s just not good enough.
Regardless, that’s me. Everybody else still signed these things without waving that right. They still broke the law for every other person they brought onboard, so you know what, they can keep this one. I can’t possibly sign away the right to let them endanger my health or reputation. Some things supersede contract law yknow.
Here’s the same boxes, the privacy policy scrolled to the bottom to show it’s still German, the other midway where it transitions to English.
As i started finding more legal violations including the next one, i let Scarlett know about some as i found them, and during one conversation with my friend she assured that they “had lawyers who looked at everything and made sure it was legal”.
Well i guess the Lawyers forgot to take into account incompetence. I’m pretty sure they never thought the company would be stupid enough to forget to include the English version of the privacy policy on the website, which i’m sure exists somewhere and is perfectly legalese.
– Speaking of which, they made another violation. While i’m pretty sure the above is already enough to obtain massive fines purely on people who agreed with it, they did something far worse due to sloth. Even worse then the above? OH YES!
If you thought individual violations were bad enough… How about a mass GDPR/privacy law violation spree? Not possible? Watch this:
Whenever you visit their webshop (as i’m sure many of you have by now), there’s this little popup at the bottom of the website:
Well first off while i’m not entirely sure about this, but i thought that the GDPR got changed a few years back so that automatic agreement was no longer legal. That’s why those cookie popup boxes everywhere are now larger and they have a whole host of options to agree too, but these guys have already shown they don’t update their materials at all. But i think you can feel this one coming. That red box is there for a reason. It’s one thing to have people automatically agree as a GDPR violation….
It is immeasurably worse when you make people, en masse, automatically agree to something they can’t understand.
The Privacy policy is in German. Worldwide. I had my Californian friend check. Even the link says /en/datenschutzenklaerung/
AND WHATS WITH THE FUCKING FACES! AARGH!!! STOP STEALING MY SOUL!!!!
THIS ONE’S LOOKING AT MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!
– I’m just gonna add it the list: The faces everywhere is not normal. I don’t know if it’s a criminal violation, but it’s creeping even me out – and i’m used to quite a bit. There’s even a giant one behind the privacy policy for crying out loud. It’s fine to have a kink, everyone’s got a few. But i don’t mix business with pleasure, and this is…. It’s not that there are faces, it’s that it’s just faces. Again what’s wrong with a hand, or objects for comparison, yknow some creativity… or just, not having one on your privacy policy…
In any case i’m not exactly one to judge here since i don’t really know what normal is. But i think it goes towards improper behavior in the workplace? I mean someone must’ve made the call to make all the pictures like this. Whoever it is, that person’s behaving atleast a bit improperly in my opinion… If nothing else, towards the brand. If anything you’d expect a picture of osmium there.
– In my opinion, the chronic understaffing and putting all the workload on Scarlett is improper behavior as well. She’s clearly a workaholic, which is a very real disease, and so far the only thing i’ve really blamed her for is psychological behavior, the need to be liked, which is just a character flaw.
In any case, people like this need strict boundaries set for them, as clearly proven, they cannot set them themselves. If need be – parental controls on accounts so that they cannot possibly use them to respond outside of work hours. This may seem excessive, but the whole point of the adage -aholic is that these people are incapable of controlling themselves.
Alcoholics can’t stop consuming alcohol out of their own accord. Workaholics can’t stop work out of their own accord. They need outside help to keep it under control, atleast until they’re used to a situation where they’ve managed to learn control themselves. But that can only be achieved in a healthy situation first, created for them.
Her behavior won’t improve. She’s already a self-admitted workaholic, so admitting the problem herself no longer helps. And before anybody starts: I’ve been under psychological care from the age of 5 until 21, you tend to pick up a few things. Especially if you’re smarter then the psychologists.
What should happen to her and Ingo i leave to the authorities, but in case that nothing happens as per usual or the authorities let them get away with a slap on the wrist, my advice would still remain the same: That she’s treated like the vice-president that she is: She gets a whole team to deal with 400 partners (i was never told if she had one or not, but considering her efficiency, she needs alot more if she has a team). She needs to delegate connections with partners to dedicated staff, and then manage the staff instead of the partners.
There wouldn’t be any problem setting any boundaries for her if her workload involves administration and 5-10 staff. There’s a reason all companies are set up that way. No one can take on the workload she has without detrimental effects to their health, not even me. I need far more resting days then that – even my inhuman sprint now will be compensated with time off after, and alot of time off. While my body heals fast enough – it’s purely my mind that demands time off from calamity, and i fully intend to give it its time. I’m no fool. Work hard; Rest hard.
I would even say; Whatever legal ramifications come her way, outside of monetary punishment i hope any time served can be in some way integrated with her making more of her jewelry. It’d be a loss to society to see that go, and i’m much more in favor for people adding value as recompense, rather then to see even more valuable things lost to tragedy. I’ve got quite a few things to say about society’s tendency to “just stick people in jail and justice is served” as well. There can be no justice if the law is absolute.
– The final thing i would add is the pictures of Ingo’s friend on the website. As i’ve made clear, i’ve got nothing against involving friends, but i’ve also made clear that there’s a way to use friends. And genuinely – any clear thinking person can tell you (and as stated it was also noticed right away) that any person holding up a box where you can’t see what’s in the box is not about what’s in the box.
When you involve friends to help improve the product, it’s a beautiful thing. But when you use the product to improve the standing of your friends – it’s nepotism, and it’s improper. Especially if it’s done in such a manner that actually reduces the standing of a friend, even when the intention clearly was to improve their standing. That just makes it worse: Incompetent Nepotism.
Again – I’m no legal expert. But i would say that most of these things by themselves would already be improper conduct. Everything added together is clearly unacceptable.
Did i display improper conduct as well during all of this? Yes. But i’m not the vice president or president of a Monopoly. And atleast, i realize my conduct and am sorry for it. While i claim necessity, that doesn’t necessarily excuse it, and i do apologize.
And i would like to remind everybody, regulator and elite alike – Monopolies are held to a higher standard. This because a monopoly out of control is a very big detriment to society. Imagine if this asset blows up with this level of thought behind it, and rather then spend money on improvement, they spend money on even more lawyers to defend their misconduct?
Scarlett mentioned she wants to get into environmental projects. There is no sector as filled with destructive projects quite like the “green” and “sustainability” sectors. Many great ideas to improve the quality of life too, yes… But how do you separate those from the scams when you’re this gullible? Would she fund a biomass reactor when it takes real research to find out those produce more environmental pollution, not less? After all, the Dutch government still runs one, how bad can it be? Surely they know what they’re doing (hint: pretty bad).
With everything i’ve written… Would she really pick my information over that of the Government? Osmium is sure to make alot of money, which can fund alot of destructive projects without due diligence…
Then there’s the sheer risk to investors the database and shop are insecure. I can’t make any judgments here – i’m no coder. Sure i know basic HTML and HTML structure, but database coding is something else… Though i had to do MySQL in my education too, so i’m somewhat familiar with database structure. Regardless the website is a mess so i’ll gladly question its security, and at the very least it should have a accredited professional take a good hard look at it. All of it. I mean the source code. If not for the sake of the asset, then the sake of the private information of the customers.
Without a doubt they’ve got no regard for the GDPR or any privacy laws whatsoever. “Having regard” in this context means atleast double checking your main store front in English has the English policy on it. It shows a grave disregard for peoples privacy, expecting it to be fine “because they have lawyers”.
Well i don’t. Might makes right, is that where we’re at?
But i’m not done. This so far has been just improper conduct. I’m pretty sure they’ve violated the limits of what is and isn’t a multilevel marketing scheme as well.
For this we have to go to Osmium-sales.com, specifically this address:
https://www.osmium-sales.com/en/marketingplan/
It’s under “Income” on their site, and requires a password. The password is in the brochure, which has been handed out to many partners including partners they now parted with, so it’s not exactly protected knowledge (password’s bigbang). Regardless what’s on there is important enough to share.
Most of the system, i have no problem with (though again i’m no lawyer, so i can’t really be held accountable if it’s declared illegal in its entirety when a competent lawyer looks at it). While it’s true it resembles a multilevel marketing scheme, as i’ve mentioned before there are some key differences: You don’t have to hold inventory, and there’s no performance pressure. A bonus for performance is fine, as long as you’re not made to feel as if you’re forced to strive for it. To their credit i’ve not once felt pressure to make sales. While their comments show greed, i’ve never heard it ever mentioned once i had to make a certain turnover, or i’d be terminated or punished in any way. If anything their rewards are pretty fair. And the asset sold is genuine.
But there is one very egregious line in there, that i’m sure either the lawyers missed, got put in later, or their legal team is as incompetent as everyone else in the organization.
It involves their Osi-scoring system. It is their internal reward structure for sales performance. As stated on the website:
“The Osi model is an internal scoring system used to reward sales performance of retail sellers and wholesale Partners by increasing the rebate for purchases for own personal use, retail sales and wholesales. At the beginning of every calendar month every Partner has accrued a certain amount of Osis. These Osis will be debited at the beginning of every calendar month from the Partner’s Osi account to activate a certain variable Rebate level.”
“The wholesale Partner therefore receives a 6.0 percent fixed Rebate plus the maximum variable Rebate of 5.0 percent based on Osis. Accordingly, the wholesale Partner receives the highest possible Rebate of 11.0 percent.”
In short – if you’re a wholesaler, you receive 6% of sales outright, but you can work your way up to 11% by collecting enough Osis.
Now, i understand why Osis is used instead of sales in currency. They wanna offer Osis for more things then pure sales, such as partner recruition. Which is fine, makes things easier to calculate. However…. This does mean that Osis functions like a premium currency, much like in mobile games: Osis have a real world value because they accrue and can be converted to real world currency, making it a currency in and of itself.
Essentially, you can read “Osis” as “Dollars” or “Euro”. And that’s why this paragraph is incredibly problematic:
So. They literally say, “It is our right to give out additional money to whom ever we want for whatever reason we want. Furthermore this has no connection to their or any ones performance”.
Yeah, they may try to word it vaguely with “particular set of circumstances”, but guess what… Performance bonuses are given out under a particular set of circumstances: Performance based circumstances.
I understand why the second line is there. The lawyers put it there, because they know performance bonuses are illegal. However! The first line logically negates the second line.
If it’s money given out at the discretion of the institute, but it’s not a performance bonus, then what is it? Is it a Bribe? Is it a Dowery? Is it for the procurement of Cows?
Because it cannot be a gift. Gifts are given with intent. Randomly handing out presents to employees for no reason doesn’t happen because it goes against the nature of a company, which exists to try and make maximum profit. And it clearly states it’s at the discretion of the institute.
Even worse, since they have little control over who they bring onboard; If i were to become partner for the Netherlands as originally intended, and i just bring my friends onboard and i start doling out cash regardless of performance, which is then OK because i’m not allowed to do it for performance? I literally have to give my friends more and strangers who perform better less, because i’m not allowed to do it for performance reasons?
But if they say it’s OK to reward people with extra Osis for performance at my own discretion ontop of the system, then that puts extra pressure on the people who’s sales have slumped outside of their control. If i’m also supposed to reward those people from time to time, then at that point i’m rewarding everyone equally, and it should’ve been built into the base system, but it’s not. It’s a separate mention.
That is a mutually exclusive logical inconsistency. Either; the institute gives out extra money at their discretion and some (though most likely all of it) goes towards performance bonuses and the system is built around that with clear preset goals to achieve (though the word “discretion” throws that for a loop, and specificity matters a great deal in legal matters); Or there is no bonus given out at their discretion because crediting a partner isn’t indicative of performance, and the system given is simply the system given.
As i’ve said before. When you’re trying to run an ethical monopoly, you better bring your fucking a-game because that’s the hardest form of business there is!
Competition’s much easier then not sliding down the slippery slope, and boy oh boy, they’re at the bottom already.
I wish this was it, but i’m afraid i’m not done yet. They’ve already shown improper conduct towards partners, but i would like to just plain add endangerment to the list. This because they clearly will bring anyone onboard without proper guidance, so i have no clue as to the competency of people they’ve brought aboard before or after me. And naturally, i have proof for this as well.
They have a website for training in Osmium: https://www.osmium-academy.com/en/
From the top headline:
“Training schedule of the Osmium-Institute for the acquisition of expertise in the field of precious metals, in particular in the osmium segment.”
Now again, i could make sales right away. But let’s assume i’m different from the others and they all need training first.
From the Seminar Levels headline:
“The content of the training courses is divided into five levels, each of which builds on the other. The next level can only be started after completing the previous level”
Alright. In fairness we’ll skip level one since everything’s digital now, so “coming to a trade fair” ain’t gonna happen. You can instruct digitally too.
“Level 2: Online training and assessment for tipsters and trading partners
Price: free of charge
Places: Online
Status: “participated” without passing the exam and “examined” after passing the exam.”
So these are the materials you can find on the website. I was told about this, and that there was a little test to make sure people didn’t go out into the field blind. Well sure, that’s good.
Let’s take a look at what’s available: Under “Fixed Dates” on the website for Seminars, the calender’s completely empty. To participate in level 3 costs money for a classroom session: €290 euro, and apparently the calendar’s empty anyway (then there’s the virus), and this was never mentioned to me anyway to be necessary.
So online materials only then. Doesn’t have to be bad. Since getting access to the materials requires registration, i’ve taken screenshots:
To just start off with, there’s that fucking cookie warning again. Only this time IT is in German, so i genuinely only recognize the word “cookies” and i can figure out what the first 4 mean. I didn’t even notice it until i edited that screenshot for the PDF just now – and i’m pretty sure it’s another violation of GDPR to not make it clear and prominent, considering how prominent every other website makes them.
Second of all, most of its in German. And i gotta say, the selections of videos to begin with isn’t very stunning and it looks like a bunch of advertisements rather then sales training videos or information videos. Luckily if i have questions i can Faq Englisch.
Don’t look at me, that’s how they called it. *Cough*.
I like how one of the videos is literally called “Is osmium sold in a pyramid scheme or a ponzi…”. Yknow maybe the asset would sell better if ya didn’t make it look like one in every possible way.
Regardless, most videos are under a minute, some are a minute to two minutes, one is 4 minutes 9 about whether or not osmium is a crisis currency like gold. But there’s a common pattern here: All videos are about Osmium.
There’s no video on the website that teaches anything about selling something. This might seem nitpicky, but again, they’re bringing just about anybody onboard, and i recruited multiple people without any sales experience myself. In my case i swore to micromanage them and clearly i know what i’m doing – but this is not necessarily the case of others the company brings aboard.
In fact…. There’s no other content in there. These are the only English videos i found, the upper tree structure above the main directory contains no content and the rest is German.
This clearly is not enough to prepare people who you’ve got a contract with to sell, to sell. If it’s not your intention to provide sales training to anyone, that is fine, but that has to be clearly indicated upfront. You can’t offer a barebones site with no scheduled training sessions, not even digital ones, or ask money for that to begin with. Coughing up €290 is alot of money for me yknow, atleast before making any sales. And again, i could make sales anyway. Then there was this Test.
First off i’m glad the mix of German and English continues: Same website, English section, English cookie warning – still illegal.
Since the letters are small let me highlight a question:
Now, to be fair this is one of the harder questions. But i’d still guess the bottom option if I didn’t know anything about Osmium. Because I remember the Fraunhofer institute is where MP3’s come from, while there’s no way in hell the German state knows enough about this asset to build up any sort of reserve.
Oh yeah, it’s an online exam, i can just google the answers. There’s not exactly any oversight here.
But i don’t even think there needs to be. Because some of the questions are alot easier to figure:
Genuinely, if you don’t want your team to get shredded on the first day, you don’t give them such an easy time. And again, all the questions are oriented towards osmium – no questions on how to approach a client to see if somebody actually knows how to sell something. Though to be fair, i didn’t screenshot the entire website at this point, because this came way at the end of everything so i was beyond done.
This list reads like an highschool exam to study chemistry. And while that might’ve been fine if this was a free online test to see if i could possibly sell it without any information… It’s a poor excuse of a test if it’s the threshold to whether you can or can’t sell.
And after all of this i wanna remind again that Ingo said to me, verbatim “This is a good time to get into America because of Christmas” in my introductory meeting, 7 days before Christmas.
There is one more aspect to get into: Their licensing agreement.
As mentioned, they don’t have the patent to the process, merely their implementation of it – which is a black box patent which i have no problem with. As i’ve said before Ingo deserves full credit and compensation for his achievement.
But the process license is, i assume, subject to certain conditions. And i doubt that simply perfection of execution is the only requirement.
They’ve mentioned many times that the Osmium Institutes were created for the introduction and promotion of Crystallized Osmium into the markets. From what i’ve heard – that it’s had success as an investment product in the German speaking countries, atleast they’re keeping up their end of the bargain there.
But for the international market, due to their own stupidity (and yes – failure to act counts too), they’ve actively held back the introduction of crystallized osmium in the global market.
At a crucial time too, since all my other research points towards hyperinflation and national defaults of western economies to be a heck of alot closer then everybody gives them credit for.
There’s a problem with gold. It’s too undervalued. There literally is so much currency out there while the price of gold has been suppressed for so long – the spread between what gold should cost and what it does right now has become so big, many if not all of the wealthy elite cannot buy any substantial quantities of it to protect their wealth.
For example, i recently calculated Warren Buffett only needs about 70% of his short term treasuries position to buy out all gold on the Comex – whether it actually belongs to the Comex or not. Not to mention his reputation is so large, if he were to put any significant amount into gold or gold miners, the entire world immediately takes it as a signal of capitulation and rushes into the sector. As shown by the commotion over his recent investment in Garrick Gold.
This because the gold price is viewed globally as the price of commodities. While supply and demand might make everything move independently – If the price of gold rises significantly, all other commodities shortly follow, as it’s a classic sign that the currency is depreciating.
Crystallized Osmium – had it been properly introduced in February 2019 with the back AND front end to support it – could’ve served as a solution in this situation. Regardless of utility, during hyperinflation nothing but rarity counts. It’s a psychological panic that drives people to seek out anything which cannot be created out of thin air, and non-deprecating assets such as gold are king, as you can stick them in a vault and pull them out exactly the same whenever you want.
It is, quite literally, THE reason i found Osmium to begin with. Because i wondered, “what else is rare?” And there’s no doubt eventually others get the same kind of thoughts – many already have.
So to be clear: The growth of Osmium as an asset, atleast in the areas outside of the German speaking countries, has nothing to do with the company promoting it, because they’re actively holding it back. It’s just that good of an asset.
I can honestly say that their plan for scaling up to 10,000 wholesalers is madness. If i was in control i would never go beyond 1 institute per country and funnel the sales through the institute meant to promote the damn thing in the first place. After all it’s so rare, the shop features no unit counter. What you see is what’s available in total. I really could sell out the shop with my team on the daily.
And that brings the problem that everybody else’s income drops. Not to mention that it seems the company has no idea about what happens when the price eventually does spike up.
The clientele changes. Right now, to get 24 milligrams you already have to pay 38 euros. By my research, Osmium is ~32 times undervalued to gold because you can get a gram of osmium per ounce of gold. An ounce is 31 grams, so to bring that up to the 1000 grams it needs to be to equalize the 1000 times more rare rarity, you get 1000/31= 32.25, roughly.
That already pushes the price for 24 milligrams up to €1,225.50 – and that’s fair market value.
Then you have to realize gold is undervalued by a factor of 10, atleast, so $1850 an ounce becomes $18,500 an ounce. This is not because gold is so valuable – it’s because the dollar is in a massive bubble, because an incredible amount that has been printed, but due to a skewed measuring of inflation and the flow of new money into synthetic paper assets only, everyone is still of the opinion that the dollar’s worth alot more then it really is.
As i said, since gold is the base for valuing commodities, and Osmium literally has the same but better properties as gold, it should 10x as well from that point – bringing 24 milligrams up to €12,255. While that’s Euros, trust me, when the Dollar goes the Euro’s not long for this world either. TARGET2 sends its regards. Also Deutsche Bank is eventually going to get margin called and counter-party-risked into oblivion. Just a matter of when.
As fantastical as that all sounds: The ONLY reason i can think of why it seems impossible, is because we’re not used to crystallized osmium being a thing, as it’s new tech. But as i’ve described, since this is more then likely going to end up both as a replacement for diamonds for the ultra rich (taking care of the milligrams issue) as well as a superior form of value compression for the ultra wealthy. If we apply the same calculation to an investors disk of 113.731 grams, currently worth €183,901.15; we get close to €59,3 million euros, Per disk.
Well. I did say to my followers that i found something that’d go up an insane amount. Though i doubt i can continue to pull these kind of multiples.
Dividing that amount by the 10x cost of gold, $18,500, gives 3,205.83 ounces of gold. Converted to kilos, this comes to ~99.71 kilos. So, at fair market value, ~114 grams of Osmium can store as much value as ~100 kilos of gold. This basically replaces a very large vault with a drawer.
HOW is the average person going to afford all of that?! And all of this assumes only the currency that has already been printed! NONE OF THIS includes any sort of demand spike for rarity as the currency continues to be printed and people start to flee out of it. This will only drive the price of silver, gold, osmium, platinum, and just about every other metal you can think of through the roof. Price will become meaningless in and of itself.
Regardless of the demand spike: No person who isn’t already incredibly well off is going to end up dealing with Osmium. The reason i wanted me and my friends in now is because i understand this. Right now, it’s cheap, but it won’t stay that way – and not for much longer either. So i wanted to first present it to the people who really supported me, my followers and the people who believed enough in me to put money into my ideas. It’d be every one’s own choice – but i’m 100% sure those who could afford it would become rich, and my wealth at the top of the salesteam would allow me to come back for everyone who missed out, like the top dogs in the browser games i played.
But alas, twas not to be. I’ll have to find another way to secure my fortune. I’m not worried, considering i can find gold, the new gold, and the replacement for black gold (AKA Uranium AKA glowing gold pretty soon), i can just keep doing this. Osmium will sell itself too, when unrestrained.
Point is, 10,000, 5000, or even 1000 wholesalers are FAR too much. When the price spikes, everyone’s income paradoxically drops, because their client base shrinks. This is going to put alot of them into financial trouble, unless they’ve got the connections. I was also told that they already had wholesalers who serviced the high end market, and they wanted me to be careful not to tread on their toes. I’m sorry, they’re literally the competition for my livelihood, within the same company no less, what do you expect here?!
That just shows more criminal negligence to me. They want to sell this asset, but they don’t even know who they want or can sell it to. “Whoever has money” seems to be the motif.
What’s worse, it seems they’ve put little thought into the secondary market, cause there really isn’t any at the moment. They have resellers supposedly, but the main question i’ve gotten so far has been “where do i sell this?”, and so far i’ve been resolved to make a reseller myself because it’s such a gap in the market.
Not an idea i’ve given up yet by the way. I’m fine with buying from others instead. Still nothing wrong with the asset.
But it is here where we reach the final allegation. The part of their system they actually did spend time, money and effort getting it right. Or so they thought. Instead a part of their system is straight up anti-competitive, full stop.
What the company does is fix the price of Crystallized Osmium globally. All the wholesalers and retailers sell at the same price, mostly from the same shop even, and they get paid on the back end – Rather then providing the asset at a set price to the retailers and wholesalers who then can charge a premium that they can set to whatever they wish. In short: They want one global osmium price.
And since they control the market, that is their right. You don’t have to buy osmium, afterall. It’s not a critical life good… well, not until the global demand for value compression kicks in, anyway. The moment another person or company manages to perfect the same process, they can set their own price and their own structure.
But this applies to what we call the primary market. In other words, the first sale of the asset into the economy out of their company. What happens afterwards is beyond the companies control, and is what we call the secondary market: for example people who bought osmium from the shop, now being able to sell osmium themselves into the open market as they have supply.
And it is here where they’ve gone too far, as they’ve set up the system in a way where it’s anti-competitive to the secondary market, forces people to sell their asset at a depressed price, and makes it impossible to compete outside of their own company. Were it just people it’d still remain questionable as that clearly impacts society. But it also impacts new businesses that want to get into the reseller market, without dealing with the company! Which is entirely possible if you only buy from people who’ve already bought from the company, but not the company itself or any of its affiliated partners. Imagine an Apple phone repair shop. You might not be “certified” by Apple or anything, but you have the right to repair any phone including theirs without affiliation – there’s just no laws yet to not make that difficult as all hell as well.
You see; It’s because it’s possible to redeem my commission in Crystallized Osmium, partially or even entirely. And i was informed by Scarlett that some wholesalers do indeed request their entire pay in the metal itself.
But it’s here where their primary market structure works against the legality of it all: Salespeople affiliated with the institute can both buy from themselves to turn the wholesalers rebate into an effective discount, as well as request part or their entire pay in the metal, rather then currency.
This gives anybody affiliated with the institute a massive advantage over any reseller, AKA Bullion Dealer, not affiliated with the company. Now they understand this, so they’ve tried to compensate for it, but in doing so made the system worse and even more exploitable.
When i started recruiting people, the most asked question was “where do i sell this?”. People i’ve suggested osmium to as an investment have also turned it down due to liquidity issues. I mean to me that means there’s a massive gap in the market for a reseller, so i immediately planned to make one. I even spent ~370 euros of my own money buying domain names; Which i’m still gonna keep.
Since i’m pretty good at business and systems, i’ve developed an additional system which will add value to each piece i sell, so i already figured out a way to charge a premium regardless. Since my way is vastly more profitable (and ethical, so i’m not gonna reveal shiat), i figured i’d just do the investment/bullion dealer part on the side for minimal profit to drive traffic.
However. At this point in the story, i hadn’t been informed on how resellers worked yet (and i hadn’t checked out the academy yet either). And i realized on my own that the 11% wholesalers discount i would have would put me at a competitive advantage. After thinking about it and on my own accord, i figured that, in order to not compete with the parent company, i would have to fix the buy-in price at 11% under spot. Since i’d pay people the same as it’d cost me to buy from the company, there shouldn’t be any conflict of interest on my part. And as stated – If i add value, i’m not competing on the asset or price, i’m competing on service. Any other reseller is free to offer the same service.
It pays to be insightful at times, yknow.
Anyways, after i finalized my plans, i told them to Scarlett (minus what i was going to add, i may be a retard i’m no idiot); And to my surprise i was informed thusly:
“Yes that’s how it works for all resellers, sorry if i hadn’t made that clear”.
Which made me feel uneasy. It’s one thing if i choose to setmy buy in price that way… It’s another matter entirely if it’s centrally controlled that way and i’m forced to. That means it’s industry wide, and thus affects all consumers since they are the industry.
Honestly at the time i had so much on my plate already i just resolved to work within the system and “outcompete everyone else”. If i make them more money then anyone else by a large margin, i get to set policy, simple as that. They’ll come around. It took a while to think through the ramifications, which became apparent as i started that work within that system and designing my reseller.
Maybe it’s because i’ve been playing videogames excessively to escape a very tortuous reality, but it’s lead to the point where i can basically glitch any system. Purely because i continuously expect to have to defend myself against everything and everyone, ANY system i encounter i immediately start scanning for weaknesses and exploits as i automatically assume the same is being done to me as i’ve had many a system exploit me. But again, i did warn them from the start i was pretty traumatized.
And i came to the conclusion pretty quickly that it was possible for me to passively outcompete literally everyone as long as i made sure my salesteam was trained and operational. This because of their referral bonuses, which i’ve described before work in the same way as videogames that i’ve played often and know how to dominate.
The plan was simple: I was going to start the reseller with my friend who got me in, who was 1 level above me. Meanwhile, i was trying to collect a salesteam of about 10 people beneath me, and i’d try to get them all help of atleast 1 level below them.
In that case, if their team sold something for $1000, that person would get $60, my friends would get $30, i would get $20, and my friend uptop would get $10, simply because of money left in what they call the “transmission chain”, because these referral bonuses link and go 5 levels deep.
But that’s where it starts becoming an issue. I can demand that pay in metal, even with a reseller on the side!
Clearly they’ve been trying to boost the rarity of this thing, and they keep emphasizing it. Since i already figured out it was possible to empty the shop rapidly, meaning a supply crunch, i knew securing supply was key. Because i can demand pay in osmium, i’ll always have supply. And this was the original plan until i heard concerns that nobody would have anywhere to sell it and i wanted to provide that opportunity myself.
If i demand my pay in Osmium then sell the supply to my reseller, i’ll get 89% of the value in cash, which i can use to buy more on the back end to keep supply tight, and i can do so at an 11% rebate. Meanwhile, my reseller will have supply, and will sell it at the wholesale price 11% higher, netting me an instant 11%. Since people have no choice but to buy at my reseller because of supply, i own the market.
And because i have a whole team generating the supply crunch that keeps my competitive advantage intact, i can corner the market over anyone who doesn’t have that structure in place and operational. Meanwhile with crosspromotion and coordination i can drive traffic to my structure and even usurp traffic from other wholesalers.
I wouldn’t even have to make a single sale of Osmium myself. Though i would, as i told everyone if they needed help closing a big client, i’d take the call, use their reference code, and we’d both get money
Oh and incase anyone is wondering: i don’t leave my team behind. I was going to set up the share structure of the reseller as non-voting shares (look i’m clearly the brains of the operation lets keep it that way), but instead of tradable shares they’d basically be dividend vouchers. Since the reseller would generate alot of profit for not alot of work, i figured i could offer alot of dividends and make sure everybody had a guaranteed income that way.
I was planning 20% shares for me, 20% for my friend who got me in, 20% for Ingo and Scarlett for the opportunity, 20% divided among my sales team of 10 people, and 20% tied to the jobs within the reseller (customer support and whatnot); Rather then work with bonuses, people’d just get a salary, and rather then stock options, they’d just get the dividends the company generates while they’re in the employ of the company. My cut was to serve as a large passive revenue stream so i could fund other businesses with it; Many of which i’ll just give shares to friends for more passive income so they can have a better life and help others too. Employees do well, company does well, we all do well.
But… This overlooks any reseller not affiliated with the company. And now that I am not affiliated with the company… i’m at a competitive disadvantage if i want to start my bullion dealer business.
For a start i have a competitive disadvantage over anyone who can buy at the company for 11% below spot. I will have to set my buy in price above 11% below spot to draw in supply from the secondary market. Meanwhile, i cannot sell above spot, because people will hunt the better deal. If the 11% margin isn’t enough – which it highly likely won’t be due to transport costs of secured couriers – i can’t compete.
Furthermore, if any resellers have sales teams making sales in the primary market, they can turn that around both for supply during a supply crunch, or as extra investment cash to actually cause a supply crunch, and buy in the shop themselves at an 11% rebate – then turn it around on their reseller for an instant 11% profit, which again can be used to buy more osmium at 11% rebates.
This DIRECTLY affects the consumer as well! Since every buyer in the primary market automatically becomes a seller in the secondary market!
Naturally, if i offer to buy in at a higher price then their -11% under spot, i will get the business instead of them, and i can compete on margin (if that’s possible with transport costs and whatnot). But how am i going to do that with a capital disadvantage? As shown above the resellers affiliated with the company have ways to transfer winnings from the primary market into the secondary market, which i don’t. If it was just cash, it’d be OK, since i can transfer outside funds into the reseller as well… But it’s not, it’s physical supply as well.
During a supply crunch in the bullion markets, premiums on gold and silver coins go up. The spot price is not the price at which people can buy, as it’s set in the futures, and the mines simply charge based on realtime demand. Resellers outside their company could do the same, but in order for that to work, they actually need supply to sell. If they can’t buy from the single company supplying it, the only source is the secondary market, where’s it’s nigh impossible to compete because of the global price.
I can’t sell above their price, because i won’t get business, and the only time i would get business, i won’t get supply. I can buy above their buy in price, but that reduces my margins and again puts me at a competitive disadvantage. The resellers associated with the company have a portion of guaranteed supply, i do not, and based on structure even within the company this competitive gap can be widened, AKA a 3rd level reseller vs a 1st level reseller.
And while i do have an added-value system… It doesn’t pertain to the bullion side of things, as i was planning to do that on the side. Which now, i simply can’t, cause there’s no way to compete with the price outside of the company.
This means i won’t be able to offer consumers in the secondary market a higher buy in price, i simply cannot afford to, because i can’t compete with the prices of any of the other resellers.
This means their monopoly is displaying anti-consumer and anti-competitive behavior in the secondary markets, thus affecting the agency of people they have no business affecting. They are competing with consumers directly, and using size to determine price.
And just to make clear that they are, let me offer you the ethical solution to the situation: NOT require resellers to fix prices, and NOT allow commission payouts in metal. In fact – How about not trying to fix the price of an element globally to begin with as it’ll always stay a legal quagmire. If this messes with their desire to globally fix the price of osmium, TOUGH LUCK! It’s anti-consumer, and needs to go.
If they want to offer a fixed price to all their wholesalers as well as directly to customers to buy, while setting premiums for consumers and then let resellers set their own premiums while actually quoting wholesale prices, like the rest of the bullion industry cause that’s what this is, bullion; it’d be fine.
There’s nothing wrong with premiums, though they seem to think so. But just to add another first rule to the list:
Business 101: Location Location Location!
If the German market is tight because it’s more popular there, but there’s plenty of supply in the US, then German dealers have to ask a higher premium then US dealers. This is how markets work! If the premium cannot be asked, supply will run out, and you’re dealing with perpetual supply shortages.
Which is exactly what they want because they’re trying to pump this price as high as it can go.
And i’ll tell you right now – i had plenty of plans to pump this price just as well, and i mentioned them many times to friends. But as always, there’s a way to do it and a way not to do it, and my plan was simply “cut through the bullshit and let everyone know what the asset REALLY is”.
I know i’ve got a reputation now as one of the lead researchers on the Comex. I’ve been told by people in the industry for well over a decade that i’m lightyears ahead of them, even though i never even looked at the Silver Futures website before February 2020. I know that if all of this were to come from me, it’d have a far greater impact then expected. As i said before i started out this adventure thinking it was the cushiest job ever: I would just have to tell people what i already knew a million times and the darn thing’d sell itself. And incase you haven’t noticed…. I talk alot anyway.
But I’d NEVER fix the price in the secondary market, because what people can get for it is their own damn business. Yes i chose not to compete with the parent company… which is just sensible honestly… But at the same time my plan already involved ways of buying in above the 11% discounted price using the added value as an excuse, and i got as far as to incorporate ideas to provide even more profits to the seller regardless of the buy in price. Like i said, i can glitch any system, including hacking broken systems so they do work, and the only reason i’m not revealing how is because, after a long rest, i might still try it out anyway.
Never bet against human innovation kids! Bad investment all around.
Regardless i’m clearly unique. Every other person that just wants to start a osmium reseller business doesn’t stand a chance. This in turn keeps the market illiquid, and hurts Osmium as well as consumers. Because the next person who asks me where to sell this thing, my answer will have to be “stick in a vault for 10 years and hope Craigslist is still around”. Bullion dealers will pop up in time. But with this level of incompetency i just don’t know when.
Though genuinely, before i got involved with the company, my idea was to just stick it in a vault, accumulate while hyperinflation hadn’t hit yet, then the moment the rush out of currencies starts and gold becomes near unobtainable, i’d use my platform to simply say “Have you guys heard about the NEW gold?”. I seriously don’t think it’ll take much to find a seller within a year or two.
Wouldn’t take long before it’d shoot through the roof. Then my plan was simply to call up any millionaire or billionaire in a bind because they’ve got far too much currency and not enough assets – while nobody is selling – and sell to them. The end of the movie Trading Places, basically. Currency that’d then just go straight into the markets in things i know would provide dividends that beat inflation, all which get reinvested into solid companies, shares i’ll still own when the currency reset comes and thus, will provide me many dividends in whatever currency is next.
Literally everyone would win… well, everyone within my orbit anyway. Best i can do, sorry for the rest, i really am.
But as you will now see… I can genuinely not be expected to do even more on my own at this point, or to keep society’s nuances in mind. This whole adventure has left me severely drained, not to mention it came in the last month of a very traumatic year, where i’ve been fighting on the front lines of the information war for over a year now. Which is true, as i learned of the Virus on the 9th of January 2020, then concluded it would cause a pandemic on January 11th, and pivoted my life to reading news 12 hours a day every day to try and warn society. Much good that did.
I need rest. Mentally. Physically. Financially. So it’s with that in mind that we move to the epilogue.
The Aftermath
Naturally, going through such a mountain of stress and effort in the shortest time possible has left me with some damage. Just the immediate stress of possibly seeing my reputation and relationships go down in flames before my eyes caused a direct effect:
I suffer from eczema on my face. Most of the time it’s manageable and i don’t have to use anything against it, but stress directly increases how prevalent it is. It got triggered when i was 28 and has never left since, though it can go virtually into remission. This entire year hasn’t been good for it, but as i entered this adventure on December 1st, i’d had taken care to minimize it as i was still expecting a guest. My face was clear and it was limited mostly to beneath my mustache.
While i could feel it slowly increase in severity when i started recruiting my friends, it completely exploded from the moment i tried translating the brochure; Simply because of how badly the brochure was, the other discoveries of incompetence i found along the way, and with it, the realization of their toxic reputation. Maybe it’s my storied history, but i still after explaining it before, i again want to stress it was not the actual physical work that caused this. I’m sure the smoking didn’t help, but that too increases to manage stress.
Below is a picture taken on the evening of the 28th, when everything was definitively over.
Note that this is only the stuff you can see: My mustache covers up the worst area, which is my upper lip. Historically it’s been worse on my facial areas where i have hair, even as far as my eyebrows. So far until the adventure, only my nose bridge, the sides of my nose and areas with facial hair had “flakes” on them. So that my entire forehead is covered in spots is new, as well as the large area of my cheeks have never been that big. Needless to say…. It itches like crazy. But i can’t scratch too much, as it’s possible to break skin.
To make matters worse, the cream i have against it smells highly chemical. Since being affected with long covid, i can’t handle chemical smells anymore as they trigger my fatigue. Washing dishes for 30 minutes knocks me out for two days because of the disk soap. If i use the cream, my upper lip smells highly chemical for 3 days straight, because the cream is absorbed by the skin, and i can even taste it for days.
I haven’t used any yet, and in the time between the 28th and starting serious work on this document around the 7th, it did recede considerably on its own. Though, now on the 15th, it’s pretty much all back thanks to reliving the whole thing. It’ll take weeks to recede fully on its own, weeks during which i cannot be stressed… And as my future now lies outside the company with no recompense for my work, i’ll have to put on even more stress building the only thing i have left: My community. I can’t even express the extreme rush i feel in bringing content to them now, even though i know they’ll understand if i take my time. That too, is a left over effect from the adventure. I’m having extreme difficulty switching out of work mode now. Though, with this giant wall of text to work through, i think i can take a month off.
Here’s another picture from the 29th, after my first shower in weeks. That didn’t help my skin either, but as i told people around me many times (though the company never got that far), when i get stressed my personal hygiene is the first to go, as it costs the most mental pressure to keep up when there’s no benefit to anyone else. I don’t meet anyone and going outside is limited to grocery and weed runs – the rest of the time i’m smoking and body odor is the least of anyone’s concerns. In any case, the spots always turn red after a shower, making the extent of the damage easy to see:
Make no mistake: While working so extensively hard on the brochure did affect me physically, it’s done so no more then muscle pains from sitting and typing all day (which i’m very used to as i do that on my own from time to time). ALL of the stress i felt responsible for my mental damage as well as my stress ailments came directly from the gravity of the situation, and the refusal of the people i was working with to recognize that gravity.
They might not care about their reputation or their friends performance – My reputation and my few friends who appreciate me for me are all that i have left! I certainly don’t have my mental health anymore, nor is there much left of my physical health anyway.
So. What’s the plan?
First off, my personal health as that was the subject. I’ve been trying to take a vacation since November, but one thing after another keeps happening, and now i truly am exhausted. I have never ever felt this tired in my life. Nor have i ever felt that i don’t have a path to mental health anymore. No matter how bad it got in my life i always saw a path to redemption, but now my mind just says “i’m broken”. It’s become so highly compartmentalized to protect me from bad memories and new possible trauma that i’ve got severe memory problems, which have only gotten worse through this adventure.
It’s not that i can’t remember. I typed this entire document from memory. It’s that when i try to even approach memories from the past, unless it serves a purpose, i don’t remember anything i just start feeling bad. Whenever i search for the memory, i don’t get any associative memories, or any feedback that there’s something there…. But there has to be because something is making me feel bad. I just cannot remember what, for my own sake. Most of this applies to stuff prior to 2020, though i notice i just don’t retain nearly as much information as i used to even 6 months ago.
My emotions are shot. There’s nothing to salvage there. I’ve asked people multiple times throughout 2020: “When is it enough?! When is a traumatized mind no longer expected to behave “normally” under duress?! WHEN am i allowed to just be broken and people take my pain into account?! Why must i be nice to people hurting me?!”.
And that was before i was used, abused, and abandoned again. I count 3 times in December. My guest, these people, and at this time, Eric Sprott hasn’t replied to me anymore after i brought him into contact with Scarlett and suggested buying Osmium. I’ve sent him mails and tried to contact him through Connor, but no word. So at this point i’m just going to assume that relationship and future path is ruined because of something he found out before me.
And like all assholes, he apparently feels fine with flipping a blind man off, because i’ve asked them – nicely – to please just let me know how or what i screwed up, cause i genuinely don’t know what i did wrong. I can think of lots of things, but because of my traumatized mind, i also think of a legion of things i did wrong – far more things then i could’ve done wrong. Blind man in a room full of noises. And sure i’ve heard via via that he has family troubles. I watched my sister break down on Christmas. Still saw it fit to update him on my finds though. We all have motherfucking problems, especially since 2020, but i don’t have millions to secure my sisters future. Both of us are on social security that’s not gonna be worth much soon, and that stresses me out more then anything. Her future.
And i put effort in too. I sent him all my research, including the original screenshots of the Comex website with volume numbers which i’m sure no one else has. I gave him all updates of what i knew of the market at the time. Even sent my research on the Canadian CDS uptick to him first. But apparently all that effort doesn’t even warrant an explanation when something goes wrong. Even though he literally said on the phone that “he wanted to help”. I just don’t know what help is supposed to mean anymore. All it means is ruined hopes by now, cause i hear it all the time, and nothing ever comes of it.
And it’s that which hurts the most as i’ve seen nothing but that behavior all my life. People that offer me help, but only on their own strictest of terms which they never explain but always seem impossible for me to figure out or obtain. When i fail those terms, its taken away and i’m left in the dark again. IF THEY WOULD JUST FUCKING TELL ME!!!!!
So i’m not gonna ask for help anymore. From no one. I’ll generate the capital myself, because literally everybody else seems to be intent on either slowing or dragging me down and leaving me a fucking mess at the end of it all, every, single, time. And i’m SICK of it. Literally, PHYSICALLY sick of it. I’ve also stress-vomited a lot in December, once every two days during Christmas week.
It seems that there’s no way on earth i won’t be taken advantage of unless i make a stand, right here, right now. I’ve always looked for help and guidance, and i’ve gotten nothing but suffering for it. The problem ALWAYS seems to lie with me, no matter how much effort i put in, no matter what my logical mind can think of, and despite having to keep a mountain of trauma in check that no one seems to keep into account and is easily dismissed just because i haven’t stabbed anybody, yet – so i shall look no help more.
If anything – this adventure has left me with a confidence that i know better. Regardless of what i do; If i put effort into thinking things through; As i am experienced in it living within a world that is not, i will exceed everyone. The one-eyed is king in the land of the blind. Every area i put effort in i end up incredibly overtrained comparatively before i even start; As it was with Finance, as it was with Marketing, Economics, Videogames, as with anything. ALL economical and social activity on this planet is Human, so if i understand the source, i understand it all. And i understand 99,9% of all people in this day and age don’t think, they simply do, then flail about or rip the other side off when things go sideways.
And in this case, i know they broke the law. I might not know the letter of the law (and so help me, piss me off enough i’ll pick those books up too – ALL of them) but i know its spirit. I also know that Dutch labor laws concerning Traumatized Handicapped Cripples are quite strict. For obvious reasons – to prevent stuff like this from happening. While they were not in error to recruit me, they most certainly were in error in not offering any guidance or any sort of competent material to work with. Had i not such experience dealing with traumatic situations and extreme duress, this really would’ve ended alot… messier. And no, i don’t mean their fate.
They effectively threw me into the deep with a grenade strapped to my back, and while i might not be able to put that in legalese, i’m pretty sure it’s not legal. Instead, i’ll let the lawyers sort that out, and i’ll be sending this entire report to the Dutch authorities.
I do not intend to sue for damages. Simply because i’ve seen that play. My mother has already tried suing a company for damages, has been at it for over a decade, and is years away from success… Even though she has an email of the director saying verbatim that “the workplace doesn’t adjust to her, she adjusts to the workplace” when she asked for a printer she was working right next to, to be moved. Now, if she smells a chemical smell, her throat shuts closed and she can’t breathe.
How ironic considering “society doesn’t adjust to you, you have to adjust to society” is something i heard all my life, and now breathing itself has become laborious because of that truth. I don’t need any more of that. I already get visions of putting a gun in my mouth pretty much daily.
But if the Dutch authorities wanna teach a bunch of Germans a lesson for messing with their citizens…. Well i don’t expect them to because the Dutch authorities have shown the entire year of 2020 to not give a single fuck about their citizens. Even today as i’m writing this the government has fallen over wrongfully accusing thousands of fraud and ruining their lives. Can’t tell you how often i’ve thought about Molotovs. They deserve it. But i digress, and i’m willing to give them another shot anyway.
Next up, since they were so kind to let me know that their product had “become quite an popular investment product in the German speaking countries”, I’ll send this report to the regulators of the German speaking countries: Germany, Austria and Switzerland. While i might be more in tune with US financial law at this time, i’m pretty sure “Unethical monopolies” are veeeeery illegal within the EU as well. In fact, considering the EU has a tendency of employing anti-trust fines far more often then the US; I’ll be sending it to the EU regulatory bodies as well. At the very least because of the many many GDPR violations.
And since we’re on the subject; Let me just single out BaFin, the German financial regulatory authority. Since the Osmium Institute in Germany is the main institute through which everything goes through – and technological monopolies require closer oversight especially so that this exact situation doesn’t occur – This whole story is another EMBARRASSMENT for BaFin, who after Wirecard and this, clearly don’t have a fucking clue what they are doing.
I would trust a 7 year old Monkey with Named Bananas to pick out scams better. Honestly if they don’t move on this i’d half expect all the other regulators to do just to embarrass them further. How the HELL is Germany supposed to be a leading EU member if THIS is how they handle their finances and business oversight! Just wait until the FUBAR Shitstorm that is Deutsche bank finally goes down, maybe then they’ll learn admitting a mistake is far less embarrassing then destroying your country and its future with anti-competitive mindsets.
Oh, and if the German regulators come after me like they did with that reporter on Wirecard, i swear to god, i’m gonna rip Deutsche Bank, Commerz bank and literally every other financial institution in that country to shreds. Society already seems happy to abuse people in my position and make me suffer so don’t think i give a shit about hastening the inevitable. I’ll bring a whole fucking country down if i have to at this point.
If you people don’t need to be civilized anymore, I don’t need to be civilized anymore. And i’d suggest watching the movie Wild Things to see what happens then. I’m pretty darn close at this point. I’m not to be fucked with anymore. I can create ~12,000 words of high level research in a day and i’m twice as good at destruction as i am at creation. I just want to be left alone and help those in need, after i’ve taken a long and deserved rest. And i wish deterrence wasn’t the only option; But i’ve never observed anything else to work on humans.
As Machiavelli said. It’s better to be feared then loved. Though i don’t find that entirely accurate: If you can’t be loved, it’s better to be feared. And i’ve not gotten love in a very, very; Very long time.
Which means i’m not done. They managed to finally do what no one else has ever done: PISS ME OFF! I’ve always told my friends from the past that “They never managed to make me angry, i’ve only been “frustrated” so far. They’d know the day i got angry”. I’ve been hurt too much, and its time this world learns. Deterrence seems to be the only thing that has had any success at all…. So be it.
It’s not just me that has suffered damage – it is my brand. And make no mistake – It’s my brand Desogames which they desired. My brand is known for Integrity, Honesty, Value and Insight. It’s a reputation i cultivated carefully and with extreme suffering – Continuing to report on the virus and economic hardship as well as scams, all throughout being affected by Long Covid and its symptoms: Fatigue, shortness of breath, my nervous system took a huge blow and i have short term memory problems now (did i mention that?).
People know this. My most liked tweet easily was the “THERE’S NO WAY I WON’T GET RICH” tweet i posted directly after the meeting. 80 likes in 3 hours. I’ve never seen so many comments of “you deserve it” on any other channel. People are always amazing, or are thanked for their work, but i rarely if ever see anyone say to another person on the internet “You deserve this”. The positivity of the feedback has been overwhelming and it’s what has kept me going, being there for the people that matter. So the prospect of losing that due to these morons, angers me greatly.
So there’s one more way i know i can explore to make money off Osmium, outside of the company and outside of a possible reseller.
I’m not the only one they hurt. Elliot, my friend from The Early Stage Investor who has also been very kind to me, joined me on the adventure. He had a webshop too, and he too has made screenshots of the site making him agree to the privacy policy in German. We also discovered why they probably overlooked it: Google Chrome automatically translated the page for him. I had him look in a different browser, and indeed, German privacy policy, even with the shop country specifically set to the United States. Considering the webdesigners competence, i’m willing to guess they checked once with chrome, forgot the auto translation, and thought it was fine. Checking websites with multiple browsers is website design 102.
This means that since it’s his brand ontop of the store, while it may be their website, it’s his store, and he would be liable had anybody visited that site. Since he lives in California, considering how litigious that society is, he would’ve been sued for millions within weeks. Since my brand is global and certainly US centric, the same would go for me as well. And naturally – He visited my webshop when i was trying to bring him onboard, long before i noticed the cookies violation. The webshop with my name on it forced him to agree to something he couldn’t understand. And while the webshop design was theirs thus they are legally liable (i can’t reasonably be expected to set up my own shop with no time or funding), the brand damage is mine, cause it’s my name on the shop. Naturally – i had to check if his webshop link worked as well, so the reverse is true just as much.
Since we both have suffered brand damage from mere association as well as forcing each other to agree to something we couldn’t have understood (and no, relying on google chrome to translate isn’t valid as i always use Firefox), and i suffered personal damage from trying to get their brand ready for the American market for which i wasn’t compensated…. I feel as if we have a good leg or two to stand on in Californian court. Not just that; But since it’s the two of us, it involves those two words everybody fears, and they soon will too: “Class Action”.
This is aside from the fact that they’re an Unethical Monopoly, also very much forbidden in the States, and Ingo told me in no uncertain terms during the meeting “This is a great time to get into the US market because of Christmas” and “They just today recruited their first wholesaler for the US the day before” – meaning they are very much active in that market and trying to expand operations. I’m not so sure the CFTC or SEC looks kindly to this kind of behavior, especially not when the asset itself is very real and soon to be very important. And i hear the SEC’s got a new leader who’s a real pitbull on these sort of manners, while the US still seems to have a bone to pick with German industry and trade surplusses….
All we need now is a “no cure no pay” lawyer – but that shouldn’t be much of a problem since i really don’t care how much legal fees they charge if we win. The moment i get a couple of million to start a few businesses or to put into the markets i’ll be able to generate so much i’ll never have to worry again – the problem is getting there. Osmium was the quickest way, but now, litigation is. Settlement, to be exact. I don’t need death. But i’d like some blood.
Will it work? No idea. But it’s low effort low risk to explore the option, and i like the idea of them worrying while i move through the shadows once more. They say they have lawyers who figured out all this stuff and their technological monopoly is legal – except that the lawyers assumed that every recommendation they gave was implemented competently… and it has been nothing but incompetence in business with these two. Assuming of course their legal team is competent to begin with and hasn’t been operating under direction from on high, rather then direction by the law.
Naturally there’s more countries i could get involved (Ireland and Canada being two) – but i think 5 and the EU will do. It’s not just the regulators you see – it’s the public pressure i’m going to bring by spreading my story as well. Since i sacrificed everything to keep my reputation pristine as well as do right by my followers, that is what i’ll focus on, and i’m sure my followers will want to help me. Many already asked what they could do for me… Well; don’t let the work be in vein and spread the word!
As my future has changed again, i now have to generate capital in a different manner. Since i’m pretty sure i won’t be moving in upper circles among the already rich and famous until i become too big to ignore on my own, i’ll look towards the only path left for me to generate that capital: My friends. So that is what i’ll focus on to generate money: Building a Community of people who want to learn what i know so they too can protect themselves and their friends. I’d love to teach, i mean properly teach finance to those who want to understand it without getting lost in bullshit.
I’ll integrate my financial teachings with my gaming relaxation, as i like to multitask. People imagine all i’ve done is read mountains of text, but that’s not true. I have spent many hours playing economically focused games while watching economics documentaries on a second screen. Humans learn by doing, and games allow you to run simulations of situations over and over again with no repercussions for failure. I’ve not just learned, i’ve done, and that is why i understand.
Meanwhile as i become more known, my time per person available becomes more limited. So that’s what i’ll set the business up as: The more you pay the easier it is to reach, with the tiered community making sure i can offer a large amount of people knowledge, rather then offering it all to one guy who pays thousands.
I don’t feel as if money should be a barrier to entry to knowledge. I can’t stop thinking of celebrity meet and greet at places like Comic Con… well when they still happened. You pay $40 for a photo and a minute or two with a celebrity who knows nothing other then sing a few notes somebody else wrote for them. In that light, $25 a month for a direct line seems nothing, the lowest sub is $5 to make sure the community is expansive and i have no intention of never showing my face to the free community either – only weekend streams will be Sub only, and all content unlocks for the freeloaders a week after. I’m faster then everyone else, so speed is what you pay for.
Meanwhile i’ll be making Merch (starting with T-shirts) with the many compressed wisdoms i’ve collected during 2020. Some people wanna express themselves by wearing their opinion on their bodies – Who am i to judge? This way people can spread knowledge and feel comfy. Plus, i saw a $20 shirt that said “I eat ass” on the chest and nothing else. I’m pretty sure the bar is alot lower then i think.
However.
All of that will take time to build up and i really don’t think this article will do so well as to make me millions overnight. And i’m in need of capital, still. My PC’s nearing end of life and crashes during bootup, sometimes multiple times. I don’t expect i’ll be able to collect the ~5k i need for a new workstation that can handle my speed and multitasking through the community alone within any sort of timeframe (though the revenue income on Twitch from the first month is encouraging)… i can’t even ask that much money for myself, i feel bad if i don’t earn it.
Oh sure i might’ve lost my inferiority complex, i still am very much aware of the dark future that’s ahead, and my mind just keeps screaming “Nevermind me! Save yourself! Buy some more physical silver instead or some miners, you’ll need it!”. I already have 305 ounces and some stock market investments, without any debt to my name, so i’ll be fine…. just not nearly as productive.
SO.
As i said at the very start of my information broker business – My Loss is Your Gain! My focus will be on my community and works of art and literature going forward… But i can still multitask, or lose a week here or there if the pay is good. Work is Work.
At this point, it should be clear that – Atleast in terms of Marketing, Public Perception as well as Human Behavior – I know what I’m talking about. But not just that, when it comes to product innovation, increasing revenue with existing supplies, or possible markets to expand to with existing production; I’m a master of Innovation.
This is not entirely coincidental by the way, aside from teaching me classical music composition, my Father also is a trained Innovation Expert. He did a course and got sent out several times as part of a team to increase revenue in companies using existing production.
One story that stuck with me is a trip he took to a consumer appliances manufacturer. Their sales were sluggish and they couldn’t seem to gain more marketshare, even though their appliances weren’t bad. Maybe not top of the line, but no reason they shouldn’t sell better. And my Father was brought in to increase those sales. Few years later, the company’s revenue had tripled. How did he (and the team) do it?
They didn’t. They looked at the consumer appliance market, which was highly competitive. They found that there was indeed no reason they shouldn’t sell better, but that was the case for pretty much everybody in that market… It was Saturated.
However, because of their lagging sales, they had part of their facility that was constantly running at about ~60% efficiency and costing them money: Packaging.
They sold lots of big appliances such as Washing machines and Dishwashers. Those require alot of packaging to transport without damage. Since that’s also expensive to make, they made it in-house to depress costs. But because their sales were lagging, they had continuous overcapacity, as the boxes didn’t have a point without a machine in em, and the machines didn’t have a point without a buyer. Also, since they’d never sold packaging separately before, their market share in the packaging sector was 0%.
So that’s all they did. They ran the packaging machines at 100% and simply sold 40% overcapacity by itself.
It worked. Big time. Because they had to package heavy machines, they actually made really sturdy high quality packaging at a low cost. They easily outcompeted the lower ranks of that market and gained market share in a market they weren’t even in before. After a few years, Packaging alone was 60% of their entire business income, outstripping appliance sales. And that was before the internet era!
I absorbed those stories, that knowledge and those insights for decades. Not to mention that my high IQ in logic and my wide life’s experience makes me the quintessential problem solver.
And i smell money. If Jordan Belfort (the Wolf of Wallstreet) can be worth $100 million today through motivational speaking, after everything he’s done; There’s no way in hell i’m not worth more. I know what he knows, except that i also know how to do things the legitimate, legal and ethical way, and i can spot those who don’t a mile away.
He’s pumping his YouTube up BTW. 366K subs, average ~7k views on most videos. He’s getting a similar viewcount to my friend Robert Kientz from goldsilverpros – and he has ~13k subs. Old habits die hard huh? Worth $100 million, that guy. Me? ~15k, cause i kept people’s concerns in mind and that didn’t work at all. But we learn through failure, and i had alot to learn from.
So i hereby offer my services as a Consultant.
Deal’s simple: You have a problem. I fix problems. Problem’s usually somebody lying to you and telling you something is fine when it’s not, but you don’t know what. Even if i can’t fix the problem, it’s highly likely i’ll run into a roadblock preventing me to fix it, and i’ll tell you about that. You get 100% PURE HONESTY! Because i don’t give a fuck who gets hurt anymore. People seem to have 0 problem hurting me “being nice” all the way, the nicer they are the more the suffering, so fuck that. If you hire me, you’re paying for unsalted unadulterated truth. As i see it ofcourse, but unlike other consultants or analysts, if there’s ONE guarantee i can give you:
I can always explain myself, my actions, my angle or insights and my expected results. If i don’t know or can’t know, i’ll tell you the truth; That i don’t know.
You won’t ever have to wonder if i’m holding something back for whatever reason, because i can’t. No i’m serious, i’ve lost the ability to shut up at this point even if it gets me seriously hurt, cause either the thoughts come out or I have a bad time, and i’m done with that. If you suspect you’ve got an underling that’s been holding you back and i find out, i will say so to their face over zoom. They can be holding a whole family of crying kids, i don’t give a fuck anymore. Incompetence has RUINED my life, and now, i’ll ruin it. Should’ve put a condom on and read a book instead!
Yeah i may be part monster, but monsters aren’t born. They’re made. Never forget that.
As for rates: First one gets the good deal. As i said, right now, my loss is your gain, and i’m tired of people in finance not understanding urgency. I’m Cheap now, but i won’t stay that way. The more people hire me for my services, the higher the price of my time goes. If i’m directly employed by big businesses, i won’t hesitate to ask top dollar either. I’ll gladly charge those who already have the capital more for my services. Strong protect the weak, as it should be.
And since i’m in need of a bitching work rig as well as some additional expenses – I think i need about $50k before i no longer need to work. 25K for physical stuff and to invest in my financial future, 25k for the tax man -_-
First one to just offer that or more gets my actual appreciation and double the effort, as they’ll be helping me out of a bad spot, improving my community vastly (i can finally properly stream then), and i’ll consider them a friend – and i bring future opportunity and protection to my friends ^_^
If my capital needs are met and the rest of you want my knowledge…. It’ll be ALOT more expensive, going up even more depending on the work required. I can literally just multiply my money in the markets sitting on my ass cause i know how to. Once i have money, i won’t need to expend the effort, so it’ll take alot more to entice me… Also meaning this offer isn’t open forever.
So…. That’s my future now, set in stone finally after 2 and 1/2 VERY turbulent years (started streaming in August 2018 and nothings ever been the same). I’ll be a True Independent, roaming the void and Cyberspace, kicking people out of my home who don’t belong. I was made to live here one day too many, and now, i feel comfortable. I’ll share the knowledge i’ve gained from this place – for free with the downtrodden, at competitive rates for the better off, and at filthy sums to those already filthy with corruption and seek cleansing. Finally i can say i am wholly my own man… And i’ll never give that up again, for anyone. Ever.
Promoters and sponsors that want my brand BTW; i’ll say to you upfront: Fuck off. Not for sale. I doubt any of you have a product that can match it.
You want me to promote your product? Take a fucking risk. Send me the darn thing, and IF i’ll use it, i’ll tell people what i really think. If use it and it turns out shit, i’ll tell everybody its shit just as easily. No contracts, no money, no demands. Honesty and Openness. If i don’t have use for it cause i’m showered in shit already, don’t bother, send it to somebody who can still get excited about receiving plastic crap.
This’ll mean that i will probably never get as many products as other streamers, which is just fine by me. I’ll gladly ship a gaming chair back and buy a good chair out of pocket the same day. Don’t bother. Quality or bust.
For the rest of you with balls: I just talk about life yknow. If i use something i like i’ll just say it. I’m not afraid of costing anybody sales, but i don’t think about generating sales either. If your product is shit i’m very expensive… But if it’s a good competent product i enjoy, i’m veeeeery cheap ^_^
Finally the question: “Why should you hire me?”
Or maybe even better put… “Who are you to be making these claims, anyway?”
Aside from the above story and proving my competence with marketing and knowledge of humans and business; Since i’ve been sitting at home most my life unemployable and have no history as such, what could i possibly have done to have expectations of any sort of money, let alone alot of it?
Well…
I’ve owed my followers a Bio for a long time now. Unfortunately something always seemed to come in between, and the other days, i never felt like writing it. I didn’t know how to put that fucked up backstory you’ve read so far into words. Nevermind being able to describe what i’ve done with any sort of pride. Since we live in an age of character assassination and it wouldn’t take much to point at that background and say “you know nothing” and “your predictions are shit cause you’re crazy”… I haven’t been able to write it so far.
But i also felt it incomplete. I’ve got alot of misery to write about sure… But i want to move past that. I REALLY want to move past that. I need to move past it, for my health’s sake, cause i’m not gonna last much longer this way. I’ll just die of exhaustion.
I needed achievements to my name in order to feel complete. My favorite Anime/Manga of all time has been Naruto, as i could just infinitely relate to the main character, as well as watching the anime while growing up and being around the main character’s age at the same time.
I’ve always dreamt of being able to perform to such high levels that the village had no choice but to accept me for who i am, and to see it’s not dangerous, but helpful, if YOU just let it. Gaining friends, then respect, then admiration. I don’t need anyone to accept me. I won’t leave them a choice.
That time has finally come. I’ve finally managed to put down achievements no one will supersede for a very, very long time to come. 2020 might’ve been hell, but i’ve lived, and i came out the other end stronger. And thanks to that… I can finally give you the FULL bio – including my resume as of 2021 – of who i really am…
The Twelve Labors of 2020
Well.
Up until this point, i’ve neglected to write a bio on my website, though an adjusted version of the one i sent to Scarlett will suffice for that, with this chapter added ontop. And i neglected to write one so far because part of me simply didn’t want to yet. I didn’t know why, though now that the year is over, i’ve come to understand. I felt it, incomplete. With this story done, i think i can finally let you all know what i truly can do at full strength, through my achievements in 2020:
1. January 11th 2020: Predicted the virus would turn into a pandemic and started reading news 12 hours a day to record history. While i have no screenshot of this, my Russian friend will confirm that around this time on Telegram i told him, on the App we we’re developing as well as my inventions; “Were all on hold. Wait 3 months and you’ll understand”. Meanwhile my Discord general channel, which is still the same as before the virus, is filled with messages after the repo crisis warning of an imminent crash even before the virus, which anyone can check.
2. January 25th: Predicted the coming market crash and survived the test on faith after the rally, doubling down on my prediction on February 7th.
3. February 10th: Became infected with the virus myself; Ended up going critical and surviving a heart attack through quick thinking, and 10 subsequent attacks, as well as the long term effects, while protecting others along the way from infection as much as i could (such as taping up my apartment’s vents before i showed symptoms). I actually have video footage during my first heart attack, showing an extremely weak pulse with a pulse ox meter – as well as more video/photographic footage that i was sick. I won’t be posting it – it’s highly traumatizing, and no medical professional ever wanted to look at it anyway. I asked. I begged. They wouldn’t.
4. March 7th: Predicted the oil shock directly after the Saudi’s announced opening up the taps (though, even i didn’t think it’d go negative).
5. March 12th: Predicted the liquidity cascade that broke the treasury markets.
6. March 21st: Called the exact USD/Gold bottom at $1440/DXY:104 (but waited until Monday the 23rd for confirmation, due to the brainfog from the virus’s effects making me forget not *all* online shops are closed on Saturdays. The local one i was looking at only accepted orders during trading hours)
7. May 6th: Predicted the Dow Jones’s Friday close after Tuesdays close to within 2 points (the “300” was a hedge as i felt “333” felt like answering A on a multiple choice test 16 times in a row and i got nervous), achieving the impossible: “No one can predict the markets”.
No one but me. I’ve done it. More then once.
And yes – The Dow Jones sold off immediately afterwards into Monday.
I’ve also done the same with the supposedly impossible to predict VIX.
I called it spiking before the crash due to the crash.
I made a call that “The VIX will not break 21 until the Fed buys stocks outright” after the crash around VIX 27. I tracked it every day, and the lowest it ever got before the presidential election was 21.12.
It did spike once to 20.88 – but this was during an 8:02 VIX spike: Structural daily manipulation on the same time each day of the VIX which i also cataloged.
After it bounced off 21 i called the VIX 25 regime and told people a surefire way to make money was to buy call options whenever the VIX got close to 25. It bounced 8 times that i saw, breaking 25 only once; bouncing from 24.83. I correctly called the end of the regime too.
Post elections i closed my “will not hit 20” call – and changed it to “Will not break 20”. It has not been broken since that call, with the lowest 2 readings being 20.12 (so i did that twice)…
..and 20.00 exactly.
8. End of May (though i can’t remember exactly when): Found out Tether was the cause of the Bitcoin rally by its inevitable explosion, making the first full thread on July 23rd. The picture is one i made for the first in depth twitter thread on July 23rd, as i felt somebody had to say something.
9. June 2nd: Found the Gold shadowcontracts on the Comex from their inception and started tracking them, successfully predicted their upcoming existence in Silver, and beating the Titan of the industry Eric Sprott by 3 months. I may not get the timing perfect… But then again i’m not omniscient either.
10. November (though it’s a blur so i’m not exactly when): Found the one thing we all look for, the True New Gold in Crystallized Osmium, and starting that adventure with the first poll on twitter on November 26th.
11. December: Saw through the blindness of greed and exposed the corruption underneath, hopefully stopping the new gold from becoming corrupted itself, and in any case, gave up great wealth to do the right thing.
12. Survived the ultimate test of Character: I never once throughout the entire year abandoned my friends, followers, or those without money or knowledge. I have broken through multiple of my own limits and rose to the challenge through each hardship, because it’s the duty of the strong to protect the weak. There is no question that i am faster then all; But with Great Power comes Great Responsibility. And i’ve proven to never shirk away from it, even at the cost of physical, mental or financial suffering. It’s not like i didn’t lose anyone along the way, i lost a great deal and made mistakes, and you can never save everyone. But throughout it all, i kept going, never forgetting whoever was left… Whether they were strangers, family, or close friends.
13. January 1st 2021: I lived to tell the tale.
(14. Bonus: Literally today on the 16th it came out that China’s tightening control over their entire Rare Earth supplychain, completing my “2021 China Rare earth export caps” prediction. ADDENDUM: On the 22nd, my RE companies are up +243%, +138% and +48% – the order is the same as the order of size of investments.)
As i’ve completed 12 impossible tasks within 12 months, and having come to understand nothing in this world is given to you; I hereby claim a title granted to me by Antiquity, and the only title fit for a man of my stature, as there would be no question what title my achievements would afford me in the time of the Ancient Greeks:
Demi-god.
This title nobody will be able to take away from me ever again. I don’t give a shit what people think about it, whether they think it’s pompous or justified. Not until someone has atleast attained the same level of achievement in the area of prediction will i even allow questioning it. I have been used, abused, sacrificed and abandoned all my life. And with this achievement at my back, i will finally be able to leave all of that behind me. This whole ordeal has given me a level of Confidence i never thought i’d ever attain again, and the value of such a thing cannot possibly be understated. Truly, i feel as if i deserve this title, because i worked my fucking ass off for it through MASSIVE pain and suffering – And with the knowledge that there are now many people out there who want me to do well – I’ll never abandon it out of my own accord either.
If somebody else wants this title or a similar one – COME AND FUCKING GET IT! But beware of the void… There are beasties around here with little pointy teeth.
However it is not yet complete. Naturally, i’m not good at *everything*. If you’d ask me to fix a car i’d say its probably a problem with the spark plugs – even if it’s an EV (“Well there ya go that’s your problem they’re missing!”). In fact, i suck at a great many things a great deal (don’t ask me to draw a cat please). However – It’s clear i excel at prediction, as well as have great knowledge and insight into both the present and the future. Therefore, my full title shall be:
Deso, God of Vision.
I’m taking the Demi out because this just sounds better. Creative license, and all that. Besides i’ve been reading up on Greek mythology (for relaxation) and demi-gods were considered gods all the same, just not “upper” gods. They’re about middle ranked in the structure of the ancient gods dontchaknow. Well atleast their hierarchy is more interesting then the monotheistic gods. Superheroes would be more current, but honestly… Infinity war was awesome and also the moment i was done with the MCU. Lets be real here. Besides my sister’s a fan of the Percy Jackson stuff too.
Note that with this i’m leaving the title open to *all sorts* of specializations. While my mental speed is unrivaled, that only allows my logic to be fast. When we speak of “speed”, we often mean physical quickness. Therefore, if you’d ask me what i’d call Usain Bolt, i’d easily say “A Demi-god of Speed”….. Because c’mon the dude poses for the camera while winning another world championship while everybody behind him looks like they’re praying to the actual gods to not outrun their very souls. It’ll be a long time before we see another Usain Bolt.
The reason i’m setting this up this way is simple: I want others to strive for it. My achievement looks completely impossible….. Yet I have done it. I may be a Genius, i’m no god nor immortal. To strive higher for a title then Demi-god would go as far as blasphemy anyway. I’m not a religious man, it’s just to say, to try and achieve something even greater would just be stupid as it already took a superhuman effort to achieve all this and actually live through it all. I mean my body still hurts like hell and i’m mentally completely drained. If all of this isn’t enough, i really don’t know what’d be enough to prove myself and my capabilities, and i’d rather be dead.
Even though i’ve been suicidal since i was 7, i always wanted to leave this world because i wanted the pain to end. For the first time in my life, when i get a thought of suicide it comes from my actual soul feeling tired to the very core (though not to worry at this point i have absolutely no other plans other than to enjoy the fame this is going to bring me and finally actually live a little). I can honestly, genuinely, truly say (REDUNDANCY! *pulls out gun*): I have given it my all. And with that i think i can finally redeem the last promise i made:
This is what a true Alpha and leader of the pack looks like. Somebody who provides for his pack but protects them from danger at the same time, at great personal cost if necessary. Somebody who protects at all costs, because there are those who simply can’t for whatever reason, and they SHOULD be protected. Not some Mutt that bites every hand that feeds.
AND I’M FUCKING TIRED OF PROTECTION BEING SHIT ON IN FAVOR OF GREED!
BY THE GODS I SWEAR I WILL FUCKING END THIS SINGLE HANDILY IF I HAVE TO!
AND IF ANYBODY GETS IN MY WAY, I WILL RAIN DOWN AN UNGODLY FUCKING FIRESTORM UPON YOU!
I AM TALKING SCORCHED EARTH MOTHERFUCKER!
I WILL MASSACRE YOU!
I. WILL. FUCK. YOU. UP!!!!
I am Always in control. My emotions may be incredibly strong, but they never control me, i control them. But, that doesn’t mean i don’t still have a communication disorder. And when i encounter a situation i have literally never seen before, where somebody pisses me off *SO MUCH* my inferiority complex i’ve had my entire life and that has always stopped me from asking for payment for anything, ACTUALLY BREAKS AND I EXPECT TO GET PAID…. Well. I don’t have any way of conveying those feelings to somebody who doesn’t even know a thing about autism, considering they’re new even to me. So under duress, i do what i usually do, and what is a well known trait among people with severe autism and trauma: I reference popular media.
This because my disability lies in being able to convey Context. I have absolutely no context for how a normal human experiences the world, at all. You all think it’s fun to have superpowers, but i’m telling you, there are some serious drawbacks. Imagine having superstrength, but having it be turned permanently on. Meaning there’s no way you can turn on a tap, because even the lightest touch crushes the metal or rips off the knob.
Honestly, there’s a real potential for a sitcom where superheroes actually exist, but supervillains don’t, and because there’s no actual superheroing to be done their super powers are a social detriment instead – meaning society ends up treating them like disabled people. Oh sure – superstrength is handy in construction. But if you have to assume a T-pose every single time somebody hugs you, because if you move even the slightest muscle you might end up breaking their bones – the other 16 hours off the job are going to be real shitty. You’re going to need a house of pure titanium just to not-crush the door when you open it, or rip it out of the doorframe, or not accidentally slam it through the wall opening it too far, opening it gently to begin with to avoid a massive ruckus, closing it even gentler and the inevitable sound that’ll make anyway. Take it from the God of Vision – at this point in the superhero movie cycle, people are ready for a good parody, and if you make it HIGH QUALITY ANIMATIONS WITH GOOD WRITING (put some money into a good idea, for fucks sake. Stop feeding the woke dragon its never gonna get its fill), it’d do well. But i digress.
If you want to know my true nature, i have a short story for that too: I remember a day in early summer in my early 20’s (well over a decade ago) where i was smoking on the balcony and 2 flies where buzzing around each other, seemingly randomly. I was stoned and tired, and had no love for flies to begin with, so i just swatted at them since i rarely ever hit any. Though i felt no impact, after the swat one of the flies was gone and didn’t return, while the other continued buzzing.
And for some reason, i got it in my head that they were flies trying to mate, i’d killed that other flies lover, and i felt *EXTREMELY* bad for weeks. Bad enough to remember that story a decade later, and even hear my mind go “Well, i can’t truthfully say “i won’t hurt a fly”, but atleast i can say i genuinely say i feel sorry for it”. That said, i do have a flylamp, but that’s because my apartment seems to suffer from fruitfly infestations and i can assure you, no matter how many of those i kill, forever, i’ll have spawned many many more. Brrrr.
Another good example is Pets. I don’t have any. I’m terribly alone and i’d love a companion, damn near need one at this point. But i live in apartment building in the middle of the city. I’m a cat person, but i feel they should have some territory outside too as it’s an animal, and i can’t offer that at this time. Rather then lock an animal in an environment where it doesn’t belong, i’d rather be alone.
My point being. Their concerns, and my friends concerns of me being violent are completely unfounded. I have violent thoughts, but i’ve never done anything, because it isn’t right to hurt people. Had they any time to do as i do, and just relax every so often with a good meme or two, or had they taken the time to just get to know their employee before sending him out into the field, they could’ve known. ANYONE will tell you i’m an open book, and if anything, i talk far too much rather then too little. Instead of accepting my language “just to be nice cause he doesn’t know any better”, they could’ve simply thought “Just cause he talks this way doesn’t make him wrong”.
Had they reached that conclusion before i’d finished the brochure, they wouldn’t have seen threats, but rather severity, which was what i tried to convey. Though honestly they should’ve just called me the moment they learned it was really bad to get a more immediate update. My employee tells me something’s seriously wrong i wanna know everything right away.
And to be fair, after this entire year at the end of it on December 27th… I don’t feel as if i can be expected to “keep my cool” eternally. If there is yet another thing i HATE about our current world, it is this false and constant veil of civility, even if the other brings you great harm with a smile, disarming any arguments with taking offense. And when you grit your teeth and you’re nice to your torturer, they’ll “look into it”, yet nothing happens, then they’ll tell you you’re wrong for expecting expediency.
I’m done with that. Let me tell you people who think and work like that in no uncertain terms: FUCK YOU. Go die in a ditch for all i care. CENSORSHIP ALWAYS STARTS WITH SWEARING! Because it is the lowest common denominator when it comes to taking offense: It is easiest of all to take offense from an offensive person.
But that doesn’t make the nice person right, or the offensive one wrong. Maybe, the other one is just being offensive because the “nice” person is committing an egregious offense themselves and is consequently refusing in any way shape or form to admit to it or to stop it from happening. That’s not Nice. That’s Corrupt. It’s tearing society and this world apart through continuous escalating polarization and i’m sick of it.
But make no mistake.
I am NO standard bearer.
I have no desire at all to be a Hero. At most, i am an Anti-Hero. While i’m very thankful i’ve found many people now who appreciate me; Until my first interview, society at large wanted nothing to do with me, for decades, and i won’t ever be able to forget that at this point. Going so far as starting the year with ~25 twitter followers left over from streaming, and after a month of warning people about the virus and tweeting videos of China gassing entire cities, ending January with 18 followers. I didn’t even hit 35 until May, and i think those were mostly people from my very active posting on another site between February and April (hey if nobody will listen in one place i’ll just try to find the place where people are who will listen… until i got banned for swearing :D).
On August 31st when i went to bed, the day before the interview went live, i had fought my way up to 135, most of which i’d gained during July and August. When i woke up on September 2nd, i had 1350. And before this year, there were decades of neglect of my intelligence by society at large. I wish i could single out a section of society which didn’t impact me negatively… i can’t think of any. The ones who saved me were the fellow intellectual rejects i ran into in cyberspace who just appreciated me for what i could do, rather then worry if i was behaving “correctly”.
Society doesn’t deserve me as a hero. Not now, not ever. Good luck on the next supergenius that comes around. Maybe this’ll serve as a lesson to treat talent better. You never know where it ends up.
Instead i’ll take the role of Lone Wolf that has been forced on me in stride. I’ve grown very comfortable with it now, and i’ll use it to not better any single place, but travel all over, in cyberspace and the real, solving problems, dispensing wisdom and creating value where ever i go. Those who don’t value it will be abandoned, and eventually, they’ll come around to my thinking on their own accord.
It took a long time, but i finally figured out a new way to invest. Not Money, but Time, into the betterment of society. How do you force people to better themselves, without forcing them? It’s impossible to apply any sort of force, because that’s the mistake all dictators make: They think “a little bit” of force is OK, even though people regard freedom as the highest good, and therefore no force is OK. Any sort of force always leads to totalitarianism, because people will always push back against force, requiring even more force to overcome the pushback. It’s a never ending cycle.
Instead, there is a way to force without force: It is contained within the saying “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence”. This alludes to the fact that humans are always on the lookout for a better deal, or a better life. But it also alludes to people’s poor judgement of value: When they reach the other side of the fence, they look back at the side they were, and no matter how much trouble it took to get to the new side of the fence: The old side looks greener.
I’ve figured out that this problem can be brute forced away:
If you take such good care of your grass that it starts glowing neon, people will never ever doubt that your grass is greenest, even if they have to expend effort getting there. People will choose to accept your ways, because they are simply the most equitable.
Note i say equitable, not profitable. What’s most profitable isn’t always most equitable, and therefore not ethical. Performance should be rewarded, but not at all costs. Profit should be chased, but not at all costs. There’s more to life then money, because money is a means, not the end.
I don’t need money if i manage to raise my standard of living beyond that of the wealthy. And it’s clear my abilities cannot be attained through wealth, considering i’m still fucking poor…. though not for much longer, now that i’ve decided to actually apply them.
Scary, isn’t it? I really haven’t been at this for long. Imagine 10 years from now.
For now though, i intend to model my immediate future on a combination of three men. Tony stark being the first, as a chaotic neutral playboy billionaire philanthropist, as there’s no way in hell i won’t make money or achieve fame now, though i have no sight on the timeframe. Regardless of metal, the real currency of this world is Reputation – and in those terms i am now one of the richest men on the planet. People love a good story, and considering the tons of stories of loss that’ll come out of 2020 forever forwards, i’m sure one of insane perseverance through all the odds will do well. Oh and yes – the article/book might be free, the movie rights are gonna cost y’all 😀 Meanwhile i can use the wealth that affords me to actually start helping people, and leave the charlatans to their own devices.
Elon Musk might have more money, he couldn’t possibly touch my reputation for doing the right thing, and i can think of few names who can, and it will only increase with time. Meanwhile my time will become more and more valuable, for which people will end up paying me more and more. I’m no fool – i need income as much as anyone else – but as i’m also very in tune with finance and the way of the world, i will have no qualms going forward asking alot of those who already have alot; And a little or nothing of those who only have a little or nothing. Money means nothing to me, a soul is a soul, but it does to everybody else and i’m not gonna sweep that under the rug. I suffered enough, its time for MY payday as well. At this point, i sure as shit deserve it more than anybody working at the Federal Reserve.
I didn’t just survive 2020; I made it my fucking bitch, and now i am due.
Second man would be Gomez Addams of The Addams family. Super weird, hyperactive and hypersexualized, the entire world wants nothing to do with him, if they could. But because he’s so god damn successful in business and his only failure is his failure to fail, everybody is still forced to deal with him, because they like money and he literally cannot stop generating it, even though it means nothing to him, as it has never meant nor will it mean anything to me. I care for smiles.
I’ve been shunned all my life, not in the least by the opposite sex, and i’m done with it. I understand the Void is where i belong, and honestly, i’ve gotten too comfortable here to leave now. The last person i held the door open for strung me along, so now it is shut. While i may be kind, i am no longer nice. My heart is cold and my soul is ruthless. In short, i’ve been fucked with one too many times, and now i’ve gone slightly crazy, because i’ve started enjoying being shunned. And until i find my Morticia with enough passion to warm it back up again, it’ll stay that way.
Doesn’t mean i can’t have alot of fun though. And genuinely it’s therapy at this point. I have to. My virus trauma from 2020 literally involves a psychiatrist not believing me as i was dying. Speaking to somebody or “therapy” at this point is no longer a viable option… Especially not since it’ll go exactly like the last umpteen times and i’ll end up drugged up thinking it’s my fault again.
Instead, i’ve come to realize what the only therapy is that i need: Good Memories. Even though i tried plenty of pills from the pushers, the one type i always refused was anti-depressants. It may sound weird, but even though i was chronically depressed and suicidal, and still am, i knew i wasn’t actually unhappy. My depression came from very real outside factors that weren’t being dealt with. I didn’t want to take drugs to make me feel good just so i could take more abuse. Death was preferable.
My depression stems from the fact that my mind is filled to the brim with horrible, horrible memories. Traumas, Confusion, hundreds of nightmares. Before the age of 8, there wasn’t a single night where i didn’t die in my sleep, most of the time murdered, though i fell to my death quite a bit as well… Going as far that even though i’m suicidal, i’ve always considered jumping off a building a horrible way to go and it’d take a lot to push me to that point. I live in an apartment building even, and looking over the edge of the balcony, i’m still not inclined to jump at all.
I’ve come to realize i can just keep doing this. I can literally double this document in length, including all the files, purely from psychological horrors that i remember. People might say i should come to terms with it, but i can still see the events flashing before my eyes as if it was yesterday. Having a visual memory sounds awesome until it’s filled with trauma yknow.
These memories aren’t going to go away. I’ve come to terms with them as much as i can, but more trauma and uncertainty keeps getting added, as this pandemic and economic collapse is far from over and it will get much worse, including the insanity.
Literally the only thing i haven’t tried yet is to experience life to the fullest and start adding good experiences to remember. Never had the chance or the money for it. Now that i do, whatever time i have left, i want to enjoy. So i will. Virus or no virus.
Hell the virus might even end up being a boon. I’ve forgotten alot, and considering the ratio of good to bad memories, a considerable amount of bad memories are already gone. It shouldn’t be hard now to tip the scales in the good memories’s favor. AND, because i’ve not only had it, but can prove i went critical, i don’t need a vaccine, i don’t need a vaccine passport, and i can actually obtain an exception to travel freely. I would very much like to put this smartphone camera to actual use ^_^
Thirdly, Dave Chapelle, for his attitude towards fame. Another man who could’ve had it all and gave it up because it simply wasn’t right, now (atleast before the pandemic), he just travels to comedy clubs because that’s what he wants to do. He just gives away shows without pause cause he knows he’s entertaining and gives people a good time, yet its never expected of him. While there may be many great stand up comedians to be found living and dead, he clearly has the most respect of them all, and i feel that’s a life worth living. It’s a treat to hear other famous comedians speak of him in awe. I may be weird, i may be different, but that doesn’t mean we can’t connect and make this world a better place…. Without involving ever increasing amounts of money. I know i can solve problems and dispense real insight and wisdom into life wherever i go, so that’s what i want to do now.
Throughout this all, i’ve been alive in my apartment. I could’ve written this on a boat, or in an office, or in a doghouse. Regardless of where i write, i am in one place at any one time. I have no need for 15 vacation homes, 20 yachts, or an unlimited amount of stuff.
I do need to move as a one bedroom apartment simply isn’t enough space for a 33 year old, no matter what the government might say, but i have no desire for anything more then i can use at any one time. Am i going to strive for billions? Yes, but only because the ideas i have and companies i will make will sometimes require billions, without ever producing results. Science is hard and the future is always in flux, so i will fail many times, and i want to fail on my own money. Honestly i just don’t wanna inconvenience anyone who’d believe enough in me to actually put money into me, with failure.
While the numbers in a magazine might get big (wealth tied up in the market isn’t really wealth), i honestly think a $10 million mansion is already excessive (i mean i’d like a pool, but an indoor bowling alley? I mean if my sister likes bowling i’ll get her one and i’ll just go over to her place to play – get to bowl AND see my sister, much better then having one yourself). So i can’t ever see myself owning 3 +$40 million dollar mansions or something like that. Farm would be nice with a few animals though.
I’d rather just plow all the money into projects that improve everyone’s quality of life. I’ve got plenty of ideas already made, and i can damn near save the game industry by myself. To give a taste: I’ve been writing about finance now for no longer then December 2019. I’ve been making inventions since July 2019. And while i never published anything, that doesn’t mean i didn’t write… So here’s how long and how much i’ve worked on videogames and videogame mechanics:
I’ve been warning people of catastrophe and emergencies all year long, and i’ve even been talking about these events for Decades (minus the virus), and i’m real sick and tired of it. I’ve served my time on the front lines, taught others along the way how to fight, now i’ll pass that mantle to them. I’ll keep the crypto and Comex watch going as i need to see those through to the end, but going forward i’m going to concentrate on what i’ve always wanted to do, but was scared to do, because humans want nothing to do with it: *FIX* problems, instead of being scared of naming them, burying them, and hoping they go away LIKE A BUNCH OF COWARDS!
And because of my OSMIUM CLAD REPUTATION; Not a single person will ever be able to say again that i’m talking out of my ass, that i’m flat out wrong without offering arguments to counter mine; And as a bonus, it’ll keep away all the trolls and scum who KNOW they can’t possibly stand up to my intellectual weight, finally giving me some peace. Though i’ll still enjoy blocking alot of people i expect. Sorry fellas! I’ve got so many people who actually care now, i just don’t have the time anymore to care about cutting a rotten social connection.
It’s been extremely surprising at me at first that i received an extremely high rate of positive comments, and even moreso that they’ve continued as i’ve become more relaxed and myself over time, and actually became MORE positive as i relaxed! I’m getting many private messages now that straight up ask me to continue doing what i’m doing.
And i understand why. I’m standing up to the societal system that’s put many people in the same position as me, and even though i couldn’t possibly come from further down…. I’m winning against it, by focus, commitment, and sheer fucking will.
When i was 15 and ready to die for the 4th time, i stopped myself, because i realized if i killed myself out of revenge to hurt my bullies, they’d only be sad for a week and life would move on as it always did. Meanwhile i’d be dead permanently, my sister would never understand, and i’d pass that pain on to her forever. This wasn’t a way to take revenge, and rather, i decided to find a way to live. Whatever my revenge was going to be, it wouldn’t be found in death, but in life. And i think, now, finally….. I can say i took that revenge on everyone who has ever hurt me in any way shape or form.
I’m Better Then All of You. Objectively. For Now and All Eternity. Good Luck getting a chapter like this in the history books HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
It’ll take another century before we drop our guard against another pandemic. The last precious metal will never be discovered again. Even getting a market prediction exactly right in a tumultuous market is goddamn impossible, and i did it many times. And all of this within the same disaster year!
While i will be remembered, my bullies will be forever forgotten (thanks to the virus i’ve lost most their names and i don’t care to go looking for em), and i can’t possibly think of a more tasty dish of revenge, best served in hellfire.
Be careful who you mess with.
With that, i really feel i’ve reached the very end of the path i set out on more then 12 years ago, and it’s time for a new one. When i started paying attention to markets when Bear Stearns collapsed, then followed Lehman through its demise and watched the markets panic no less then they did in 2020; After two weeks watching a CNN report i heard the anchor say “No one saw this coming”.
And i couldn’t possibly accept that, with an event the magnitude of the great financial crisis, that there were no early warning signs at all and the whole system just got kneecapped overnight. I couldn’t accept that an event that large was impossible to predict, and believed it was merely because “If no one saw this coming, it was because everyone was blind”, and tried to find out the truth myself.
I trained for 11 years, and in 2020, I’ve proven it: It IS possible to spot events like this up front, Very possible, repeatably so. But you have to LOOK! You have to be Honest to yourself, and have the Strength of Character to admit to yourself when you’re wrong, when you could be wrong, and to believe in yourself when you know you are right, because that knowledge is based on empirical evidence.
And if any one wonders why i seem like such a fucking rockstar in the stale world of suits: It’s because i have Character, and they don’t. They have tall tales, at best. And there’s just too many of those people around for most people to care. If you ever wanna talk about an overstaturated market, “Talking Heads” would be near the top of my list. While i’m not going to “bring the data” in quantities like i used to in the future (though i’ve got entire books planned…), i’ll be having an opinion on every problem i think i see 😀
Which honestly is partly because of the now demolished inferiority complex; At this point if you don’t believe i’ve researched something into the very depths of the void, FUCK THE HELL OFF. I may be wrong, i’m not goddamn lazy. I’ve also lost my ability to shut up, as well as reached the limits of repression of my thoughts and emotions, so you’re gonna get it whether you like it or not.
It’s easier and serves the corrupt system’s purposes better if people remain docile and pacified. There’s a video game called “We Happy Few”. I’d suggest Americans look into it, and remind themselves that just because a drug doesn’t change the images you see (games gotta have mechanics), doesn’t mean that drugs don’t change your perception of those images. The cowardly never rise up, so why ever encourage anything else then cowardice and submission?
Just be normal, and you’ll belong. Fuck that.
Now, i belong in the Void. And if they, or Anyone else steps in it, they’ll regret it.
If *you* do…. Pray my Vision doesn’t find you.
Or else.
– Kirian van Hest; Better known as:
– Deso, God of Vision.