Visuals
Economic Evolution Thomas J Novak
Disclaimers 1. I wish to contend that Micro and Macro Economics each constitute a hidden branch of evolution. To be clear, I’m not arguing for an analogy, I’m arguing each branch is an evolutionary process; and with this comes the mathematical framework needed to scientifically objectify success (major goal for every Capitalist). 2. The quantitative aspects are partially rooted in Game Theoretic Evolution. I do not expect this theory will garner majority support or understanding. It is only an esoteric theoretical ideal; but it is my hope that this will gradually change until one-day we have a Utopia. 3. The mechanism is voluntary through rational self-incentives. It advocates for a change in perspective for optimal decision making purposes. 4. Dollars and other fiat currencies are still completely necessary. Fiat currency constitutes a valuable technology that eliminates the need for bartering, yielding considerable savings in life’s prime asset - TIME. 5. I apologize to the reader in advance for the long essay. I hope it is "worth" your time.
Key Conclusions
Present day humanity is full of capitalists that have the right idea but are missing some key math. This is causing them to behave inefficiently in the context of their own self-interests. Ideal Capitalism is Pareto Optimal and should be practiced by all; and it should lead to maximal economic growth. I also wish to conjecture that a new Nash Equilibrium is available to our race: Perpetual peacetime under the individual Pareto Optimal Strategy of Ideal Capitalism as every individual looks to maximize their self-fortune and troll farms are voluntarily dismantled. If this sounds too good to be true, note that it very well may have been for all of human-history save the last few decades. Key developments are nuclear weapons and the internet. Discussed more in the last section.
Introduction
The "science" of Economics is not yet a science. Don't get me wrong - micro-economics is just about there; but macro-econ is a totally different story. Some call it “The Dismal Science” because it makes many quantitative claims that are inconsistent with empirical data. An example is the claim that John Rockefeller’s fortune could be made comparable to contemporary fortunes by adjusting his dollars for inflation and real growth. In fact only adjusting his hours for real growth does the trick.
In general macro-econ has a zero-sum-dollar-centric structure that does not allow for input of things like maternity and child rearing - two fundamentally "valuable" human activities. Another problem is that planetary-wide risks like war, (and that which is assured by "Mutually Assured Destruction" (MAD)), are not naturally measurable in dollars.
Some concepts from financial mathematics and science can generalize economic measurements into a co-compatible theory that almost seems too simple to be necessary. Basic results agree with common sense in every way. Some conclusions are so obvious the calculation seems pointless. Others might be beyond common sense similar to the notion that the Earth on which one walks is anything but flat. The former supports credence for the latter. All examples of human stupidity supports a need for all of it.
Ideal Capitalism
Most powers past through present can be thought cold, "calculating”, and self-interested; and most presently embrace association with Capitalism. Paradoxically, human history, (even recent), is a litany of fighting and stupidity and hurt feelings. These are inefficiencies from the Capitalist perspective, so something must be wrong with these “calculations”.
The argument will start with a Micro-Economic exercise intended to provide quantitative framework to measure just how unCapitalistic many present-day capitalists are acting, by unitizing all their actions in a scientific manner. Any Capitalist wishing to maximize their net-worth will be made more materialistically rich simply by maintaining complete indifference about others, understanding the entire picture, and trusting numbers. Wall Street can confirm this is its goal.
“Complete indifference” means precisely 0 concern for anything other than material-self-worth and 100% concern for material-self-worth. Nonzero concern for others, positive or negative, is suboptimal since it distracts from the objective of maximizing self-worth. Footnote 1: “Others” does not include the friends and family category. All intentional altruism can be represented easily by having those individuals' interests summed and grouped together so as to be viewed as part of the Capitalist’s “self-interest”. All reasoning forward is unaffected by how many friends and family are now implied to be included.
The results can empower all decision makers to calculate in the only way possible: with actual mathematics. The numbers will sometimes disagree with intuition; but the numbers will always be correct. The optimal strategy will hardly change except for sufficiently wealthy individuals. The proof can be seen empirically by back-testing the model in history on the domain in which all success is measured: quality-weighted-time (qwt). The definition of qwt will leverage Game Theoretic Evolution and is discussed more below.
Some conclusions may be counterintuitive similar to the way natural selection favored Symbiogenesis; but maximum profit calls for absolute “trust” in numbers above all else - exactly as exhibited in microbial evolution. Any call for “selfless” acting resulting in benefits to others is strictly incidental; and any less is unselfishly selfish in that it renders this inefficient capitalist less wealthy than maximally possible.
Step 1 - Any political bias about aiding others should be deleted. An “Ideal Capitalist” expresses precisely 0 concern for others and what others think - no more, no less. As long as an individual is correctly acting in their own best interests, they are acting as a Capitalist. Contra-positively one can claim to be a capitalist and act inefficiently against their own interests as many “capitalists” will be shown are doing today. I suggest a new term “Maximalist” to mean an Ideal Capitalist and avoid the need for case sensitivity.
Step 2 - Success Spawns Success. What is meant by quality-weighted-time? The definition comes from the only objective arbiter possible: Evolution through Survival of the Fittest. Something is “fit”, or “successful”, if it results in more quantity (Q) or more quality (q), where more quality means it produced more Quantity faster - which renders it more successful. This is The Tautology of Evolutionary Game Theory (The Tautology). For any evolutionary process, quantity is the metric which quantifies success. Quality is measured in quantity per unit of time (q=Q/t). Note that multiplying q=Q/t with t yields Q=qwt: the metric of success that necessarily satisfies The Tautology. Footnote 2: The word “tautology” is meant in the propositional logic sense. No negative connotation should be inferred.
Step 3 - How to connect economics with evolution?
Micro-economic decision strategy for trading time (t) for dollars ($), (or $ for t), amounts to a “phenotype”, (or observable trait), coded for by genetics inherited or mutated, and ideas learned or created. Respectively: - Inherited genetics constrain every rational human to be “risk averse”, regardless of self-perception, because natural selection favored and continues to favor risk aversion. Defined below and proven further below. - Mutated genes are almost never favorable for a human so this case will be discarded (although this force is quite powerful over quintillions of human-hours). - Richard Dawkins creatively postulated ideas to be “memes”: new evolutionarily viable packets of information, subject to selection forces, as they spread from person to person with varying levels of success overtime. Respectively gene inheritance and mutation is analogous to meme learning and creation. Furthermore the economy can be seen as a subsection of the biosphere governed primarily by evolution through forces of selection. The economy evolves through selection of both genes and memes, and memes are more abstract; but this should not change anything about the evolutionary game theory. After all humanity itself is naturally occurring, so Artificial Selection of Genes and Memes can be seen as a more complex extended phenotype coded for by the evolution of genes through Natural Selection. Any argument that “Artificial Selection” constitutes a meaningful difference from “Natural Selection” must first come to terms with the observation that humanity is itself, naturally occurring.
Step 4 - What is the definition of “risk averse”? The mathematical definition of risk averse simply requires diminishing returns to be experienced on assets like dollars. For example: an additional $1M adds less “utility” if you presently have $2B, compared to if you presently have $2M. If a person is not risk averse, then more success encourages more risky behavior. This is inconsistent with the observation that more success means one has more to lose. Therefore any risk-inclined individual cannot be an Ideal Capitalist as they will almost surely go broke gambling.
Step 5 - What is “utility”? Utility is the abstract micro-economic concept that, by definition, quantifies value. The unsettled question of how to actually do this is addressed below.
Total Utility = True Material Self-Worth = “well-offness”. All have one-to-one correspondence with each other. All are “mutually inclusive”. For example: twice the quantity of utility, by definition, means twice material self-worth; and so, the individual is exactly twice better-off. Diminishing returns do not apply to quantities of utility.
Step 6 - How to define an objective function to maximize utility? Per Wikipedia: “Consider a set of alternatives facing an individual, and over which the individual has a preference ordering. A ‘utility function’ is able to represent those preferences if it is possible to assign a real number to each alternative, in such a way that alternative A is assigned a number greater than alternative B if, and only if, the individual prefers alternative A to alternative B.”
Keynote: dollars are not material wealth, dollars buy material wealth, with diminishing returns, limited by genes, memes, and the quality and Quantity of the Marketplace (respectively qQMP).
To illustrate this, consider how rich you would be with $1T cash on Mars in the present day marketplace. Personally as an oxygen breathing Capitalist, I would view my self-worth as constituting a liability - measurable in my personal subjective frame of reference in units of time, weighted by some self-knowable quality of life representing the quantity of misery per hour that I experience dying alone. Presently the quality of the marketplace on Mars is exactly 0 because 0 quantity is available for purchase. Footnote 3: The quality of life purchasable given the Time and Place is shown below to be bounded from above, although it is by no means bounded from below.
Back to Earth. If sufficiently rich, then maximizing material wealth calls for buying everything in desired amounts to maximize present quality of Life (qoL), holding ample dollars in reserve to spend on future qoL (like new inventions) and future quantity (like new medicine), and allocating the rest to increase future qQ which is not presently available for purchase. In keeping with The Tautology, qoL enhancements will provide for faster consumption of Quantity (Q=qwt). Note how perfectly this fits with The Tautology.
Ideally a good Capitalist with sufficient dollars would employ a strategy so as to maximize qoL at every point in time by exhausting most/all dollars by death. Any argument that an individual cannot meaningfully increase future qQMP fails. As an example: a medical breakthrough for genetic predispositions could yield considerably more time for any one capitalist, with expected returns modeled via actuarial mathematics. Consider just how far Humanity has come since the birth of The Enlightenment - it is easy to see how the not-so-distant future may include considerably more qQoL for sale. (Conversely the future may include far less qQoL if macro-decision-public-policy modeling continues to fail to quantify/unitize the cost of war - discussed more in the Macro Economic qwt section below.)
qQ enhancements, although more subjective, can be substantially accelerated by one talented individual. Examples include Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk. All are responsible for inventing and/or producing new things which I personally enjoy - the qQoL that I can purchase is greater as a result of their work. My time and money could not purchase such things if they were not invented. As discussed next, micro-economic quality weights are quality of Life (qoL) weights. They have an upper bound that can be “objectively” unitized and measured by the self-interested party's own frame of reference.
Step 7 - How can an individual objectively define an upper bound for these inherently subjective quality weights with any mathematical rigor? Is it possible that more dollars does not always result in more utility? Yes!
Proof Reductio ad Absurdum
Ripping off an idea from one of the greatest thinkers ever - I propose a financial thought experiment: pretend it is possible for you to pause all of society and gamble once at the “Name Your Winnings Casino”.
Here you can choose entering into an even bet: 50% of the time you win the largest number of dollars you can mathematically express = $P; or 50% of the time you suffer absolute ruin: the casino takes everything of material value and your dollars and returns you to the real world where no insurance policies exist for you and no friends or family are able to ease your loss by lending a couch to sleep on or pulling strings for a job offeinterview. If you lose you reenter the world a naked homeless person “worth” exactly $0.
Four observations follow:

The decision to bet is made independent of any consideration of others, consistent with the Ideal Capitalist.
Any sane human with the smallest capacity for self-honestly could conservatively estimate a walk-away number A, (denominated in dollars), such that if present “net worth” is greater than $A then no bet.
No rational person choosing to bet would play more than once because either they’d lose or they’d win $P and have received the payout they named. “Letting it ride” constitutes an obviously dumb decision born out of the unwillingness to simply express the larger number in the first bet; however, a risk-inclined individual always values more over what they have and so they would be compelled to keep betting. Therefore rationality is mutually exclusive with risk-inclination. Furthermore if the betting person is risk averse, then $A is strictly less than $P for some minimum value of $P.
Some confident rational individual might argue no such number $A exists for them because they’re so good they can start all over if they lose and earn a new fortune; and it would at first glance seem this individual is correct.

Many logical conclusions result:
A. An honest estimate for $A irrefutably reveals a hidden upper bound for this individual’s “Utility Curve”. Specifically if the function A’($A) = A’ maps to utility derived by $A dollar denominated “wealth”, then no amount of dollars even exists for this individual to choose to bet. Mathematically: “Net worth” &amp;amp;gt; “Bet value” =&amp;amp;amp;gt; “Net worth” &amp;amp;gt; “50% times upside minus 50% times downside” =&amp;amp;amp;gt; A’($A) &amp;amp;gt; .5A’($A+$P) - .5A’($A) =&amp;amp;amp;gt; 1.5A’($A) &amp;amp;gt; .5A’($A+$P) =&amp;amp;amp;gt; 3A’($A) &amp;amp;gt; A’($A+$P) for all values of $P (The left hand-side must be greater or the bet would not be declined by a rational individual.)
B. 3A’ is not presently purchasable with any amount of dollars. 3A’ may be purchased in some future marketplace, (possibly with less than A future dollars), in the form of a medical breakthrough or buying future children birthday presents, but it is not currently purchasable in the present as demonstrated by the individual’s refusal to bet. Conversely A future dollars may lose “purchasing power” of just A’ if the future marketplace is inferior. Therefore true material-worth is fundamentally a function of the marketplace and cannot even be expressed in terms of dollars.
C. Most choosing to bet would logically express the upside payout $P as a sequence of 9s. Many more would know to use powers of powers. Knowledge of Knuth’s Up Arrow Notation could simultaneously save time and yield considerably “more upside”. Due consideration for exactly how much time should be spent writing out fantastically large numbers reveals an irrefutably objective hidden limiting factor: this person’s lifetime - measurable in units of time. This reveals one of two hidden domains on which value must be measured - TIME!
D. From this it directly follows that the confident individual in (4) is wrong. Some number $A&amp;amp;amp;lt;$P must exist, EVEN FOR THEM. However this individual is sure $A doesn’t and keeps writing numbers out for $P until they die. Therefore $A for them equals the number they have written out at time of death, never having played the game. I believe this is the definition of a Darwinian unfit capitalist - completely inconsistent with the Ideal Capitalist.
Analysis
The argument above establishes a horizontal bound for utility – lifetime measurable in units of time. It also establishes a finite upper bound for utility itself (represented by the area of the “utility rectangle” - see spreadsheet). This implies a finite upper bound for the rectangle’s height must exist; and this is empirically supported by the observation that billionaires are not known to blow through their life fortune in any short-period of time.
So why does any sufficiently wealthy capitalist focus on earning more dollars and die before exhausting most/all of their dollars (last death if family inheritance involved)? If sufficiently wealthy, material wealth is necessarily a bounded function of The Time Period, or the “quality and Quantity of the Marketplace”. TTP = qQMP &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;= qQoL. In other words, the marketplace itself is secretly an asset for every Capitalist!
qMP(TTP) = Max quality of life, or “max utility per hour” available for purchase in TTP QMP(TTP) = Max Quantity of life, or “max utility” for purchase in TTP (IE a longer vacation or medicine)
Thus on the micro level, quality weights are utility weights; and utility weights are capped by The Time Period. Thus it is the case that for every (finite) individual, a finite upper bound for utility is self-measurable in Time Period-Weighted Time (qwt = TPWT). For example: 2020 hours have far more value to any sufficiently rational and wealthy individual (SRWI) than 1920 hours. And as the earlier questionnaire (hopefully) shows, this is realizable by most middle-class people today. In other words, today’s middle class is sufficiently wealthy to the extent TPWT resolves the Rockefeller paradox. Footnote8: The size of the middle class itself is unfortunately shrinking. This has potential to result in negative externalities for all.
Since an Ideal Capitalist maximizes self-material-wealth above all else, then if they were also sufficiently wealthy, they would measure value in Time-Period-Weighted Hours since they would always purchase maximum utility per hour. This is by definition, since any SRWI has all necessary means to purchase max utility available per hour. (Note just how important quick access to true information would be.) Footnote 9: Neuroscience could use Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to objectively measure the Micro-Economic utility unit as “Neurotransmitter-Molecular-Count Weighted Hours”. Consideration for how to weight different neurotransmitters (like Serotonin vs Dopamine) would be necessary. For now, we are all similar enough for “time” to suffice, at least for short run measurements. For example: what is the penalty for severe crimes? “Time in jail” or death (all the person’s time).
Quantifying the Marketplace
Given the average life expectancy now is more than twice that of prehistoric man, the marketplace itself is worth strictly more than 50% of any sufficiently wealthy individual’s “asset portfolio”. Just note “time is money”. Footnote 10: They need not be rational to "realize" this time, so long as their doctor is sufficiently competent. "Realization" will come in the form of living longer, quite consistent with the accounting definition of gain/loss realization.
Keynote - a Maximalist will do more than just maximize present qQ purchased. They will also divert unneeded dollars to maximize future qQMP so that more qQ is available for purchase. Thus the Maximalist calculation includes due consideration for additional dollars that will be needed given future qQ becomes available.
Squaring Theory with Reality
Most already know most of this, at least on the common-sense level. So why don’t sufficiently wealthy Capitalists invest maximum dollars with less strings attached to maximize the future? Is it because that would help everyone else and constitute socialism? No! In this context socialism is Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand”. A good Capitalist aims for precisely 0 concern about others, and any concern for implied socialism would constitute nonzero concern. Such concern would amount to incomprehensible irrationality far beneath any good Capitalist. So what else could it be?
Perhaps it’s simply the fact that much of humanity is still measuring their net-worth in the wrong dimension for the inefficient purpose of feeling superior to others with less money. Anyone currently doing this quite literally knows the price of everything and the value of nothing, not even their own self fortune, because they are using the wrong dimension of measurement. quality-weighted-time is the objectively correct way in which real value should be measured, and quality weighting is limited only by The Time Period in which time and money are being spent.
More noteworthy, any human mistaking dollars for qwt for this scorekeeping reason is still violating the prime rule of being a good Capitalist - they are demonstrating nonzero-concern for what others think of them. Implicitly and inefficiently, these individuals are expressing negative concern for others, as now is measurable by how worse off they are in units of their time. Specifically this is calculable as the opportunity cost of not investing more dollars for an enhanced future marketplace, measurable by others in said marketplace by the cost to this imperfect capitalist’s life expectancy, (all unitized in units of time).
Equity Miracle Swap Instruments
Perhaps the above explanations are not exhaustive of the full truth. Maybe some sufficiently wealthy Capitalists simply do not have the means to invest their dollars in a way that can reliably pay greater dividends. Therefore I propose a new type of financial derivative instrument called an “Equity Miracle Swap”. These would be voluntarily issued as contracts from the mega-wealthy. Here is a hypothetical example:
Rational (and thus risk averse) Billionaire-G (BG) possessing $100B in dollar-denominated-capital can now do research and will likely find they are genetically predisposed to a (presently) incurable illness (let’s say Small Cell Lung Cancer = SCLC). BG could use the chancy math in the proof above and might determine that Billions $91-$100 have minimal true value to him/herself when converted to qwt. Therefore BG could decide to start up an enterprise to find a cure for SCLC and use a $10B Equity Miracle Swap = EMSSCLC-$10B, or just “EMS” for short. The purpose is to maximally incent the researchers, who might otherwise just be employees. The contract would stipulate that all equity in the enterprise transfers over to the research team only upon successful development of the cure.
When measured in dollars, the payoff for BG is represented by the performance of the stock, which is greater than -$10B if no cure; or -$10B if the miracle cure is found. The former is greater than the latter. Which do you think BG will prefer? Obviously the latter, especially if they wind up contracting SCLC in the future! But the former was greater measured in dollars? How to reconcile?
This can be quantitatively reconciled by using the correct unit of measurement - qwt. Here is how: the newly discovered cure might empower their remaining dollars to purchase considerably more qwt in the future. The real expected return on investment for BG could be calculated actuarially as follows: Expected ROI = { Expected Return }/{ Investment } = { E(Δqwt | Miracle) * [ P(Miracle | EMS) - P(Miracle | no EMS) ] }/{ A’($100B) - A’($90B) } Where: 1. A’($D) maps to utility measured in quality-weighted-time presently purchasable by D dollars 2. E(Δqwt | Miracle) = Expected change in purchasable qwt given miracle cure occurs in lifetime 3. P(Miracle | Event X) = Probability of Miracle given Event X
Note that because BG is risk averse, diminishing returns render billions $91-$100 worth very little qwt. Therefore the cost in the denominator = A’($100B) - A’($90B) constitutes a very small amount of qwt, rendering the expected ROI very large, even for relatively small changes to P(Miracle). Obviously the lawyers could tinker with the terms of the contract. Finally note that society is incidentally made better off if the cure is found.
Macro-Economic qwt
Please now consider the benefit of a qwt-centric model from a Macro-Economic standpoint in the context of the Doomsday Clock, where as always, economics can objectively measure value (or “GDP”) in units of quality-weighted-time. On this Macro scale, the quantity unit will be "Healthy Human Hours", calculated as always by multiplying quality weights of presently healthy humans, with units of time, where any human is healthy if he/she produces more future human hours. Note how naturally maternity and child-raising now fit into GDP.
This may also help resolve the argument over which crimes should be punishable with incarceration - specifically only crimes where the individual is deemed likely to contribute less negative future qwt to GDP when in jail vs when out of jail. Also there is a natural extension of this for the death penalty, although I do not wish to make such moral judgements. Footnote 10: Any argument that population overgrowth leads to mass death is correct. Policy models need only step back and estimate healthy human hours in the more distant future. Calculus can be used to model public policy decisions from present-day infinitely far into the future and compare infinite relativities for different policy options.
Also consider that actuarial modeling could be used to objectively estimate the cost of disinformation posed to every Capitalist on the planet, measurable of course, in units of time. Specifically calculated as expected changes to Humanity’s Expectation of Life on the Doomsday Clock, plus individual life expectancy given Midnight, times the probability of midnight. Also observe the need and means for due discount in modeling the "decrease" in the future qQMP (which might include radiation).
The Emergence of Economic Symbiogenesis
Try to arrive at the conclusion any good Capitalist must. Here is a hint - genetic Symbiogenesis resulted in the planetary-wide cooperation of all plant and animal life to regulate Earth’s Oxygen concentration. Note the immense success is, of course, measured in qwt. Weighting in this context needs to satisfy the same tautology as always. Therefore the final answer on this Mega-Macro scale comes in organism-count-weighted units of time. This is the current game strategy that genetic Evolution has concluded on Earth to date. It came from pitting individual selfish microbial interests against one another in the 0-rules game of survival of the fittest. The result is the current marriage between the Plant and Animal Kingdoms! (Like all great marriages there are still a few mentionable skirmishes.)
Also observe the micro-macro relational analogue between Chloroplasts and Mitochondria with Plants and Animals. Consider how this might analogize individual decision making with the marketplace as a whole.
If you are religious, consider just how correct this implies your understanding of God’s wish for the general wellbeing of every individual to be.
My conclusion is that there is a trail of breadcrumbs for our species to follow and we’ve had the right idea all along. We’ve just been doing the math wrong. Now every decision maker can better understand how to measure their own self-fortune and get to growing it faster!
Also interesting is the game theoretic argument for why every person must be allowed full forgiveness - it is the only way world leaders who are concerned for their own wellbeing could possibly embrace such a model. Astonishingly full forgiveness is 100% consistent with every major religion’s claim of what God hopes all of us can achieve. In economics, any desire for revenge can now be seen as The Sunk Cost Fallacy, measurable as always in units of qwt.
Finally, I wish to conjecture that a new Nash Equilibrium is available to our race: Perpetual peacetime under the individual Pareto Optimal Strategy of Ideal Capitalism as every individual looks to maximize their self-fortune and troll farms are voluntarily dismantled. If this sounds too good to be true, note that it very well may have been for all of human-history save the last few decades.
Key Technological Developments 1. The advent of nuclear weapons which align all of humanity's interests in a way which never used to exist. Even survivors of a nuclear war will be far worse off, now as measurable by decreases to the quality and Quantity of any future radioactive marketplace. Less qwt for purchase! 2. The advent of the internet renders information around the globe nearly free and instantaneous. If we can learn to be more self-interested, the only conclusion which rationally follows is to dismantle all troll farms for the simple purpose of maximizing Macro Time until Doomsday. The New Nash Equilibrium available to our race could be quantitatively modeled with actuarial techniques, and the optimal solution is to push Midnight infinitely far into the future by allowing every rational decision maker the means to make rational decisions with 100% true information. The internet sets up a worldwide analogy with our nervous system.
Footnote 11 - The Micro-Economic Model is now consistent with John Lennon's definition of life success: happiness. When asked what he wanted to “be” when he grew up, John responded "happy". John’s teacher thought he misunderstood the question. If John's teacher had instead followed up with the question to quantify: "How happy do you want to be?" - John could have replied: "as happy as possible for all my years.”
Footnote 12 - Warren Buffet's advice to "do what you love so you never work a day in your life" is quantified naturally by the model. I hope that more will start to take this advice. The qwt-centric-micro-model shows they will quite literally be made richer as a result. Given that richer people tend to contribute more to GDP, society will be made incidentally better off as a result. Star Trek almost had it but missed two words: “we work to better ourselves, and incidentally, the rest of mankind”.

Skill-Based Slot Machines: What Are They and How They Work?

For decades, spinning the reels of slot machines - whether at land-based or online casinos - has been reduced to pure luck and, apparently, no skill whatsoever. Players have been at RNG's mercy to either win or lose, which for most was both exciting and somewhat rewarding.
However, new generations have started changing the face of gambling, slots in particular. Moving away from luck as a deciding factor of their wins, these generations have started asking for games that put their skills, reasoning, and capacities to test while still being fun – and that's how skill-based slots arouse.

What Are Skill-Based Slots?

Skill based slot machines are the newer breed of slots designed for everyone who would rather trust their skill over their luck, while still having fun - at least that’s how they are advertised.
The outcome of skill-based slots should be based on the player's ability to play the game rather than how lucky they are. Skill slot machines also allow operators, game developers, and suppliers to design variable payback based on a comprehensive variety of identifiers.

The outcome of skill-based slots should be based on the player's ability to play the game rather than how lucky they are.

While regular slots' winnings involve a lot of player's luck and hardly any skill, skill slots are supposed to be predominantly skill, factor-wise. With skill-based slots, players start the game knowing that they will have a material effect on the outcome, i.e. how much money they can win, with better players getting rewarded with higher payback.
Essentially, in answering what are skill machines, it is safe to say that they are games which resemble video poker or blackjack, as they give the player a chance to boost their profits solely with skill.

How Does a Skill-Based Slot Machine Work?

In comparison with how regular slot machines work, it is kind of difficult to give a definite observation on the matter as, basically, they operate the same way.
Unlike regular slot machines, casino skill games feature bonus rounds that require skill to win. Also, some of these games don't necessarily require playing the skill-based round; instead, they offer the option of choosing between free spins and an interactive bonus.

How Slot Machine Skill Games Work?

Say you are playing a slot with a racing theme; this is how you would go about it:

When the bonus room is triggered, you choose the skill-based bonus
You race against other cars
The size of your payout gets determined by your finish

Skill based slot machines particularly stand out due to their unique bonuses.

What is the Difference Between Regular and Skill Based Slots?

Skill based video games, i.e. skill-based slots, are different from regular slot machines because they feature bonus rounds which include a high degree of skill. While the base mechanisms are the same for both, skill-based slots require some skill if the player is looking to score.

While the base mechanisms are the same for both, skill-based slots require some skill if the player is looking to score.

Regular slot machines work in a way that the player places a bet and spins the reels; then, the RNG (random number generator) delivers a combination, showing the results on the reels. Essentially, it is the RNG that determines the spin's fate. With traditional slots, players have almost no say in the outcome – they only decide the amount they'll bet and when they'll start/stop playing.

How Much is Actually Skill and How Much Pure Luck?

When we speak of skill-based gaming, it's safe to say that both are included, with the difference that, unlike traditional slots, skill-based slots do include competence.

What is the Difference Between Arcade Slot Machines and Skill Based Slots?

The younger generations don't remember it – but arcade games were the thing in gaming. New-age developers have decided to use the old trend, revamp it, and make it the basis of the majority of skill-based slot machines. The reason for this is, predominantly, millennial preferences. Millennials are not interested in luck deciding the course of their actions but are known to believe their own competence and rely on it.
As skill-based slots haven't exactly grown in popularity in the past years, bonuses based on arcade games could be the best way to test if skill based gaming will become the new "it" of slots gambling.

Can You Make Money Playing Skill Based Slot Games?

Skill-based slots don't come with guaranteed profits despite the fact that your skills can result in earning more money. Why? When it comes to this type of games, the truth is - you won't raise RTP enough to guarantee winnings even if you're an expert at the bonus round. While players are given the option to include their skill in the whole concept of playing, these games are still programmed to give the house advantage over a player.

The Case of PA Skill Machines (Pennsylvania Skill Machines)

Pennsylvania Skill machines are the games you see at convenience stores, at bowling alleys, local pubs, and virtually all other fun-games-and-entertainment places. These games are allowed for 18-year-olds, while casino slot machines are strictly for those who are 21 years old, or older.
Pennsylvania skill games are produced by Pace-O-Matic (POM or Pace O Matic), distributed by Williamsport, PA, -based-Miele Manufacturing.
There are several games on offer:

A hypothetically unlockable bonus session
A tic-tac-toe-style puzzle
A "follow me" coloured dot-matching second phase of gameplay

If a player plays the Pace-O-Matic game successfully, they win a total of 105% of the original amount spent to play.
Throughout the years, there have been talks whether the machines developed under the name "Pennsylvania Skill" should be considered regular slot machines or games of skill specifically. In the most recent ruling, it was announced that "video game machines manufactured and distributed by the POM under the name "Pennsylvania Skill" are considered slot machines under Pennsylvania law. However, Judge Patricia McCullough did not state that POM was in violation of the Gaming Act."

Currently, Pennsylvanian skill machines are considered legal.

But where does that leave things? Are Pennsylvania skill machines legal? Currently, they are considered legal. However, some people argue that the skill aspect is an illusion designed with the idea of floating Pennsylvania gambling laws. The same people, additionally, claim that a player can get lucky on both a regular slot machine and a skill-based one, and win – but that it would be luck in both cases, though.

Are Skill Slots the Future of the Slot Machine Industry?

Discussing whether skill slots are the future of the slot machine industry has to come with a degree of uncertainty as there are still plenty of unregulated and undefined things in this domain. While skill-based gaming sounds like a great idea on paper, the reality is different. Yes, skill-based slots give players the ability to decide their own gambling luck (in a way), but - skill alone doesn't always translate into success.

Skill-based slots give players the ability to decide their own gambling luck (in a way), but - skill alone doesn't always translate into success.

The optimum is that, based on how things are now, the future of slots looks close to placing an emphasis on social gaming (e.g. Angry Birds, Candy Crush, and Plants vs. Zombies, etc.) and console/computer games. Still, all further changes and upgrades remain to be seen.

Conclusion

Skill-based slots are a mixed bag of elements different to standard slots, but also a somewhat deceiving game as it sounds like it's giving players more power of the outcome than it actually does. Players are potentially able to influence 5% of the RTP through their abilities, but that is pretty much it. Skill slots differ from casino terminals in a way that they include some skill, the accent on "some". Skill slot machines don't actually give players a true chance to overcome the house edge, but that doesn't mean you can't have all the fun in the world just playing!

Wealth Formula Episode 237: Is Angel Investing Right for You?

Catch the full episode: https://www.wealthformula.com/podcast/237-is-angel-investing-right-for-you/
Buck: Welcome back to the show everyone today my guest on Wealth Formula Podcast is Tom Wallace. Tom is a 40 year veteran of technology startups both as a founder and an investor and, after multiple successful exits most recently selling vector learning for 268 million dollars, he's now the managing partner at Florida Funders which is a hybrid: a venture capital fund and angel investor network focused on finding funding and building the next generation of breakout technology companies in Florida. Tom welcome to Wealth Formula Podcast.
Tom: Buck thanks for having me on your show. I really appreciate it. It's an honor to be here and thanks for hosting.
Buck: Yeah of course. And you know why don't we start out you know this is a sort of a different area for us but why don't you just start out a little bit by talking about your background I know we mentioned that you've been a tech guy, for the most part, your professional life. Talk a little bit about that and you know how you ended up I guess from being on the front lines as maybe an actual startup guide ultimately on the angel investor side.
Tom: Yeah sure so I come from a blue-collar family. Neither of my parents graduated from high school. And so when I got out of college it was 1980 and if you think about that time it was kind of the dawning of the microcomputer or personal computer revolution and I worked for a couple of years for a Fortune 500 company Alcoa my father said it's the only real job I ever had and then at the age of 23 my best friend and I started our first company and we started a company in the personal computer space and had no idea what we were doing we were young we were green. Back then buck it wasn't like today where there's all these incubators and accelerators and all these mentors and so many people you can get help starting you know an entrepreneurship is such a you know a cool thing and such a hip thing back then it was something that not a lot of people were doing and I was like most of the kids I went to college with were looking to go work for IBM or some Fortune 500 company but it was really a special time and we got bit when you got bit by the entrepreneurial bug and if you think back every so often game-changing technology comes along and certainly the late 70s early 80s that was the case with a personal computer if you think about up until that time the only had access to computers were universities large corporations or pretty good sized companies and they were big computers they were expensive and they took a team of geeks to program them yeah that all changed in the late 70s with Apple and IBM introduced their first personal computer in 1981 and compact computer and all that and it really now every person every small business could have a computer and the software that came along with it from people like Bill Gates and Mitch Kapoor of Lotus123 that came along with it you didn't any longer have to be a programmer or geek to figure out how to use this. So we start our business and that was our first company. We exited that about eight years later got about 20 million in sales and then kind of been doing it ever since and an entrepreneur and on the field as is I kind of look at I've been the core I was the quarterback for many years and you know living the daily grind and fight of being an entrepreneur. And I like being on the sidelines at this point
Buck: Got it. So you know we talked a little bit offline about my audience and where you know I tend to be for the most part you know alternative asset investors who are looking for different things generally you know heavily in real estate and that sort of thing. So you know a lot of the nomenclature maybe for this area is going to be a little bit foreign maybe just from an educational standpoint maybe kind of if you would you know you hear a lot of different types of things, words thrown around like angel investing and venture capital and private equity within technology, can you talk a little bit about that and maybe you know kind of where you're focused.
Tom: Yeah sure so I kind of look at it in stages so early, early stage you know say Buck you were going to start a company a technology company tomorrow and you needed to raise a few hundred thousand dollars to get it going. The first thing you would probably do is go out to your family and friends and get them to invest so that's kind of very very early stage probably pre you probably don't have any revenue no customers it's just an idea. The next stage is angel investing and that's when you typically get a little bit past that family and friends maybe you've got some customers now you've got a real product you go out to that group and these are kind of and that and angels have changed over the years but you know many of us do it professionally so these are more sophisticated investors they do a lot of deals they see a lot of deals and we'll talk more about that later. Then if you're successful if your success continues you continue growing you get bigger now you're looking to in that angel round is typically maybe 500 000 to a million maybe a little more maybe a little less, now you're ready for you know a more institutional round or series a these rounds tend to be more like two to three million to 10 million amount amount that you're raising that's venture capital still early but you've got customers you've got some traction and then you know and that really from venture capital private equity is even later stage and the difference in and I spent the last kind of 10 years my career running private equity companies working a lot with private equity guys that's tend to be that tends to be later stage companies they're profitable they put a lot of leverage on them so the private equity companies typically put a lot of debt on these companies so there has to be that cash flow in ebitda to make that happen and so property equity guys are looking for two three four x returns on their companies maybe greater than when we exited vector solutions my last company. I take our last private equity round we provide our investors about eight or nine times their money back venture capital is different game they know they're gonna invest in and by the way private equity guys nothing's going to zero, they're not investing in companies that are going to zero. I mean once a while it happens but it's a rarity where venture capital is a little different game you know and it depends on where you're playing it because if you're playing in New York or Silicon Valley it's a different game than you're playing in Florida but typically we're banking on a certain percentage of our companies going to zero that they're just not going to be successful and you know some we're going to get our money back and we're going to make all our money on kind of the top third that's how we look at Florida Funders the third or third or third but you know the you know the folks out in the valley probably look at it more like you're investing in 10 companies nine are going to zero one's gonna be unicorn and they're gonna make all the returns on the one company. So you know it varies a little differently with you know where you're playing geographically and what you're doing but that kind of is how we look at that paradigm of you know stages of investing in venture capital versus private equity.
Buck: Obviously and you're talking about you you sort of alluded to it a little bit but you know if the tech private equity folks are looking to return you know I think what did you say you know maybe for up to eight three or four three times over a period of how long like a decade or something like that.
Tom: I mean the returns typically they invest in money over a period about three or four years and then the returns start coming in shortly after that and they're out by usually like 10 years right.
Buck: And then with angel, so what's the compelling element that you like and maybe investors should know about your space which is you know the angel investing which is really the earliest I mean after friends and family right so it's certainly the highest risk but yeah so what do you just like the asymmetric nature of that?
Tom: Well it's risk reward so yeah I will admit I personally am a little bit of a deal junkie but you don't have to be. If you look at some of the research, I would never suggest anybody that is you know as they look at their asset allocation across their investments that angel investing should be a large portion of it. It is for me because it's what I do for a living so maybe a chair 20 of my net worth but 10 whatever but typically it's a small sliver two three percent for an investor but if you do it right angel investing can and has historically outperformed every other asset class including venture capital and private equity that is research coming out of the Angel Capital Association Of America. So the problem is most people don't do angel investing correctly. We call this the 5 Ds of angel investing, so diversity, deal flow, due diligence, domain expertise and discipline. So the first mistake most angel investors make I use my brother as an example my brother's a very successful software CEO, he sold his last company for 1.6 billion dollars and I said to him one day Tim you know what about angel investing he said I've done that two or three times I went to zero that doesn't work. Well you really can't do it two to three times because the odds are against you you might as well go to the casino you really need to be up to build a portfolio a diversified portfolio like you have to in most investing, we say 10 to 15 companies you should invest in to really you know have enough diversity. Secondly is deal flow. How many deals do you look at to invest in each one again look at my brother I'm like Tim well how many deals did you look at to do these two or three deals he's like well he just looked at those two or three like you know it Florida Funders and vendor we'll look at 50 deals to do one. So we're highly selective and we're you know we like believe we're getting the best of the best. And then due diligence is how much research and digging in did you do in your process and a lot of research on this 20 plus hours is you know really what you should do to maximize your potential returns if Florida Funders every company we do we have more like 80 to 100 hours of due diligence and this is everything from digging into the the founders and their background their experience to talking to those early customers asking about the product, why they buy it, how important it is, is it nice to have, does it have to have we really get into in their technology, what's your technology stack look like, what's their IP, so that's a big part of it. And then domain expertise and this is investing in what you know. You're a doctor right you're a surgeon so if you were looking to invest in a medical device company you would know a lot more about that than me. So with us at 1000 Florida Funders we invest in software companies software as a service we invest in cyber security fintech edtech digital health areas that all of me and my partners have backgrounds in. So we're investing in what we know. And then the last thing is discipline to be a good investor I would argue real estate I don't know what you're guessing you gotta come up with your your thesis and you gotta stick to it. And the biggest thing we see in angel investing or I see an angel investigators mistake people make is fomo. They invest because all their friends are investing and they don't want to miss out on this deal that is not a good reason to invest and what we found is if you're disciplined and you follow those other four d's and that process and do that over and over again that you're going to be successful and that this can be a very not only successful asset class from a return on investment standpoint but also fun. I mean think about it we'd like to say we get to go to work every day with these young talented smart people who are trying to change the world we're gonna be more fun than that?
Buck: Yeah let's you know exploring some of those d's for a moment one of them I'm thinking about here is you mentioned deal flow and I now you're in Florida. If I'm you know a software developer and I've got something I'm excited about, am I gonna go to Silicon Valley or I mean so how does that factor into this in terms of affecting your deal flow? Do you see some advantages in being you know on the other coast or what's that been like in your experience?
Tom: Yeah we we do see some advantages in Florida is a very unique state we're the third most populous state in the country growing rapidly we have great tax laws we're a very pro state very unlike California in a lot of ways now again they play a different game it's really not California Silicon Valley In San Francisco right I mean by the way all the venture capital invests in the united states goes into 60 of it goes into four little micro markets. Twenty percent goes in Silicon Valley twenty percent san francisco ten percent boston ten percent in new york so forty percent goes to the rest of the world. We have in Florida over the last decade really great success stories and technology companies like Chewy.com, Jetsmart, Fanatics, Knowbe4, Connect-wise, these are all unicorn companies built here in Florida where the people the entrepreneurs didn't leave here to go to Silicon Valley they could have but they didn't and we're seeing more and more of that in fact we're seeing the opposite happen where we're getting calls from from founders are saying we're getting out of the valley we're getting out of San Francisco it's too expensive to the talent google and facebook are sucking up all the talent they pay them they we can't compete with them and we're looking for a pro business state to come to and in the past you know when that happened it was more it was mostly Austin Texas had benefited from that in colorado places like Boulder and Denver but now we're seeing it in Florida and it's exciting and you know we have a lot to offer these founders, we have 45 incubators and accelerators across the state, we have a lot of support systems for entrepreneurs and we're a very pro pro business state. So it's exciting. And then the other thing that's exciting from an investor standpoint is the valuations. You know companies in in Silicon Valley and San Francisco you know they're they don't have any revenues they have an idea and they're worth 10 million dollars you know in Florida most of the companies we invest in already have revenues already have customers somewhere you know the revenues might be 50 000 in annual recurring revenue up to maybe 500 000, but we can invest in them at a valuation of you know free market valuation maybe 5 million 3 million 7 million. So we don't need them to be a unicorn for us to have a very successful exit for us and for our fellow investors and we can get you know 10x 20x 30x returns with a company that's exiting at 100 million dollars which is in the tech world is not a huge exit today.
Buck: Tell me how it works in terms of a typical I mean my you know my listeners are used to you know the types of real estate private equity particularly our accredited investor groups and things like that but how does a fund like this work? Is it you know a typical 2 and 20 type type structure you know and if you could kind of talk about that and you know maybe also some historical in terms of what you're seeing you know obviously not promising anything future wise but what what kinds of results have you guys had?
Tom: Yeah so yes we're two and twenty our fund is a two and twenty fund so it's very typical.
Buck: So two percent annual basically under management and then twenty percent profit right and then right got it so that's pretty standard and then and then in terms of in Florida Funders what kind of you know structures are you looking at are are you doing? Are these regulation D exemption type things or I mean are they 506 c's or are they crowd funding or you know right crowdfunding or how are you structuring these?
Tom: Yeah so the way we work if we're a little different animal. We'd like to think we have a pretty unique model is once a company makes it through our vetting process and we say okay we're gonna invest in you. Our fund will put in the first, say we're gonna raise a million dollars for this company, our fund will put in 500 000 and then we take the 500 000 we go out to our crowd curated accredited investors we only deal with accredited so we're 506 C and then the crowd will fill in the rest, sometimes it's a little light maybe the fun will make up the distance many times it's over subscribed it will raise more for the founder or we'll just shut it off. So you know again we're a little a little bit different.
Buck: Sorry to interrupt but you're saying that each opportunity you're doing separately, you're not doing it as a portfolio like a fund, you're doing each business separately?
Tom: So we have two things we have a fund of our own that many of our just invest in the fund and we invest the money for them, but then we have this curated crowd of accredited investors who invest alongside our fund. So like myself personally I'm an investor in our fund I invest in almost every deal we do as well and I'll vary what I put in the deals based on what I think what I like you know that's that sort of thing. Now we have some many investors that are just in our fund they love what we're doing they're really excited about they're like you know hey we don't know technology, I don't know technology, I don't have time to look at even though you guys do all the due diligence and put it off on the portal and I don't really have to do a lot of work you kind of take the heavy lifting out of angel investing for me, I don't have the time to do it or I don't know tech so why don't I just give you the money and you guys invest it for me. And so we're on our second fund to go back to your question about our returns we're just stamming our first exits from our first fund which is about four years old. We had we'll have we've had two in the last week and one was 1.8 x times your money back and one was a little over two so those are moderate returns in our world yeah and we're playing you know we're we we expect to have some of those but we also expect to have 10x 20x 30x deals and then we expect to have zeros too.
Buck: Right got it. In terms of right now in this day and age specifically talking about a recessionary environment, a pandemic environment, how is this all affecting your business and you know your business is that you invest in you know capital all of these things.
Tom: Yeah it's been interesting because you know if you look back at 2009 2010 the great recession, the one area of investing that really never slowed and took was was early stage tech investing in an angel investing. It didn't really have much of an effect on it. We're kind of seeing that we're still doing deals we're very active or you know lots of deal flow you know some of our portfolio companies were severely affected by cobit but with the PPP loans and we work with our companies we don't just invest in them and leave them alone we take a board seat we get involved we coach them we provide introductions to them we help them in any way we can be successful. Many of them got ppp loans that are going to be forgiven or you know that really helped them a lot some of them pivoted and most of them have really bounced. We lost one there was a restaurant tech company which you know obviously that's not the space you want to be in this downturn in overdays but they weren't doing so great anyway. But a lot you know some you know some of our companies are k-12 education companies most of them have really bounced back now I mean they took a hit but they bounced back. We have companies in the healthcare space that you know they're involved a lot with elective surgery, they obviously took a hit but now they've bounced back. So it's been interesting it's been on you know we we hunkered down there with our companies for a while and said hey our message to them was cut your burn preserve cash you don't know when you're gonna be able to raise money again extend your runway and make sure you can live the fight your way through this and most of them have done that very successfully.
Buck: Where does for for your typical investor and I think you kind of had mentioned a little bit in terms of allocation, but you know if you look at a portfolio of you know 100 of your investable assets, what sort of a rule of thumb people I'm maybe not you know Tom Wallaces the world where you're in the middle of this but if you're looking to get exposure what what do you tell people what is sort of the rule of thumb on these types of things whether it be you know direct technology investments or angel investments or how do you look at or how do you suggest people look at it?
Tom: You know I think it's five percent or less you know whatever you're comfortable with but you know. There's something that's happened out there if you think about technology the days of buying amazon and apple and a couple hundred million dollar valuation rounding that to a trillion dollars or over. Facebook went public the valuation was what 70 billion. Uber went public valuation 40 50 billion. These companies because there's so much venture capital money out there these companies are waiting so long to go public to really get phenomenal returns angel investing is how you're going to do it because you know again companies are waiting so long to go public and so we you know again if you do the five Ds and you diversify you know there there's an opportunity for for great returns here and you know we're only seeing that trend more and more and it's becoming more exciting with all the changes to crowdfunding and all the rules that came out in you know when crowdfunding was first made legal back within six or seven years now so yeah it's an exciting space and it can be one again that you can have a lot of fun with and you can really see some exciting companies and meet some crazy founders great founders a tad crazy yeah and but yeah I'd say five percent or less I mean that's typically what our number would be.
Buck: So before we go maybe just sort of in general like for Florida Funders that's what it's called and what's the website
Tom: Floridafunders.com
Buck: So if you kind of gave us you know your you know your elevator pitch so to speak on on Florida Funders and why to look into it more and how you're different from the other angel groups what would you say to that?
Tom: Our secret sauce has a couple things. One is deal flow we've been named by cb insights and pitch book both those organizations says the most active EC in the southeast the most active venture capitalist in Florida. So we are out and about in the tech community down here, we're very well known. Every month 50 to 100 companies just go to our website and apply for funding. So we're looking at way more deals and as a result we think we're getting access to the best deals. The second part of our secret sauce is the extensive extensive due diligence we do, even more we invest alongside some Silicon Valley venture capitalists some New York venture capitalists and we often have co-investors in our deal and I would argue that almost nobody does the level of due diligence we do and that's everything from really getting to know the founders a lot of this is betting on the jockey to you know those early customers and interviewing them to plugging in a subject matter expert and we tap into our network of 1500 investors and you know we're looking at a health tech digital play you know we're pulling people that have extensive domain expertise who can really work in that space who have years of experience and they really help us evaluate these deals and once we invest they help these companies advise them and mentor them and coach them. So that's kind of what makes us different here at Florida Funders and if you think about you know where the future is for so many states, and obviously you know we're focused on Florida. We like to say we're we're looking to change Florida from a state we want Florida to be as known if not no more for technology and innovation than we are today for the mouse and tourism and strawberries.
Buck: Sure got it. Well listen Tom it's been great and very helpful and educational for my audience here. Again it's Florida Funders like fun having funders dot com Floridafunders.com and Tom I wanna thank you again for being on the show and maybe have you on again sometime and let us know how your next fund does.
Tom: Will do Buck it's been my pleasure. Thank you so much. All the best to you and your listeners and I've really enjoyed spending this time with you.
Buck: We'll be right back.

Economic Symbiogenesis

Visuals
KEYNOTE - Below includes an original proof that for every rational individual, The Von Neumann-Morgenstern Utility Function is bounded from above. The proof starts below: “Proof Reductio ad Absurdum”.
Economic Symbiogenesis
Thomas J Novak
Disclaimers 1. I wish to contend that Micro and Macro Economics each constitute a hidden branch of evolution. To be clear, I’m not arguing for an analogy, I’m arguing each branch is an evolutionary process; and with this comes the mathematical framework needed to scientifically objectify success (major goal for every Capitalist). 2. The quantitative aspects are partially rooted in Game Theoretic Evolution. I do not expect this theory will garner majority support or understanding. It is only an esoteric theoretical ideal; but it is my hope that this will gradually change until one-day we have a Utopia. 3. The mechanism is voluntary through rational self-incentives. It advocates for a change in perspective for optimal decision making purposes. 4. Dollars and other fiat currencies are still completely necessary. Fiat currency constitutes a valuable technology that eliminates the need for bartering, yielding considerable savings in life’s prime asset - TIME. 5. I apologize to the reader in advance for the long essay. I hope it is "worth" your time.
Key Conclusions
Present day humanity is full of capitalists that have the right idea but are missing some key math. This is causing them to behave inefficiently in the context of their own self-interests. Ideal Capitalism is Pareto Optimal and should be practiced by all; and it should lead to maximal economic growth. I also wish to conjecture that a new Nash Equilibrium is available to our race: Perpetual peacetime under the individual Pareto Optimal Strategy of Ideal Capitalism as every individual looks to maximize their self-fortune and troll farms are voluntarily dismantled. If this sounds too good to be true, note that it very well may have been for all of human-history save the last few decades. Key developments are nuclear weapons and the internet. Discussed more in the last section.
Introduction
The "science" of Economics is not yet a science. Don't get me wrong - micro-economics is just about there; but macro-econ is a totally different story. Some call it “The Dismal Science” because it makes many quantitative claims that are inconsistent with empirical data. An example is the claim that John Rockefeller’s fortune could be made comparable to contemporary fortunes by adjusting his dollars for inflation and real growth. In fact only adjusting his hours for real growth does the trick.
In general macro-econ has a zero-sum-dollar-centric structure that does not allow for input of things like maternity and child rearing - two fundamentally "valuable" human activities. Another problem is that planetary-wide risks like war, (and that which is assured by "Mutually Assured Destruction" (MAD)), are not naturally measurable in dollars.
Some concepts from financial mathematics and science can generalize economic measurements into a co-compatible theory that almost seems too simple to be necessary. Basic results agree with common sense in every way. Some conclusions are so obvious the calculation seems pointless. Others might be beyond common sense similar to the notion that the Earth on which one walks is anything but flat. The former supports credence for the latter. All examples of human stupidity supports a need for all of it.
Ideal Capitalism
Most powers past through present can be thought cold, "calculating”, and self-interested; and most presently embrace association with Capitalism. Paradoxically, human history, (even recent), is a litany of fighting and stupidity and hurt feelings. These are inefficiencies from the Capitalist perspective, so something must be wrong with these “calculations”.
The argument will start with a Micro-Economic exercise intended to provide quantitative framework to measure just how unCapitalistic many present-day capitalists are acting, by unitizing all their actions in a scientific manner. Any Capitalist wishing to maximize their net-worth will be made more materialistically rich simply by maintaining complete indifference about others, understanding the entire picture, and trusting numbers. Wall Street can confirm this is its goal.
“Complete indifference” means precisely 0 concern for anything other than material-self-worth and 100% concern for material-self-worth. Nonzero concern for others, positive or negative, is suboptimal since it distracts from the objective of maximizing self-worth. Footnote 1: “Others” does not include the friends and family category. All intentional altruism can be represented easily by having those individuals' interests summed and grouped together so as to be viewed as part of the Capitalist’s “self-interest”. All reasoning forward is unaffected by how many friends and family are now implied to be included.
The results can empower all decision makers to calculate in the only way possible: with actual mathematics. The numbers will sometimes disagree with intuition; but the numbers will always be correct. The optimal strategy will hardly change except for sufficiently wealthy individuals. The proof can be seen empirically by back-testing the model in history on the domain in which all success is measured: quality-weighted-time (qwt). The definition of qwt will leverage Game Theoretic Evolution and is discussed more below.
Some conclusions may be counterintuitive similar to the way natural selection favored Symbiogenesis; but maximum profit calls for absolute “trust” in numbers above all else - exactly as exhibited in microbial evolution. Any call for “selfless” acting resulting in benefits to others is strictly incidental; and any less is unselfishly selfish in that it renders this inefficient capitalist less wealthy than maximally possible.
Step 1 - Any political bias about aiding others should be deleted. An “Ideal Capitalist” expresses precisely 0 concern for others and what others think - no more, no less. As long as an individual is correctly acting in their own best interests, they are acting as a Capitalist. Contra-positively one can claim to be a capitalist and act inefficiently against their own interests as many “capitalists” will be shown are doing today. I suggest a new term “Maximalist” to mean an Ideal Capitalist and avoid the need for case sensitivity.
Step 2 - Success Spawns Success. What is meant by quality-weighted-time? The definition comes from the only objective arbiter possible: Evolution through Survival of the Fittest. Something is “fit”, or “successful”, if it results in more quantity (Q) or more quality (q), where more quality means it produced more Quantity faster - which renders it more successful. This is The Tautology of Evolutionary Game Theory (The Tautology). For any evolutionary process, quantity is the metric which quantifies success. Quality is measured in quantity per unit of time (q=Q/t). Note that multiplying q=Q/t with t yields Q=qwt: the metric of success that necessarily satisfies The Tautology. Footnote 2: The word “tautology” is meant in the propositional logic sense. No negative connotation should be inferred.
Step 3 - How to connect economics with evolution?
Micro-economic decision strategy for trading time (t) for dollars ($), (or $ for t), amounts to a “phenotype”, (or observable trait), coded for by genetics inherited or mutated, and ideas learned or created. Respectively: - Inherited genetics constrain every rational human to be “risk averse”, regardless of self-perception, because natural selection favored and continues to favor risk aversion. Defined below and proven further below. - Mutated genes are almost never favorable for a human so this case will be discarded (although this force is quite powerful over quintillions of human-hours). - Richard Dawkins creatively postulated ideas to be “memes”: new evolutionarily viable packets of information, subject to selection forces, as they spread from person to person with varying levels of success overtime. Respectively gene inheritance and mutation is analogous to meme learning and creation. Furthermore the economy can be seen as a subsection of the biosphere governed primarily by evolution through forces of selection. The economy evolves through selection of both genes and memes, and memes are more abstract; but this should not change anything about the evolutionary game theory. After all humanity itself is naturally occurring, so Artificial Selection of Genes and Memes can be seen as a more complex extended phenotype coded for by the evolution of genes through Natural Selection. Any argument that “Artificial Selection” constitutes a meaningful difference from “Natural Selection” must first come to terms with the observation that humanity is itself, naturally occurring.
Step 4 - What is the definition of “risk averse”? The mathematical definition of risk averse simply requires diminishing returns to be experienced on assets like dollars. For example: an additional $1M adds less “utility” if you presently have $2B, compared to if you presently have $2M. If a person is not risk averse, then more success encourages more risky behavior. This is inconsistent with the observation that more success means one has more to lose. Therefore any risk-inclined individual cannot be an Ideal Capitalist as they will almost surely go broke gambling.
Step 5 - What is “utility”? Utility is the abstract micro-economic concept that, by definition, quantifies value. The unsettled question of how to actually do this is addressed below.
Total Utility = True Material Self-Worth = “well-offness”. All have one-to-one correspondence with each other. All are “mutually inclusive”. For example: twice the quantity of utility, by definition, means twice material self-worth; and so, the individual is exactly twice better-off. Diminishing returns do not apply to quantities of utility.
Step 6 - How to define an objective function to maximize utility? Per Wikipedia: “Consider a set of alternatives facing an individual, and over which the individual has a preference ordering. A ‘utility function’ is able to represent those preferences if it is possible to assign a real number to each alternative, in such a way that alternative A is assigned a number greater than alternative B if, and only if, the individual prefers alternative A to alternative B.”
Keynote: dollars are not material wealth, dollars buy material wealth, with diminishing returns, limited by genes, memes, and the quality and Quantity of the Marketplace (respectively qQMP).
To illustrate this, consider how rich you would be with $1T cash on Mars in the present day marketplace. Personally as an oxygen breathing Capitalist, I would view my self-worth as constituting a liability - measurable in my personal subjective frame of reference in units of time, weighted by some self-knowable quality of life representing the quantity of misery per hour that I experience dying alone. Presently the quality of the marketplace on Mars is exactly 0 because 0 quantity is available for purchase. Footnote 3: The quality of life purchasable given the Time and Place is shown below to be bounded from above, although it is by no means bounded from below.
Back to Earth. If sufficiently rich, then maximizing material wealth calls for buying everything in desired amounts to maximize present quality of Life (qoL), holding ample dollars in reserve to spend on future quality (like a fancier vacation) and future quantity (like a longer vacation), and allocating the rest to increase future qQ which is not presently available for purchase (any new invention). In keeping with The Tautology, quality enhancements will provide for faster consumption of Quantity (Q=qwt). Note how perfectly this fits with The Tautology.
Ideally a good Capitalist with sufficient dollars would employ a strategy so as to maximize qoL at every point in time by exhausting most/all dollars by death. Any argument that an individual cannot meaningfully increase future qQMP fails. As an example: a medical breakthrough for genetic predispositions could yield considerably more time for any one capitalist, with expected returns modeled via actuarial mathematics. Consider just how far Humanity has come since the birth of The Enlightenment - it is easy to see how the not-so-distant future may include considerably more qQoL for sale. (Conversely the future may include far less qQoL if macro-decision-public-policy modeling continues to fail to quantify/unitize the cost of war - discussed more in the Macro Economic qwt section below.)
Quality enhancements, although more subjective, can be substantially accelerated by one talented individual. Examples include Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk. All are responsible for inventing and/or producing new things which I personally enjoy - the qQoL that I can purchase is greater as a result of their work. My time and money could not purchase such things if they were not invented. As discussed next, micro-economic quality weights are quality of Life (qoL) weights. They have an upper bound that can be “objectively” unitized and measured by the self-interested party's own frame of reference.
Step 7 - How can an individual objectively define an upper bound for these inherently subjective quality weights with any mathematical rigor? Is it possible to prove dollars can only buy so much utility? Yes!
Proof Reductio ad Absurdum
Ripping off an idea from one of the greatest thinkers ever - I propose a financial thought experiment: pretend it is possible for you to pause all of society and gamble at the “Name Your Winnings Casino”.
Here you can choose entering into an even bet: 50% of the time you win the largest number of dollars you can mathematically express = $P; or 50% of the time you suffer absolute ruin: the casino takes everything of material value and your dollars and returns you to the real world where no insurance policies exist for you and no friends or family are able to ease your loss by lending a couch to sleep on or pulling strings for a job offeinterview. If you lose you reenter the world a naked homeless person “worth” exactly $0 and you can never play again.
Four observations follow:

The decision to bet is made independent of any consideration of others, consistent with the Ideal Capitalist.
Any sane human with the smallest capacity for self-honestly could conservatively estimate a walk-away number A, (denominated in dollars), such that if present “net worth” is greater than $A then no bet.
No rational person choosing to bet would play more than once because either they’d lose or they’d win $P and have received the payout they named. “Letting it ride” constitutes an obviously dumb decision born out of the unwillingness to simply express the larger number in the first bet; however, a risk-inclined individual always values more over what they have and so they would be compelled to keep betting. Therefore rationality is mutually exclusive with risk-inclination. Furthermore if the betting person is risk averse, then $A is strictly less than $P for some minimum value of $P.
Some confident rational individual might argue no such number $A exists for them because they’re so good they can start all over if they lose and earn a new fortune; and it would at first glance seem this individual is correct.

Many logical conclusions result:
A. An honest estimate for $A irrefutably reveals a hidden upper bound for this individual’s “Utility Curve”. Specifically if the function A’($A) = A’ maps to utility derived by $A dollar denominated “wealth”, then no amount of dollars even exists for this individual to choose to bet. Mathematically: “Net worth” > “Bet value” => A’($A) > .5A’($A+$P) +.50 => 2A’(A) > A’($A+$P) for all values of $P (The left hand-side must be greater or the bet would not be declined by a rational individual.)
B. 2A’ is not presently purchasable with any amount of dollars. 2A’ may be purchased in some future marketplace, (possibly with less than A future dollars), in the form of a medical breakthrough or buying future children birthday presents, but it is not currently purchasable in the present as demonstrated by the individual’s refusal to bet. Conversely A future dollars may lose “purchasing power” of just A’ if the future marketplace is inferior. Therefore true material-worth is fundamentally a function of the marketplace and cannot even be expressed in terms of dollars.
C. Most choosing to bet would logically express the upside payout $P as a sequence of 9s. Many more would know to use powers of powers. Knowledge of Knuth’s Up Arrow Notation could simultaneously save time and yield considerably “more upside”. Due consideration for exactly how much time should be spent writing out fantastically large numbers reveals an irrefutably objective hidden limiting factor: this person’s lifetime - measurable in units of time. This reveals one of two hidden domains on which value must be measured - TIME!
D. From this it directly follows that the confident individual in (4) is wrong. Some number $A greater than $P must exist, EVEN FOR THEM. However this individual is sure $A doesn’t and keeps writing numbers out for $P until they die. Therefore $A for them equals the number they have written out at time of death, never having played the game. I believe this is the definition of a Darwinian unfit capitalist - completely inconsistent with the Ideal Capitalist.
Analysis
The argument above establishes a horizontal bound for utility – lifetime measurable in units of time. It also establishes a finite upper bound for utility itself (represented by the area of the “utility rectangle” - see spreadsheet). This implies a finite upper bound for the rectangle’s height must exist; and this is empirically supported by the observation that billionaires are not known to blow through their life fortune in any short-period of time.
So why does any sufficiently wealthy capitalist focus on earning more dollars and die before exhausting most/all of their dollars (last death if family inheritance involved)? If sufficiently wealthy, material wealth is necessarily a bounded function of The Time Period, or the “quality and Quantity of the Marketplace”. TTP = qQMP >= qQoL. In other words, the marketplace itself is secretly an asset for every Capitalist!
qMP(TTP) = Max quality of life, or “max utility per hour” available for purchase in TTP QMP(TTP) = Max Quantity of life, or “max utility” for purchase in TTP (IE a longer vacation or medicine)
Thus on the micro level, quality weights are utility weights; and utility weights are capped by The Time Period. Thus it is the case that for every (finite) individual, a finite upper bound for utility is self-measurable in Time Period-Weighted Time (qwt = TPWT). For example: 2020 hours have far more value to any sufficiently rational and wealthy individual (SRWI) than 1920 hours. And as the earlier questionnaire (hopefully) shows, this is realizable by most middle-class people today. In other words, today’s middle class is sufficiently wealthy to the extent TPWT resolves the Rockefeller paradox. Footnote8: The size of the middle class itself is unfortunately shrinking. This has potential to result in negative externalities for all.
Since an Ideal Capitalist maximizes self-material-wealth above all else, then if they were also sufficiently wealthy, they would measure value in Time-Period-Weighted Hours since they would always purchase maximum utility per hour. This is by definition, since any SRWI has all necessary means to purchase max utility available per hour. (Note just how important quick access to true information would be.) Footnote 9: Neuroscience could use Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to objectively measure the Micro-Economic utility unit as “Neurotransmitter-Molecular-Count Weighted Hours”. Consideration for how to weight different neurotransmitters (like Serotonin vs Dopamine) would be necessary. For now, we are all similar enough for “time” to suffice, at least for short run measurements. For example: what is the penalty for severe crimes? “Time in jail” or death (all the person’s time).
Quantifying the Marketplace
Given the average life expectancy now is more than twice that of prehistoric man, the marketplace itself is worth strictly more than 50% of any sufficiently wealthy individual’s “asset portfolio”. Just note “time is money”. Footnote 10: They need not be rational to "realize" this time, so long as their doctor is sufficiently competent. "Realization" will come in the form of living longer, quite consistent with the accounting definition of gain/loss realization.
Keynote - a Maximalist will do more than just maximize present qQ purchased. They will also divert unneeded dollars to maximize future qQMP so that more qQ is available for purchase. Thus the Maximalist calculation includes due consideration for additional dollars that will be needed given future qQ becomes available.
Squaring Theory with Reality
Most already know most of this, at least on the common-sense level. So why don’t sufficiently wealthy Capitalists invest maximum dollars with less strings attached to maximize the future? Is it because that would help everyone else and constitute socialism? No! In this context socialism is Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand”. A good Capitalist aims for precisely 0 concern about others, and any concern for implied socialism would constitute nonzero concern. Such concern would amount to incomprehensible irrationality far beneath any good Capitalist. So what else could it be?
Perhaps it’s simply the fact that much of humanity is still measuring their net-worth in the wrong dimension for the inefficient purpose of feeling superior to others with less money. Anyone currently doing this quite literally knows the price of everything and the value of nothing, not even their own self fortune, because they are using the wrong dimension of measurement. quality-weighted-time is the objectively correct way in which real value should be measured, and quality weighting is limited only by The Time Period in which time and money are being spent.
More noteworthy, any human mistaking dollars for qwt for this scorekeeping reason is still violating the prime rule of being a good Capitalist - they are demonstrating nonzero-concern for what others think of them. Implicitly and inefficiently, these individuals are expressing negative concern for others, as now is measurable by how worse off they are in units of their time. Specifically this is calculable as the opportunity cost of not investing more dollars for an enhanced future marketplace, measurable by others in said marketplace by the cost to this imperfect capitalist’s life expectancy, (all unitized in units of time).
Equity Miracle Swap Instruments
Perhaps the above explanations are not exhaustive of the full truth. Maybe some sufficiently wealthy Capitalists simply do not have the means to invest their dollars in a way that can reliably pay greater dividends. Therefore I propose a new type of financial derivative instrument called an “Equity Miracle Swap”. These would be voluntarily issued as contracts from the mega-wealthy. Here is a hypothetical example:
Rational (and thus risk averse) Billionaire-G (BG) possessing $100B in dollar-denominated-capital can now do research and will likely find they are genetically predisposed to a (presently) incurable illness (let’s say Small Cell Lung Cancer = SCLC). BG could use the chancy math in the proof above and might determine that Billions $91-$100 have minimal true value to him/herself when converted to qwt. Therefore BG could decide to start up an enterprise to find a cure for SCLC and use a $10B Equity Miracle Swap = EMSSCLC-$10B, or just “EMS” for short. The purpose is to maximally incent the researchers, who might otherwise just be employees. The contract would stipulate that all equity in the enterprise transfers over to the research team only upon successful development of the cure.
When measured in dollars, the payoff for BG is represented by the performance of the stock, which is greater than -$10B if no cure; or -$10B if the miracle cure is found. The former is greater than the latter. Which do you think BG will prefer? Obviously the latter, especially if they wind up contracting SCLC in the future! But the former was greater measured in dollars? How to reconcile?
This can be quantitatively reconciled by using the correct unit of measurement - qwt. Here is how: the newly discovered cure might empower their remaining dollars to purchase considerably more qwt in the future. The real expected return on investment for BG could be calculated actuarially as follows: Expected ROI = { Expected Return }/{ Investment } = { E(Δqwt | Miracle) * [ P(Miracle | EMS) - P(Miracle | no EMS) ] }/{ A’($100B) - A’($90B) } Where: 1. A’($D) maps to utility measured in quality-weighted-time presently purchasable by D dollars 2. E(Δqwt | Miracle) = Expected change in purchasable qwt given miracle cure occurs in lifetime 3. P(Miracle | Event X) = Probability of Miracle given Event X
Note that because BG is risk averse, diminishing returns render billions $91-$100 worth very little qwt. Therefore the cost in the denominator = A’($100B) - A’($90B) constitutes a very small amount of qwt, rendering the expected ROI very large, even for relatively small changes to P(Miracle). Obviously the lawyers could tinker with the terms of the contract. Finally note that society is incidentally made better off if the cure is found.
Macro-Economic qwt
Please now consider the benefit of a qwt-centric model from a Macro-Economic standpoint in the context of the Doomsday Clock, where as always, economics can objectively measure value (or “GDP”) in units of quality-weighted-time. On this Macro scale, the quantity unit will be "Healthy Human Hours", calculated as always by multiplying quality weights of presently healthy humans, with units of time, where any human is healthy if he/she produces more future human hours. Note how naturally maternity and child-raising now fit into GDP.
This may also help resolve the argument over which crimes should be punishable with incarceration - specifically only crimes where the individual is deemed likely to contribute less negative future qwt to GDP when in jail vs when out of jail. Also there is a natural extension of this for the death penalty, although I do not wish to make such moral judgements. Footnote 10: Any argument that population overgrowth leads to mass death is correct. Policy models need only step back and estimate healthy human hours in the more distant future. Calculus can be used to model public policy decisions from present-day infinitely far into the future and compare infinite relativities for different policy options.
Also consider that actuarial modeling could be used to objectively estimate the cost of disinformation posed to every Capitalist on the planet, measurable of course, in units of time. Specifically calculated as expected changes to Humanity’s Expectation of Life on the Doomsday Clock, plus individual life expectancy given Midnight, times the probability of midnight. Also observe the need and means for due discount in modeling the "decrease" in the future qQMP (which might include radiation).
The Emergence of Economic Symbiogenesis
Try to arrive at the conclusion any good Capitalist must. Here is a hint - genetic Symbiogenesis resulted in the planetary-wide cooperation of all plant and animal life to regulate Earth’s Oxygen concentration. Note the immense success is, of course, measured in qwt. Weighting in this context needs to satisfy the same tautology as always. Therefore the final answer on this Mega-Macro scale comes in organism-count-weighted units of time. This is the current game strategy that genetic Evolution has concluded on Earth to date. It came from pitting individual selfish microbial interests against one another in the 0-rules game of survival of the fittest. The result is the current marriage between the Plant and Animal Kingdoms! (Like all great marriages there are still a few mentionable skirmishes.)
Also observe the micro-macro relational analogue between Chloroplasts and Mitochondria with Plants and Animals. Consider how this might analogize individual decision making with the marketplace as a whole.
If you are religious, consider just how correct this implies your understanding of God’s wish for the general wellbeing of every individual to be.
My conclusion is that there is a trail of breadcrumbs for our species to follow and we’ve had the right idea all along. We’ve just been doing the math wrong. Now every decision maker can better understand how to measure their own self-fortune and get to growing it faster!
Also interesting is the game theoretic argument for why every person must be allowed full forgiveness - it is the only way world leaders who are concerned for their own wellbeing could possibly embrace such a model. Astonishingly full forgiveness is 100% consistent with every major religion’s claim of what God hopes all of us can achieve. In economics, any desire for revenge can now be seen as The Sunk Cost Fallacy, measurable as always in units of qwt.
Finally, I wish to conjecture that a new Nash Equilibrium is available to our race: Perpetual peacetime under the individual Pareto Optimal Strategy of Ideal Capitalism as every individual looks to maximize their self-fortune and troll farms are voluntarily dismantled. If this sounds too good to be true, note that it very well may have been for all of human-history save the last few decades.
Key Technological Developments 1. The advent of nuclear weapons which align all of humanity's interests in a way which never used to exist. Even survivors of a nuclear war will be far worse off, now as measurable by decreases to the quality and Quantity of any future radioactive marketplace. Less qwt for purchase! 2. The advent of the internet renders information around the globe nearly free and instantaneous. If we can learn to be more self-interested, the only conclusion which rationally follows is to dismantle all troll farms for the simple purpose of maximizing Macro Time until Doomsday. The New Nash Equilibrium available to our race could be quantitatively modeled with actuarial techniques, and the optimal solution is to push Midnight infinitely far into the future by allowing every rational decision maker the means to make rational decisions with 100% true information. The internet sets up a worldwide analogy with our nervous system.
Footnote 11 - The Micro-Economic Model is now consistent with John Lennon's definition of life success: happiness. When asked what he wanted to “be” when he grew up, John responded "happy". John’s teacher thought he misunderstood the question. If John's teacher had instead followed up with the question to quantify: "How happy do you want to be?" - John could have replied: "as happy as possible for all my years.”
Footnote 12 - Warren Buffet's advice to "do what you love so you never work a day in your life" is quantified naturally by the model. I hope that more will start to take this advice. The qwt-centric-micro-model shows they will quite literally be made richer as a result. Given that richer people tend to contribute more to GDP, society will be made incidentally better off as a result. Star Trek almost had it but missed two words: “we work to better ourselves, and incidentally, the rest of mankind”.

Has anyone seen this proof before?

Comprehensive Comic Book Catch-Up Guide

(Main Series) Friendship is Magic #1-4 The Return of Queen Chrysalis (Major Storyline)
Main Characters - Mane 6, CMC, Chrysalis
Summary - Queen Chrysalis has returned, replaced all the citizens of Ponyville with changelings, and kidnapped the CMC. Will the our heroes be able to stop her before it is too late? Or will rising tensions between the friends spell out their doom?
Quick Review - A worthy introduction to the comics with some fun character moments. Any comic drawn by Andy Price is worth checking out for the art alone. Chrysalis literally throws a kitten at a wall and it explodes into blood. 6/10

FiM #5-8 Nightmare Rarity (Major) (Highly Recommended)
Characters - Rarity, Mane 6, Luna, Spike
Summary - Rarity is overcome by insecurity and the fear that she doesn't provide enough to the group, and allows herself to be corrupted by Nightmare. As her friends rush to save her, Luna must overcome her own guilty past in order to defeat it again in the present.
Quick Review - Nightmare Rarity's design is superb. So are the moon denizens. Katie Cook's writing style can lean into the absurd sometimes, but she knows how to do an emotional moment. We see how Luna earned her flowing mane. Spike saves the day. Trixie gets a few lines. 8/10

FiM #9-10 Zen and the Art of Gazebo Repair (Highly Recommended)
Characters - Big Mac
Summary - Big Mac has to find nails to fix his gazebo during the Summer Wrap-Up festival. But the world has other plans for him.
Quick Review - Big Mac plays a wonderful comedic straight man. Seriously, the comic is hilarious, the art is amazing, and Big Mac is a chad. Dude has to fight off like four different mares fawning over him, including Luna. He just wants to repair his gazebo, for god's sake. 9/10

FiM #11-12 (Neigh Anything)
Characters - Cadance, Shining Armor, Biff Tannen
Summary - Discover the romantic tale of how Cadance and Shining Armor came to be. Can Shining Armor prove himself worthy to Cadance? Will she choose him over High School Gigachad Buck Withers? Probably.
Quick Review - I enjoy it. Not much to say. Shining Armor belts out some Oingo Boingo for Cadance, and lord knows there is nothing more romantic than singing about how much you love little girls. (6.5/10)

Annual 2013: Equestria Girls (The Fall of Sunset Shimmer)
Characters - Sunset Shimmer, Celestia
Summary - Sunset Shimmer is a magical prodigy. But Celestia will not further her teachings, because despite her prowess, the young sorcerer has much to learn. Sunset believes otherwise.
Quick Review - To everyone clamoring for a proper Sunset backstory and motivation I am proud to announce that this is not it. It's unbelievably vague and generic. It pains me as a massive Shimmerfriend. Also, all the human designs look like ayy lmaos. More so than the show. Hopefully they pick it up in the next EqG comic... (3/10)

FiM #13-14 (My Little Pirate)
Characters - Fluttershy, Mane 6, Hoofbeard
Summary - Fluttershy has become too attached to a fish she rescued, and regrets letting it go. So when a dangerous pirate arrives looking for a crew, she take it is an opportunity to reunite with her fish. Also a pirate adventure thing, Hoofbeard seeks a treasure behind a perilous journey.
Quick Review - Utterly forgettable. I really cannot be bothered to reread it for a review. It was okay I think? (5/10)

FiM #15-16 (The Book Worm)
Characters - Twilight, Mane 6
Summary - A magical bookworm begins devouring his way through Twilight's library. That wouldn't be such an issue (except to Twilight), if the characters from to books didn't begin popping up in the real world. Now Twilight and co must take down the bookworm in it's own domain: The Realm of Books.
Quick Review - I like Pinkie's fantasy world. Another just okay one. Lotta references to other media. Marvel, LoTR, Disney shlock, you get the idea. The void had some solid character moments for Twilight and Rainbow. (6/10)

Friends Forever #1: Pinkie & Applejack
Characters - Take a guess
Summary - In the issue, Applejack and Pinkie Pie enter a baking contest, and culinary hijinks ensue.
Quick Review - Rough start for FF. Predictable and silly. Art here is really not good. However, it does have Guy Fieri pony. (3/10)

Friends Forever #2: CMC & Discord (Highly Recommended)
Characters - CMC, Discord
Summary - Discord takes the crusaders to increasingly dangerous dimensions in their search for a cutie mark.
Quick Review - This one is super sweet. Some of the best Discord showing in the series. The CMC being some of the only ponies to understand and show gratitude towards Discord for his effort is so damn heartwarming. (8/10)

Friends Forever #3: Celestia & Spike (Highly Recommended)
Characters - Celestia, Spike
Summary - Spike wants to get Twilight something nice for her birthday, but the gift he settled on turns out to be slightly hard to come by. He enlists Celestia's help in getting the gift for her student, a gift found deep in the dangerous Crystal Mountains.
Quick Review - By far my favorite portrayal of Celestia. Lot of nice and touching dialogue between her and Spike, and some insight on Celestia's mindset as a ruler and teacher. Shame they went further down the "Celestia is an incompetent and petty klutz" route later on. (8/10)

FiM #17-20 (Reflections) (Major) (Recommended)
Characters - Mane 6, Celestia, Starswirl, Sombra
Summary - Celestia has been secretly visiting another dimension for quite some time. A world where good is evil, and evil is good, and she has fallen madly in love with the benevolent King Sombra. A world where she and Luna are villains threatening to take over both dimensions. And it's all her fault.
Quick Review - This one is super polarizing. For me, it's a collection of great ideas utilized poorly. The mirror dimension is a very interesting concept that I wish would be re explored. And i'm content with all the characters. But the climax, touching as it maybe, kinda dampens this one for me. Still, (7/10)

Friends Forever #4: Twilight & Shining Armor
Characters - ^^^^^
Summary - Twilight Sparkle is worried her and Shiny have drifted apart since their foalhoods. An opportunity presents itself to rekindle when her and Shining Armor team up to catch a ghost that haunts the Crystal Empire palace.
Quick Review? - Turns out, there are a lot of FF comics, and a lot of them are pretty inconsequential. There are only so many times I can say, "It was cute. I liked it." before that gets redundant. So unless I have something more to say, i'm gonna reduce these to just Rating and Summary. Pretty good tho. (6/10)

Friends Forever #5: Fluttershy & Zecora
Summary - Fluttershy and Zecora try to figure out why Fluttershy can suddenly hear her animal friends talk. Spoilers: It was Discord. Go figure.
Rating - (4/10)

Friends Forever #6: Rainbow Dash & Trixie
Summary - Rainbow Dash is called upon by a newly crowned Queen Trixie to perform for a kingdom of Diamond Dogs. Turns out being Queen isn't all its cracked up to be.
Rating - I mean, it's got Trixie. (6/10)

FiM #21-22 (Manehattan Mysteries) (Recommended)
Characters - CMC, Babs, Trixie, AJ, Rarity
Summary - Doesn't need one. Trixie and Babs are in it. Go read it.
Quick Review - The relationship between Babs and Trixie here and they parallels they draw from each other are pretty great. I always love those kinds of strange character interactions. (7/10)

Friends Forever #7: Pinkie & Luna
Summary - Princess Luna seeks Pinkie Pie's help in making ponies laugh so she can participate in a Royal Event.
Rating - (6/10)

Friends Forever #8: Applejack & Rarity
Summary - Typical Rarijack episode, road trip edition.
Rating - It introduces those stupid bull cowboys. For that (4/10)

FiM Issue 23 (Pets to the Rescue)
Characters - Angel, Winona, Opalescence, Owliscious, Gummi, Tank
Summary - When there owners are nowhere to be found, the pets team up and must set out to find their owners and assist them in whatever magical conundrum they may have found themselves in.
Quick Review - I think the villain here would have been really interesting in almost any other scenario. Other than that, minimal dialogue, and the art isn't exceptional, so (5/10)

Friends Forever #9: Granny & The Flimflam Bros
Summary - Granny Smith helps Flim and Flam patch things up after they have a falling-out over a mare.
Rating - This one is pretty wholesome. (7/10)

FiM Issue 24 (Discord in Time)
Characters - Discord, CMC, Flutters
Summary - Discord take the CMC and Flutterbutter on an a journey through time to show them some animals. Hijinks ensue.
Quick Review - Another really nice Discord issue. He isn't use to having all these friends and watching out for them in his chaos, so he drags them along in his dangerous adventures. He then immediately forgets this lesson. (7/10)

Friends Forever #10: Fluttershy & Iron Will (Major)
Summary - Fluttershy helps Iron Will with has marital problems.
Rating - (6/10)

Friends Forever #11: Rainbow Dash & Spitfire
Summary - Rainbow Dash helps Spitfire overcome her greatest fear: Children.
Rating - Art style is cute, but super jarring. (6/10)

FiM #25-26 (The Good, the Bad and the Ponies)
Characters - AJ, Mane 6, Bulls
Summary - Doesn't matter.
Quick Review - Don't read this one. Seriously, it's bad. Nothing really makes sense. Applejack has some sort of brain defect. Twilight arbitrarily cannot use her magic on Equestrian citizens. Even when they are dangerous criminals, apparently? (1/10)

Friends Forever #12: Pinkie & Twilight
Summary - Twilight tries to help Pinkie overcome her harrowing cocaine addiction. When that fails, Twilight starts doing coke herself to make the guilt go away. Pinkie stops doing coke for like five minutes, and Twi considers that a success.
Rating - (4/10)

Equestria Girls Annual 2014: Holiday Special
Characters - Humane 6, Sunset Shimmer, CMC
Summary - The holidays are nearing, and Sunnybun is feeling pretty down in the dumps. The girls try to cheer her up by inviting over for a few nights of debauchery. This cheers her up a bit. So, the Humane 5 go home on the shortbus and Sunny walks home, finally content with herself. Meanwhile the CMC decide that Sunset is keeping them from spending time with their sisters(?) and start a social media account in her name, called Anon-A-Miss, which they use to spread explicit photos of their sisters from the "sleepovers" and frame Sunset. Everyone in the school begin to tragically suffer from severe mental deficiencies and buy it immediately. Because the chick who just saved all of your sorry asses from soul sucking harlots like a week ago is going to post shit about her friends with her fucking face attached to the account.
Quick Review - I really wish I could shit on this more, but I got quite a bit to get through. (-3/10)

Friends Forever #13: Rarity & Babs Seed
Summary - In the issue, Rarity must entertain Babs Seed when Sweetie Belle falls ill. Turns out Babs idea of entertainment is different than Rarity's.

FiM #27-28 (The Root of the Problem) (Major)
Characters - Mane 6, Bramble, King Aspen
Summary - The Everfree spontaneously begins protruding into Ponyville. At the root of this problem, the druid-esque Deers who wish to reclaim the parts of their forest that were lost.
Quick Review - The Deer are really neat, and having them be the night elves of Equestria is a fun concept. But the deer people kind of get the shaft, and most of the story focuses on the avaricious minotuar Well-to-do. (6.5/10)

Friends Forever #14: Luna & Spike
Summary - In the issue, Princess Luna enlists Spike's help in solving a dragon problem in Fillydelphia.
Rating - Luna and Spike spend three pages together, and the rest of the story is focused on an annoying pink fangirl dragon. (4/10)

Friends Forever #15: Applejack & Mayor Mare
Summary - In this issue, politics are boring.
Rating - (5/10)

FiM Issue #29 (Ponymania XXIX)
Characters - Cheerilee, Cherry Blossom
Summary - Cheerilee reunites with her twin sister—one of the most famous wrestlers in Equestria. But when Cherry Blossom gets injured, Cheerilee is forced to take her place in the ring.
Quick Review - As with most Jay Fosgitt's stuff, cute, but a lot of fluff and not much to carry an interesting story. (6/10)

FIENDship is Magic #1: King Sombra (Major) (Highly Recommended)
Characters - Sombra, Radiant Hope
Summary - Twilight Sparkle and Princess Cadance discover King Sombra's diary and learn of his rise to power. But before that, how he was a sickly outcast, a troubled young amnesiac whose only friend was the equally strange Radiant Hope, who still had imaginary friends.
Quick Review - Much needed backstory for Sombra, and very well done at that. His connection to Radiant Dawn feels genuine, and his corruption by way of shitty crystal ball is absolutely tragic. My dude just wanted to go the Crystal Faire ): Also Princess Amore fucking dies. (9/10)

FIENDship is Magic #2: Tirek (Recommended)
Characters - Tirek, Scorpan, Sendak
Summary - Tirek, young and ambitious, sneaks out of his royal families castle to visit the unhinged sorcerer Sendak to learn more about magic. Scorpan is worried about his brothers ambitions.
Quick Review - Doesn't add much character depth to Tirek, but it's suitable. Presents a lot of cool ideas not explored as thoroughly as they could be. Leaves a lot up to interpretation and head canon. (7/10)

FIENDship is Magic #3: Sirens (Non-Canon)
Characters - The Dazzlings, Starswirl
Summary - The fate of the world is determined by a music battle, and if the Dazzlings win, all is lost. This is not Rainbow Rocks.
Quick Review - Not a single character acts in character, and while the other Fiendship issues are take themselves pretty seriously, this one is drastically different tonally and opts for comedy. Which really sucks, because I wanted actual backstories for the Sirens. Humor falls flat as well. (2/10)

FIENDship is Magic #4: Nightmare Moon
Characters - Nightmare Moon, Nyx (Not that Nyx)
Summary - A recently banished Nightmare Moon attempts exacts revenge on Princess Celestia through the world of dreams. The Nyx, the keepers of the dreams, will not allow it.
Quick Review - I much prefer Nightmare Moon as a manifestation of Luna's negative emotions over depictions a corrupting parasitic entity. Story is serviceable, a bit sad, nothing noteworthy. (6/10)

FIENDship is Magic #5: Queen Chrysalis (Major)
Characters - Twilight, Chrysalis
Summary - The Mane Six visit the imprisoned Queen Chrysalis, who recounts her past exploits.
Quick Review - Case of unreliable narrator here. Chrysalis implies that changelings are made of pure dark magic, which is an idea I actually quite like, but having them reform like they did would say otherwise. Story is sorta all over, like a Chrysalis anthology short. (6/10)

Friends Forever #16: Diamond Tiara & Silver Spoon
Summary - Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon compete against the Cutie Mark Crusaders in a scavenger hunt.
Rating - Smokin' hot goth pony makes an appearance. (7/10)

FiM #30-31 (Ponyville Days)
Characters - Rarity, AJ, Twilight
Summary - Civil War over a land dispute or something, can't really be bothered with this one.
Quick Review - As far as I remember, this is one of the issues that gives everyone in Ponyville a crippling case of "has to wear a helmet while outside". Dumbing down characters to make a story work is obnoxious. (3/10)

Friends Forever #17: Twilight & Big Mac
Summary - Twilight takes a trip into Big Mac's brain to learn how to focus as well as he does.
Rating - (7/10)

Friends Forever #18: Rainbow Dash & Fluttershy
Summary - Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy go to their flight camp reunion.
Rating - Pretty adorable. (7/10)

FiM #32-33 (Night of the Living Apples)
Characters - Mane 6, Spike
Summary - Apples take over Ponyville. Our heroes turn into bats. This is not a crackfic.
Quick Review - Batpony designs are pretty damn cool. Story is whatever. (5/10)

FiM #32-33 (Night of the Living Apples)
Summary - Rarity gets carried away when she goes into business with Mr. and Mrs. Cake.
Rating - (6/10)

Friends Forever #20: Luna & Discord (Recommended)
Summary - Princess Luna helps Discord when he has trouble sleeping.
Rating - Neat character dynamic. Good stuff for Luna and Discord. (8/10)

FiM #34-37 (Siege of the Crystal Empire) (Major) (Non-canon) (Highly Recommended)
Characters - Sombra, Mane 6, Chryssi, Umbrums
Summary - A mysterious new villain brings several of the series' past antagonists together to attack the Crystal Empire.
Quick Review - I want to keep my gushing about this one brief. The umbrum design and lore are some of the best things to come out of the comics. This Sombra is infinitely better than the one in the show. I definitely didn't cry at the end because i'm a big boy. (9/10)

Friends Forever #21: Spike & Zecora
Summary - Spike and Zecora save Ponyville from a disease, and only they are immune.
Rating - (7/10)

Friends Forever #22: Celestia & Pinkie
Summary - Princess Celestia tasks Pinkie Pie with making the perfect cake for Princess Luna's birthday party.
Rating - Barely any Celestia. (4/10)

Friends Forever #23: Applejack & Fluttershy
Summary - Applejack and Fluttershy become involved in the search for a legendary creature called the Pigasus. They must keep its existence a secret.
Rating - No Kirin (5/10)

Friends Forever #24: Rarity & Gilda
Summary - Gilda enlists Rarity's help in designing uniforms for a new sports team in Griffonstone.
Rating - (6/10)

FiM #38-39 (Don't You Forget About Us)
Characters - CMC, Diamond Tiara, Snips, Snails
Summary - The Cutie Mark Crusaders, Diamond Tiara, Silver Spoon, Snips, and Snails become lost in the mountains during a class field trip. AB and Diamond Tiara are forced to learn how to work together.

Friends Forever #25: Rainbow Dash & Twilight
Summary - Rainbow Dash seeks Twilight Sparkle's help after her wings mysteriously vanish.
Rating - Weird body horror. (7/10)

Friends Forever #26: Shining Armor & Prince Blueblood
Summary - Shining Armor is forced to work with Prince Blueblood on a diplomatic mission to Yakyakistan.
Rating - Holy shit they made Blueblood redeemable. (8/10)

FiM Issue #40 (Twilight meets Spike)
Characters - Twilight, Spike
Summary - You know, it's exactly how it sounds.
Quick Review - Very cute. (7/10)

Friends Forever #27: Pinkie & Granny Smith (Recommended)
Summary - Pinkie Pie offers to help Granny Smith after she breaks her hip right at the start of cider season.
Rating - Precious. (7/10)

FiM Issue #41 (Rainbow Dash and the Very Bad Day)
Characters - Zecora, Rainbow
Summary - Rainbow Dash is being a c**t, and enrages literally everybody else in Ponyville. In other words, they captured her character just right in this one.
Quick Review - I like rhyme schemes, but I hate bluefast. (4/10)

Friends Forever #28 Princess Luna and the Cutie Mark Crusaders
Summary - The Cutie Mark Crusaders assist Princess Luna during a foal slumber party at Canterlot Castle.
Rating - I like bone pony. (6/10)

FiM Issue #42 (A Pinkie Pie Story That Pinkie Pie Kinda Sorta Remembers) (Recommended)
Characters - Rarara, Ponker Po
Summary - Pinker Pop, still cooling off from her ten month long cocaine binge, tries to help Rarity make a gift for a friend very special to her.
Quick Review - Very cute, very funny, cried. (8/10)

Friends Forever #29 Rarity and Maud Pie
Summary - Rarity assists Maud Pie in her rock science interests and helps her discover her inner enthusiasm.
Rating - Nice Maud character development. (7/10)

FiM Issue #43-45 (Ponies of Dark Water) (Major) (Recommended)
Characters - Mane 6, Luna, CMC, Spike
Summary - The Mane 6 bathe in cursed waters and become distorted versions of themselves. Pinkie Pie becomes a domestic terrorist.
Quick Review - I like the part where Pinkie bombs a movie theater potentially killing dozens of ponies. Hilarious. (8/10)

Friends Forever #30 Twilight Sparkle and Princess Cadance
Summary - Twilight Sparkle helps her sister-in-law Princess Cadance when she suffers from an unexplained lack of self-esteem.
Rating - I quite like this little arc for Cadance. (7/10)

Friends Forever #31 Rainbow Dash and Little Strongheart
Summary - Little Strongheart seeks Rainbow Dash's help in finding a legendary creature called the Rainbow Crow.
Rating - Little Strongheart, where ya been for six years dude? Beautiful art. (7/10)

Friends Forever #32 Fluttershy and Daring Do
Summary - Daring Do enlists Fluttershy's help in uncovering an ancient treasure. She must also face her arachnophobia.
Rating - Better than the actual Flutters/Do episode. (7/10)

FiM Issue #46-47 (Election)
Characters - Twilight, Mayor Mare, Donald Trump
Summary - Mayor Mare struggles in her bid for reelection, against definitely not Donald Trump guys I swear.
Quick Review - Haha I lied, but like I totally got you though right? Like it was super subtle? I bet you didn't even catch on. (5/10)

Friends Forever #33 Applejack and Cherry Jubilee
Summary - Applejack learns the secret history of Cherry Jubilee.
Rating - Cherry Jubilee is pretty hot. (6/10)

FiM Issue #48-50 (Chaos Theory) (Major) (Recommended)
Characters - Discord, Starlight, Mane 6
Summary - An astronomical event causes Discord to transform from a creature of chaos to a being of pure order. But not all is at seems with the newly minted Accord.
Quick Review - Starlight gets one arc throughout all of these comics. luckily it's pretty good. She gets some good character growth. Accord is pretty god damn terrifying. Actual sound logic is used to best the villain, which is pretty rare. (8/10)

Friends Forever #34 Pinkie Pie and Cheese Sandwich
Summary - Pinkie Pie and Cheese are eaten by a possessed party house. Seriously.
Rating - (6/10)

Friends Forever #35 Twilight Sparkle and Starlight Glimmer
Summary - Twilight Sparkle and Starlight Glimmer's attempt to organize the books in the Castle of the Two Sisters turns into a battle of egos.
Rating - This would have been much better is not illustrated by Fosgitt. It doesn't suit this more weighty type of story. (7/10)

Friends Forever #36 Rainbow Dash and Soarin (Recommended)
Summary - Rainbow Dash follows Soarin to a remote location to help him with a dangerous mission.
Rating - Great Soarin and Spitfire moments. (8/10)

Friends Forever #37 Rarity and Trixie
Summary - Dude, it's got two of the best pones. Read it.
Rating - (7/10)

FiM Issue #51-53 (From the Shadows) (Major)
Characters - Mane 6, Donut Steel
Summary - The edgiest OC to ever exist begins to erase Equestrian history from books and minds, in fear of his heritage catching up to him.
Quick Review - Super interesting villain motivation, terribly generic villain design. (7/10)

My Little Pony: Deviations
Characters - Prince Blueblood, Mane 6, Nightmare Moon
Summary - Have you ever wondered what would have happened if Prince Blueblood was sent to Ponyville instead of Twiliight? No? Too bad, dude.
Summary - I would have loved to have gotten more deviations. Read about Blueblood being an arrogant prick for half an hour. It's fine. (6/10)

Friends Forever #38 Princess Celestia and Princess Luna (Recommended)
Summary - Princess Celestia and Princess Luna's minor squabbling escalates just before they plan to participate in the Sisterhooves Social.
Quick Review - Friends Forever Finale. Andy Price outdoes himself yet again. Hilarious and Heartwarming. (8/10)

FiM Issue #54 (I Didn't Read This One)
Summary - No seriously, didn't read it. Fosgitt, Fluttershy, fluff, the three F's of i'm going to be fucking bored. Maybe it's a masterpiece. I'll never know.

FiM Issue #55-56 (Wings Over Yakyakistan)
Characters - Rainbow, Rutherford, Ember, Spike, Pinkie
Summary - When the dragons invade Yakyakistan over an ancient treaty, it's up to heroes to defend the Yaks and try and diffuse the situation. Spike doesn't like the idea of fighting his own kind.
Quick Review - Let it be known that I would have been totally cool with the Yaks getting destroyed. Typical let go of the past, look to the future stuff. Rainbow's parents are here, and they are fun, and Spitfire gets a bit of extra love, so (7/10)

FiM Issue #57 (Apinkalypse Now)
Characters - Pinkie, Mane 6, Discord
Summary - Pinkie Pie accidentally becomes trapped in Discord's realm. If you wanted to see more of Chaos Pinkie, then here you go.
Quick Review - I really like the how the chaos dimension is shown in the comic, in that adapts to the current owner if they themselves can't be turned. You'll notice by this point the writers will do whatever in their power to make sure Starlight can be written out somehow. (7/10)

FiM Issue #58 (The Vines That Bind)
Characters - Twi, Flutts, Zecora, Cattail, Aqua Vine
Summary - Twilight Sparkle, Fluttershy, and Zecora follow the notes of Mage Meadowbrook search for a flower said to cure any ailment. The search soon becomes an obsession for Twilight, determined to get her name in the history books.
Quick Review - Dude, Twilight, you already saved the world at least seven times. That Magenta Bloom shit would just be a footnote. Overall pretty forgettable. (5/10)

FiM Issue #59 (Pie in the Sky)
Characters - Rainbow, Pinkie
Summary - Jesus Christ Pinkie she doesn't fucking like pie. We had a whole episode about just this. We didn't need a comic to teach the same lesson. That's a;lso your review. (3/10)

FiM Issue #60 (The Stars on Our Ponies)
Characters - CMC, Gilded Lily
Summary - The Cutie Mark Crusaders help a filly who doesn't want to follow in her family's footsteps. But she is scared to disappoint them if she does pursue her own interest.
Quick Review - Gilded Lily's design is absolutely adorable. She also looks like she tastes pretty good, like Oranges n' Creme. Solid one-off. (7/10)

FiM Issue #61-62 (Convocation of the Creatures!) (Major)
Characters - Twilight, Raven
Summary - Twilight Sparkle makes a discovery during the largest assembly of creatures in history that threatens to redraw the map of Equestria.
Quick Review - Glenda canonically has a stutter, making her best changeling. Good bit of overbuilding in this one, without falling into the common trap of making the convocation feel too modern. (7/10)

FiM Issue #63 (All in Marederation)
Characters - Twilight, Pinkie, Temperance
Summary - Ponyville gets swept by an anti-sugar movement that threatens to put Sugarcube Corner out of business.
Quick Review - MLP's thinly veiled take on the Temperance Movement. Another one where all of Ponyville is turned into exceptional individuals. (4/10)

FiM Issue #64 (Everything Old) (Recommended)
Characters - Rarity, Fluttershy, Coco Pommel
Summary - Fluttershy and Rarity travel to Manehattan, where Rarity discovers that old, ugly fashions are back in style.
Quick Review - I absolutely adore the message here. Things you made when you were younger that you maybe embarrassed of now don't have to be cast aside and forgotten. Rather, look to them to see how you have improved and how you can still improve. Coco is a QT. (8/10)

My Little Pony: Legends of Magic Annual 2018 (Major) (Recommended)
Characters - The Pillars, Pony of Shadows
Summary - The Pillars of Old Equestria face a new danger that tests their skills as a team. One that they may find feels a bit like a deja vu.
Quick Review - I really like the relationship between Stygian and Rockhoof here. I wonder if Starswirl was always meant to be a dickhead? Green Pony of Shadows looks badass as fuck. Also, Somnambula is cute as hell. (7/10)
Edit - Consider there are twelve of these. I am not awake enough to add them all. Read' em. They're pretty good lore stuffs.

FiM Issue #65 (Queen for One Less Day) (Recommended)
Characters - Celestia, Scarlet Petal
Summary - Princess Celestia disguises herself to live among ordinary ponies for a day. But when her magical necklace is stolen by a thief, she may lose the ability to turn back into herself for good.
Quick Review - I love this comic. Shows off the best parts of Celestia's character. I'm running out of synonyms for heartwarming, so just go read this one. (8/10)

FiM Issue #66 (Applewood Follies)
Characters - Mane 6
Summary - Twilight Sparkle and her friends discover that a film is being made about them. But when the director hands them the reins, they discover it's harder to make a movie than they thought.
Quick Review - I'm really not a fan of more modern tech in Equestria. I don't mind it at all if it's used as a background gag, but here, where it's the plot of the comic, I just find it obtrusive.

Ponyville Mysteries Issue 1
Characters - CMC, Nurse Redheart
Summary - "Welcome to a new series of mystery and intrigue! The Cutie Mark Crusaders discover their inner detectives and solve crimes nopony else can! Will they be able to discover who is stealing supplies from Ponyville hospital and get their schoolwork done at the same time?"
Quick Review - None of these are particularly engaging, so I won't review the rest. When I figure these mysteries out all by myself like the grown man I am I feel particularly proud, like I just solved a crossword puzzle they have on those Kiddie menus at iHop.

Ponyville Mysteries Issue 2
Characters - CMC, The Dude
Summary - "There's a major mystery at the... bowling alley? Ponyville's team is set to break a bowling record, but the alley keeps being ransacked by a mystery criminal! Will the Cutie Mark Crusaders be able to set the pins right and solve the caper?"

Ponyville Mysteries Issue 3
Characters - CMC, Old People
Summary - "The Cutie Mark Crusaders must solve a dangerous mystery at the Ponyville Retirement Village before it's forced to close! Is one of the curmudgeonly residents to blame or could it be a villain from their past?"

FiM Issue #67-68 (Tempest's Tale) (Major) (Highly Recommended)
Characters - Tempest, Cadance, Glitter Drops
Summary - Tempest Shadow travels across Equestria to learn more about friendship and comes face-to-face with her past.
Quick Review - These issues do wonder for Tempest's previously scarce character. If your a fan of Tempest, or especially if your not a fan of Tempest, check these out. Smug Cadance is best Cadance. (8/10)

Ponyville Mysteries Issue 4
Characters - CMC, Applejack
Summary - "The Cutie Mark Crusaders are trying to solve the case of the missing spa water! But what happens when all signs point to a member of a Crusader's own family being the culprit?"

FiM Issue #69 (Magical Apple)
Characters - Pinkie, Mane 6
Summary - Pinkie gets god powers. Again. Didn't we do this already?
Quick Review - Oh, Pinkie, maybe someday somebody will figure out how to write you well again. (4/10)

Ponyville Mysteries Issue 5
Characters - CMC, Rarity
Summary - "The Crusaders have their biggest case yet when a priceless artifact belonging to superstar Songbird Serenade is stolen!"

FiM Issue #70 (Extreme Bingo)
Characters - Golden Horseshoe Gals, Rainbow, AJ
Summary - Grannies Gone Wild 2!
Quick Review - Grannies Gone Wild 2! (5/10)

FiM Issue #71 (Happy Haunts)
Characters - Student 6
Summary - Twilight Sparkle's School of Friendship students experience Nightmare Night in Ponyville for the first time. Things don't exactly go as planned.
Quick Review - I hate this issue. Not because it's bad, but because we are teased with infinitely more interesting stories. I want to see the princesses on Nightmare Night, like the cover! I want to see Shim and Glim's NN, like on the first page! Fucking cocktease. (4/10)

FiM Issue #72 (Pie in the Sky, Again)
Characters - Pinkie, AJ, Pear Butter
Summary - Applejack discovers an old Apple family pie recipe and seeks to recreate it for Granny Smith. Along the way, they meet ponies who her mom has touched in her life. I wouldn't mind being touched by Pear Butter.
Quick Review - Standard. Wholesome. Sweet. (7/10)

My Little Pony: Nightmare Knights (Major) (Highly Recommended)
Characters - Luna, Stygian, Trixie, Capper, Tempest, Daybreaker, Eris
Summary - Princess Luna assembles a team of former villains to face a new threat to Equestria.
Quick Review - I cannot recommend this arc enough. Every single character gets a chance to shine. Stygian gets much need development. Eris and Daybreaker make a menacing evil duo. The villain casino makes a great setting. Sunset Shimmer gets a cameo. (Even though her and Starlight are once again shafted.) Capper absolutely steals the show. Tempest is a bit more brutish than she usually is, but as we don't know much about her anyway, that's a very minor gripe. (9/10)

FiM Issue #73 (Copycats)
Characters - Fluttershy, Twilight
Summary - A magical amulet causes Fluttershy to become more animalistic.
Quick Review - I have no idea what the fuck what went on in this issue or why. It's a mess. (3/10)

FiM Issue #74 (On the Mane Stage) (Recommended)
Characters - Zephyr, Fluttershy, Silverstream, Pixie Cut
Summary - Fluttershy's brother Zephyr Breeze attends the All-Equestria Mane Styling Conference.
Quick Review - Even Zephyr Breeze can snag a qtπ hairstylist gf. There is hope for us yet, bros. Could you tell i'm down a third of a bottle of Grey Goose by this point? (7/10)

FiM Issue #75-78 (Major) (Recommended)
Characters - Cosmos, Twilight, Discord, Fluttershy
Summary - The Mane Six's quest for the fallen stars of a missing constellation puts them on a collision course with their most galactic adversary yet. Discord's clingy ex wife who still hasn't received any child support.
Quick Review - They don't even bother to write Starlight out anymore. She just doesn't exist. Cosmos isn't as fun of a villain as Eris or the Storm King, but she's serviceable. I do like her design. Discord puts his past behind him for good physically and metaphorically. (7/10)

FiM Issue #79 (The Ponyville Anniversary Spectacular) (Highly Recommended) (Major!)
Characters - Sunset Shimmer, I don't know I don't remember the rest
Summary - Fuck you it has Shim Sham.
Quick Review - Sunnybutt jams out on a guitar at the end. (11/10)

My Little Pony: Spirit of the Forest
Characters - CMC, Filthy Rich, Diamond Tiara, Mayor Mare
Summary - Something about a forest mystery?
Quick Review - Lackluster follow up to the amazing Nightmare Knights. Stop giving the CMC mini series you hacks. (4/10)

FiM Issue #80 (Live-Action Role Pony!)
Characters - Mane 6, Bulk Biceps
Summary - The Mane Six play a live-action role-playing game. The usual Pinkie hijinks ensue.
Quick Review - I'm so use to using LARP as an insult now, it's weird to see it in an endearing manner. Fun little adventure issue. (6/10)

FiM Issue #81 (Pretty Fly)
Characters - Scootaloo, Rumble, Rainbow, Wind Sock
Summary - Scootaloo and Rumble learn about the only Earth pony to become a member of the Wonderbolts.
Quick Review - Heartwarming. Seriously, someone get me thesaurus. (6.5/10)

FiM Issue #82 (Dog-Dog-Dogged Determination)
Characters - Rarity, Mane 6, Celestia, Cerberus
Summary - Rarity is tasked with giving Cerberus obedience training after he leaves his post at Tartarus again.
Quick Review - Dude, Rares, never change. (6/10)

FiM Issue #83 (The Strange Case of Silver Blaze)
Characters - Twilight, Spike
Summary - Twilight Sparkle and Spike investigate when a famous racing tortoise goes missing.
Quick Review - Less Sherlock Holmes and more Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. This is a good thing. (6/10)

My Little Pony: Feats of Friendship (Major) (Recommended)
Characters - Student Six, Swift Foot
Summary - Come one, come all, to the School of Friendship's very first sporting event-the Feats of Friendship! As Sandbar, Smolder, Gallus, Ocellus, Yona, and Silverstream prepare for the new competition, they realize they're going to need one more pony to round out their team. Enter Swift Foot, a mysterious new exchange student! But will she help strengthen the Young Six's bonds of friendship-or just drive them apart? Jealousy threatens our favorite youngsters in this brand-new miniseries!
Quick Review - This is by far and away my favorite Student 6 depiction in the franchise. It shows off very well how far they have come and how well they work together as friends and individuals. Swift Hoof makes for a great antagonist, trying to plant seeds of resentment but realizing that it doesn't work on the students and realizing her own faults. Dom Athenian Warrior waifu also included. (8.5/10)

FiM Issue #84 (Identity Crisis)
Characters - Ocellus
Summary - Ocellus struggles to complete a big project for the School of Friendship midterm.
Quick Review - Man, I wish my problem was that I was so booksmart I had trouble fitting it all into my creative outlets. What a fucking struggle that would be. But I understand wanting to be a perfectionist, and that sucks. Amazing insight as usual by me. (5/10)

FiM Issue #85 (Apple Bobbing)
Characters - AJ, AB, Big Mac
Summary - Applejack teaches Apple Bloom the meaning of courage by telling her the story of how she conquered her fear of the water when she was little.
Quick Review - A whole lot of touching moments between AJ and AB. A very cozy little story if you ignore the giant spider. (7/10)

FiM Issue #86 (Marble and a Hard Place)
Characters - Maud, Marble Pinkie
Summary - Pinkie Pie and Maud Pie help their sister Marble make friends by helping her throw a party.
Quick Review - I love the Pie family, dude. The chemistry between them is something we don't get to see often enough. (6.5/10)

FiM Issue #87-88 (The Fast and the Furriest)
Characters - Big Mac, Rainbow, Angel
Summary - Rainbow Dash and Big McIntosh take part in the Draytona Breach 500, which an antiquities dealer uses as cover to smuggle a priceless artifact.
Quick Review - Meh. (6/10)

I can finally pass out now.

OBLIGATORY FILLER MATERIAL – Just take a hard left at Daeseong-dong…7

Continuing
Well, when the props fouled the third time, I suggested we call it a day, as we’d already made some 32 sea-kilometers. We were out on the fringes of the worst of the kelp forest beds, and after a good night’s sleep, we’d be ready to deploy bright and early and get some seismic data acquired and recorded.
But, first, there was the first night aboard ship. In a rusty old tin-can with few creature comforts, as the annual winter monsoon winds wane and the seas actually begin to settle slightly.
I took that as both good omens. The bitching and kvetching I head from the locals about the ‘abominable weather they had to endure’, even from the Coast Guard types, really struck me as uproariously funny.
I just chalked it up to being sequestered from the rest of the world for so long. Put these characters in the path of a Midwestern tornado, East Indian summer monsoon, or Siberian blizzard, and they’d shit themselves blind. I didn’t really think too much of it, although it became somewhat of a game when the imperialistic foreigners tried to one-up each other with horror stories from excursions past.
“No shit”, Dax said, “We were snowed in for a full fortnight.”
“No!” several of us recoiled in mock horror.
“Oh, yah, hey.” Dax continued, “It’s just great when blizzards snap the power lines, and all the toilets freeze. The house cat didn't die until we burned up all our wood. Considering we ate her raw, she tasted pretty good…”
Several of our handlers, a few in the Coast Guard and most of the Korean scientists reacted rather badly to Dax’s story; especially when it had been gorily translated.
Seeing this, Dax stood up, got the soju bottle, and asked if anyone needed a top-up. I asked while puffing away on a large Jamaican cigar if anyone needed a smoke.
At this point, Dax was winning. He had seven of the assembled crowd run to the rail to relieve themselves of our canned Chinese dinner.
Not ever one to shrink from a challenge, I related my second-hand story of my Brother-in-law, who was in the US Coast Guard for years and years. I waited for the green crowd to re-join us and regain what remained of their composure. I figured the quasi-military national Coast Guarders here would appreciate the tale.
Mine wasn’t a gory or shocking tale, just one of the incredible water conditions off the coast of California.
I waited until everyone was settled, drink in hand, and smokin’ ‘em if you got ‘em.
“Well”, I said, “It was on board a ship much like the one we’re currently on,” I said as a rascal wave broke over the railing in counterpoint. “About the same size as this vessel, but with smaller wheels. You know these Coast Guard shallow-water boys”, I chuckled. Always meaning to jab one group or another in the place where I know it stings.
Yeah, I’m a real bastard that way sometimes.
The Korean Coast Guarders sneered hardly at me; but not too hard. They liked my cigars, cigarettes, and open disbursement policy too much.
“Yeah, anyways”, I continued, “He was offshore California in one of the US Coast Guard cutters. It was a boat about 26 meters or so in length. They were out doing search and rescue after a mega-nasty storm blew in from the west and scuttled a sailing regatta race.”
I was drawing them in with my ‘just so’ story, nice and easy, until…
“Yeah, there were several capsized monohulls, catamarans and trimarans. Damn, these things were fucking yachts. Owned by rich idiots that almost knew how to sail but didn’t know enough to get out of the way of a fucking severe storm…”
I really had their attention with ‘soaking the rich’.
“Well, the waves grew and grew, but my Brother-in-laws's boat was built to handle severe weather. These patrol and rescue boat has the capability to roll over 360 degrees and self-right within 30 seconds. Like right now, you’d never even notice this degree rock and roll”, I said as I demonstrated with my cigar, tracing out tighter and tighter rolls, and higher degrees of rocking and rolling.
“They were approaching a capsized trimaran, but the waves kept growing and growing…” I said, leading by example and having them watch me with unblinking attention.
“The waves grew and grew, and normally you’d take these head-on. But that was impossible, because when afternoon came it was slashin' rain, in the face of a hurricane west wind. The boat rolled to the left, heeled, almost keeled, a then rolled the other way just as quickly.” I noted.
They followed me as I timed it with the heavings of our own boat, to the left…to the right…
“Then, just as they were about to reach upon the trimaran, a rogue wave! Out of nowhere”, I said, rocking and rolling along with our own little boat, “BAM! Hit amidships! It didn’t roll once, it rolled twice!” I made great and magniloquent gestures of a tiny boat being savaged by a monstrous rogue sea wave.
I stood up, blew a great blue cloud of smoke towards the poop deck, and said, loudly, “Rolled over once. A full 360! Then rolled right over again. A full 720 degrees!” as I demonstrated what happened with my cigar and drink.
The eyes following me rolled and rolled as well. Some straight back into the owner’s head and some to the left, some to the right…it was like ‘Loose Slots’ night in Vegas, they were rolling and rolling.
And then racing for the rails. Topside to deliver the remains of their hearty canned dinners.
“Beat you, Dax!” I smiled as I sat back down, “I got nine with that at one. And two of them were Coasties!”
“Did that really happen?” Ivan asked.
“According to my Brother-in-law. But he’s an engineer if you know what I mean…” I smiled.
We concluded story night as we had drifted free of the kelp forest and the Captain of the boat decided he’d risk an anchorage for the night. The weather was ameliorating, the seas calming themselves down, and the wind dropping a couple of notches on the Beaufort Scale.
“Well, gents”, I said, “I need some air. The aroma down here of Chinese Aplo™ for dinner, those who didn’t make it to the rails, and the solitary head for the entire crew has lost its charm. If you’ll excuse me”, I said as I grabbed a bottle of ersatz vodka, and several cans of Taedonggang beer, “I’ll be on the aft deck; in my comfy chair and contemplating the wonder of it all.”
With that, I ventured up the stairs and out onto the aft deck.
Dax naturally followed and he found his own not-bolted-down deck chair. We had a constant flow of visitors, foreign and nationals alike. It was shaping up to be a fine night for being out under the stars, there was no light pollution at all. We sat in our chairs, drank our drinks, smoked our smokes, and argued the finer points of astronomy as seen from this part of the world.
I had several side chats with the scientists and academicians from the Korean side. They all had one thing on their minds. Well, one thing after cigars and cigarettes. They wanted Western scientific journals. They were actually trying to bribe me to get those copies, any age, any subject; of Science, AAPG Explorer, and SEPM Proceedings, anything of Western science as it is today. I said they were welcome to a couple of copies of Science and SPE journals I had brought with as an afterthought, for free. With 900 won to the dollar, they needed every won they could get. I wasn’t about to take anything for the free dissemination of knowledge.
However, if they saw it fit to buy me a drink or seven, I wouldn’t object.
In reality, I’d buy those as well.
We made secret pacts to meet at the hotel-casino the night before we left, whenever the fuck that would be. We had a lot of work before us as it stands. It won’t be for a few weeks, I reminded them.
They had no problem. If I could ask the other in the team if they’d do likewise, the appreciation would be palpable.
Great. Now I have to go get my field notebooks and make some more new entries.
Dax cratered around 0100. I elected to stay the night and sleep under the stars as the boat slowly rocked one way and rolled the other. It was quiet, dark as a tomb, and brilliantly lit up by the stellar backbone of the night once the clouds fumbled out. Tomorrow looked as if it were to be bright and sunny if the gentle westerlies had anything to say about the next day’s conditions.
The next day dawned early, bright, and ridiculously sunny as it usually does when the monsoons have departed and it had stopped raining.
“OK.”, I thought, “Time for a hearty breakfast. For someone else. I wonder what’s available here.”
I ventured down to the cold galley and there were several boxes of dry Chinese breakfast cereal, “Shredded Tweet” and the like, some sort of obviously aged bakery, and a case of Taedonggang beer.
“Hmmm”, I mused out loud, “Beer and rice crispies. Breakfast of champions.”
Dax walks in, rubbing his eyes. He sees me drowning my rice cereal in foamy ersatz milk.
“Reminds me of field camp!” I smiled as I chowed on the morning’s offerings.
After our ‘hearty’ breakfast, all the scientific parties gathered in the main stateroom. It was cramped, but the walls were magnetic and we could hang maps, well, charts actually since we’re well offshore now, and plots the day’s course.
Out in the Yellow Sea, we were supposedly over a subsurface, and by dint of being offshore, submarine, dome. Salt dome? Unlikely. Probably more of a shale dome, which isn’t a bad thing when hunting for oil and gas.
Looking at the charts, I ask the locals what our current position was relative to the domal uplift.
After several long moments of silence, I asked again.
“Umm, guys”, I said, “If you’re not going to be forthcoming with something as simple as positional data, then turn this boat 180^0’s and take us back to shore. I am fed up, as are my team, with this tight-holing of the simplest of data when you are the knotheads that asked us here for help. We get paid either way, and I for one wouldn’t mind being paid triple to sit in the hotel’s basement and drink”
After telling the translator to translate that last part literally, I sat back, pulled out a really nasty cigar, and went through all the threatening moves of firing it up in the enclosed cabin.
“You will have to excuse us”, came the reply from one of the elders, “We are not used to dealing with oegugseon [foreigners].”
“Are you used to following orders?” I asked brusquely.
“Of course!” came the near-unanimous reply.
“Great. Then consider this an order: You will relay the appropriate information when asked by any Westerner on this cruise. Consider it as coming from the Supreme Leader of this expedition.” I noted.
Using the term ‘Supreme Leader’ was both a bow to their current bad-hair-cut in charge and my desire to let them know I was serious as a kick to the scrotum about the whole fucking deal.
There were a couple of gasps and some consternatious talk, but eventually, one brave soul got up, walked over to the chart, and pointed to our relative location.
“There”, I added, “That wasn’t so hard, was it? Didn’t hurt in the least, did it?”
There were a few chuckles amongst our national colleagues, so I figured that was at least a little progress.
“OK, then”, I continued, “Volna? Ack? You’re up to bat.”
I turned the proceedings over to the geophysicists. They would devise the configuration of the towed array, our speed, direction, charge size, which was based on depth, and all the other geophysical flips and twists one has to do in order to acquire the best data.
This shit doesn’t come cheap. The Mesozoic-Paleozoic marine residual basin in the South Yellow Sea where these domes live is a potentially significant deep potential hydrocarbon reservoir. However, the imaging of the deep prospecting target is quite challenging due to the specific seismic-geological conditions. In the Central and Wunansha Uplifts, the penetration of the seismic wavefield is limited by the shallow high-velocity layers (HVLs) and the weak reflections in the deep carbonate rocks. With the conventional marine seismic acquisition technique, the deep weak reflection is difficult to image and identify. We confirm through numerical simulation that the combination of multi-level impulse source (i.e., explosive) array and extended cable used in the seismic acquisition is crucial for improving the imaging quality.
With that, we’re going to be recording a minimum of four stacks, with a receiver interval of 25 meters. The array will have a shot interval of 50 meters, with a 25 meter near offset, and a 2500 meter far offset. We will attempt to record 180 channels, off-end, with a sampling period of 0.5 seconds, and a record length of 5 seconds. We’ll sail the same course 4 times to verify previous records and attempt to add ‘fold’, i.e., extra data from the same point, to the overall records.
That’s the plan, at least.
Loads of preparation, logistics, and execution.
After a half an hour or so, both Volna and Ack are finished with the national scientists.
They set down their notebooks, pens, notes, and pointers; walk out of the meeting room and directly over to the galley.
“Hungry, fellas?” I inquire.
“Rock?”, Ack asks, “You have explosives here, right? Sink us. Just fucking sink us right now.” As he pours himself and Volna a stiff shot of real vodka.
“Uh, oh. Problems in Dreamland?” I ask, utilizing the derogatory name for the geophysical domain of exploration data.
“Un-be-fucking-believable.”, Volna adds.
“Your colloquial American is coming along well, Volna.” I snickered a bit.
“I learn from you”, he spat, “Cannot believe this. They don’t record while underway. They tow single array and stop. Then drop dynamite over side. They record. Then they do it again. Claim this gives them good fold. This is bullshit. You said devise program. HA! Take us to shore and let me teach them the fucking basics of geophysical acquisition. Then in a few years, we come back and do it right.”
“Oh, fuck”, I reply, wincing, “That bad?”
“Oh, no”, Ack continues, “It’s worse.” As he down 100 milliliters of booze in one draught and pours another for Volna and is own self, “No on-board demultiplexing. No on-board pre-processing. No-onboard QA/QC. No on-board anything. It’s fucking hopeless. Sink us, I’d rather take my chances with the sharks.”
“They can’t do all that stuff or they won’t do all that stuff,” I asked, expecting the worst.
“Oh, it might be possible, with this museum-grade crap they call a computer they have on-board. It’s just time-consuming, tricky, and will need constant attention. But with this raft of sad-sacks, flub-a-dubs and third rate hobbyists?” Ack and Volna agree as one.
“Consider it job security”, I replied, “How about this? One test loop and we use that data to do what’s necessary; just once. Then we can say we’ve shown them the way. After that, I’ll leave it up to the National scientists.”
“Good thing we have 2 full days, Rock”, Volna said, “Because we do a single AC (acquisition) run, it’ll take the rest of the time to show these buggers how it’s done.”
“Ack? You agree?” I asked.
Ack agreed, in spades.
“OK, gentlemen”, I said, “Let’s make it so. About time, too. I haven’t blown anything up in a couple of weeks. I’m getting antsy. Let’s go tell them the good news.”
“NO! WE REFUSE!” was the cheery response from the nationals when Ack, Volna, and I laid out the rather lengthy program for the next couple of days.
“OK. Someone tell the Captain to head for home. We’re done here.” I calmly told our handlers and the translators.
Panic in Pyongyang.
Immediately, there is this hue and cry about how this was not supposed to be how this trip was going to work. This was to be an acquisition trip only. This was to be a one-off to show Best Korea geophysical prowess. This was supposed to be data gathering trip on the Western scientists…
Oops.
That last one was a bit of a mistake.
I turn to one of the translators and ask them to re-translate that last part, just in case I was hearing imaginary things.
“Oh, yes”, he replied, “He said they were here to gather data on the Western Scientists as well as offshore data.”
“Is that a fact?” I reacted. “Please tell them I need to see all my team members on the fantail immediately if you would. Sorry, translators and nationals not included in this little meeting.”
We reconvene on the fantail a few minutes later. I walk in on this little conclave with cigar and drink in hand.
“OK, gents”, I say, puffing a huge blue cloud, swigging a tot, “Here’s what I think we, as responsible international scientists, should do in this regrettable situation. We were asked to come here, with provisions that we would not be under cynosure, observation, or surveillance. Given ‘Open and Free Access’, no questions asked. We were to be treated as “esteemed guests”. This is obviously a load of dingo’s kidneys. I think we need to get as creative as possible and do whatever we can to provide as much deliberate misinformation to these characters to annoy, amaze, or disgust them as much as possible. Comments?”
There’s a general buzz, but no real dissention. After a few moment's discussion, Dax suggests we get a load of XXXXL condoms, and leave them around packaged as “Texas Medium”.
“That’s the spirit”, I reply. “Anyone one else up for a little Psychological Operations on our not-so-clever-nor-truthful hosts?”
We all agree that we will, in our own little way, start a campaign of deliberate misinformation, misdirection, and general petty bullshit nastiness for our hosts to discover and by which be dismayed.
Everyone’s in agreement. This trip has been a rotund bale of jeers from the get-go.
Promises made, promises broken. Itineraries approved then inexplicably disapproved. We make requests, they accede; and then nothing ever happens. It’s most frustrating.
We’re tolerating a lot of horse, bull, cow, and assorted other farmyard excrements; all in the name of international harmony and scientific goodwill. This has been an outgoing one-way street for too long. We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore.
“Hellfire and Dalmatians!” I growl, growing angrier every minute I think about the subject, “We need to take the high, low, and middle ground on this offensive. Nothing too overt or obvious; however we need to jank these bastards good. But they can’t realize they’re being janked…!”
Ack cuts in.
“The esteemed Dr. Rock is right. Psychotic...but absolutely right. We got to take these bastards. We could fight them with conventional weapons. That could take years...cost millions of lives. In this case... I think we have to go all out. I think this situation absolutely requires...a really futile and stupid gesture... be done on somebody's part.”
There’s a general buzz among the assembled.
“And we're just the guys to do it.”
Shouts and catcalls of deep agreement.
“Operation ‘Confound-a-Korean’” is now enacted.
“About fucking time!”
“Let’s do it!”
“Dissen gonna be bery messy! Me no watchin!”
“OK, I think, “Who’s the prequel-series wiseass?”
“OK, gentlemen”, I continue, “We continue with our scientific duties. No fucking around there. But, when it comes to…interpretation…opinion…or personal viewpoint; let’s go full impede. Dazzle them with brilliance or baffle them with bullshit.”
We all agree and after a couple of quick rounds of old thought provoker, we realize this trip has just taken a hard left into Wackyland. We will have to let our comrades onshore know of this, but that can wait until we return. Right now, we all have jobs to do. Real jobs, serious jobs, covert and sneaky jobs…
So, it’s back to the recording shack as we lay out the plans for the next couple of days.
Volna begins: “OK, listen up you primitive screwheads. We’re going to assemble and layout a recording array that’s called a Meisenheimer Triplet. You do know what a simple Meisenheimer Triplet is, don’t you?”
There’s a slight murmur from our national friends, but in the end, they all plead ignorance.
“Right. Thought so. A Meisenheimer Triplet is a central towed array flanked by two shorter, subparallel flanking sub-frammitz arrays. We will assemble this array on-board, even though it’s probably going to take every ounce of silver solder and electrician’s tape you’ve got. The amount of data received is orders of magnitude greater than any single Sheriff-sonde array, like the ones you been using.”
Suddenly, there are nods and murmurs of agreement.
“Right”, Volna smiles sinisterly to me, “With that, we’ll need to devise an explosive package, well, actually, a series of explosive packages based on the harmonia of the pre-bottom fore-sets, water depth, tow vehicle velocity, water column density, and decomposition coefficients of the said water column. Oh, yeah. Fish too.”
Volna is really getting into the spirit of the affair.
“Who is your explosives engineer?” Ack asks, “He’s going to have to do some serious number-crunching with all the pre-blast data we’ll need to supply. “
One quick translation and there’s nothing but long faces and querulous looks from our national crowd.
“We have no explosives engineer”, the head Best Korean geophysicist laments. “Explosives are very, very heavily regulated by the government. That’s why we have several Government Observers on board. They handle the explosives.”
“Oh?” Ack remarks, “Are they fully up to speed on the Barnard-Reichmann equations for hydro-displacement of serial charges? Which subset of the marine rarefication coefficients do they employ?”
“Ummm, don’t know.” was the answer.
“Don’t know? Well”, Volna continues, “Then, they must be pretty good with the Langefors-Kihlström formulae, right?”
“No. Not as such.” Came the response.
“I see”, Ack sighs, “Well, then, I guess they must utilize the Il’yushin algorithms then. OK, it’s a bit old school, but they should still work.”
“Ah. Well. No.” was the rejoinder they offered.
“Well, then what the fuck do they use?” Volna explodes, “A modified Ambraseys-Hendorn model? Ghosh-Damen 1? Ghosh-Damen 2? Indian Fargin Standard? Prejaculated Rai-Singh protocols, fer’ chrissake? Which?”
Nothing but shaking heads and wringing hands.
“They take a case of dynamite, wire it up, and throw it overboard with a long fuse.” Was the eventual answer. “That’s why we stop to record.”
Long, exasperated sigh later, “Jesus Q. Tapdancing Christ on a crème cracker. No wonder you never get anything done.” Volna continues, “You characters are in luck. You just happen to be so lucky to have an internationally-renowned Master Blaster right here on board ship today.”
Volna turns the crowd over to me, “Doctor? Do your damnedest. And good luck.”
“Thanks, Volna”, I say, cigar in one hand, stalwart drink in the other, “OK, guys. Here’s the deal. When it comes to explosives and explosive design, I’m the hookin’ bull. No one has authority over me. Not the Captain. Not the boson’s mate. Not the Captain’s Consort even. Nor the guys in the cheap shiny suits. What I say, goes. No exceptions. No hesitation. We green or are we going back to shore?”
“Cholog?” they ask.
“Yes. ‘Cholog’. Green. Are we understanding one another? Are we all in agreement? Are you fuckin’ diggin’ me, Beaumont?”
There’s some quick back and forth in Korean, a lot of seeming bad noise. Even the shiny suit squad and Coasties join in the fun.
“Grudgingly, we agree. Green as you say, Doctor Rock. You are the one in charge.” Came the head national’s reply.
“Splendid. I’m in charge of the charges.” I chuckle, puffing an enormous cloud of expensive Oscuro smoke, “Volna, Ack; please get me the required parameters. I’ll be in the ordnance locker to see what we’re working with here. C’mon fellas, chop-chop!”
Volna and Ack take their select set of geophysical wishers and wannabes while I get the rest of the locals, the shiny suit squad in reserve, but in tow.
I head off to the ordinance locker.
Dax runs behind “Hey! Wait for me.”
“We have to”, I snigger a reply, “We’re going to need a drinks runner.”
“Marvelous…” was the one-word response.
We get to the locked ordinance locker. It’s one of the few original structures remaining on the ship. The boat was torn down almost to the waterline and re-built for seismic acquisition, but they had enough brains to realize that the source of the seismic signals was usually explosive in nature. Dinoseis and Mini-Sossie were closed books to them.
Therefore, the locker remained intact, however grudgingly.
“Whew! And what a locker.” I whewed. “And what a lock. OK, who’s got the keys?”
There are general hemming and hawing and no one seems to know where the keys for the ordinance locker are kept.
“Well, gents”, I say, pointedly, “I would suggest that one or more of you toddle off and fucking find the goddamn keys or this will turn out to be a very short and unproductive trip, indeed.”
A while later, a bit longer than I personally care for, the boat’s Captain wanders up, all a-scowl and generally pissed-off looking.
“Who here needs the key to the explosives locker?” He asks in his Captainly, no-nonsense manner.
There’s more muttering and murmuring, but eventually, all fingers point toward me.
The Captain looks at me.
“Hello.”
He’s giving me the once over with a LASER stink eye. I don’t know which irritated him the most; the lit cigar, the drink, the Stetson, Hawaiian shirt, cargo shorts, Scottish knee socks or field boots.
“And who the hell are you”? He asks, oh, so wrongly, through an interpreter.
I stand up, fully puffed to full mammalian threat posture and say in a loud steady voice;
“I’m THE Doctor Rocknocker, the MOTHERFUCKING PRO FROM DOVER!, that’s who.”
Since I had a good 6 inches and way too many kilos on him; my loud, American and very un-oriental answer took him completely by surprise.
His eyes got as big as dinner plates and he shakily held out the ring of keys for the explosives locker.
“Why thank you very much”, I said, bowing in his direction ever so slightly. Wasn’t his fault he wasn’t totally clued in on all the recent goings-on aboard his vessel.
I toss the keys to Dax, “Here, earn your keep.” I snickered.
Dax deftly fields the keys, chuckles back, and begins the game of ‘which key for which lock’?
I thank the Captain and explain that I’m the de facto leader of this special education class, and make some pointed, mild epitaphs about landlubbers, national scientists, and the cargo of the totally clueless on board.
He sees I’m not a total boor and relaxes some. We haven’t really had a real introduction, so I grab a translator and engage the Captain in a short, though insightful conversation.
Cigars were exchanged. Handshakes were as well.
Seems he’s just as aggravated by these know-it-alls who really know-fuck-all. We see eye to eye and part friends once Dax finally figures out the combination to the weapons locker.
“Holy fuck!” I exclaim, “Now that’s a door.” I say looking at the slowly-opening covering of the weapon’s portico. Fully five solid inches of solid steel. Triple reinforced hinges. Deadman's latches. Bringles-jams and solid, non-decabulated cast-steel cross-members.
Just the thing to contain an errant blast and send all that excess energy skyward instead of into the bowels of the boat.
OK, bonus points for that design feature.
I look inside, but it’s dark and fragrant as the inside of an irritated oyster in the bottom of the Tonga-Kermadec Trench.
Dax fumbles around and finds the light switch.

FLIP

“Hmmm.” I hmmed. “Well, we’re all set for dynamite, I see.”
Case after case after case of leaking, cheap-ass Chinese knock-off sort-of Du Pont-style 50% dynamite. Box after box of Pseudo-Dyno-Nobel blasting caps. Delaminating, unwinding spools after spool of “PrimUcord”. Sticky “Korea” brand silk-woven coated Demolition Wire.
“Gads.” I sigh. “What a nightmare. Either this stuff goes off when you give it a dirty look or it doesn’t go off at all.”
Dax looks to me, “So, the trip’s a bust. Is that what you’re saying?”
“If we don’t find something that’ll work, probably,” I reply. “This shit’s worthless.”
We continue to search after I shoo everyone but Dax out of the locker. It’s damp and musty in here, smelling disconcertingly of kerosene, gherkins, and old sardines. That’s one sure sign of dynamite going bad. I warn Dax to be extra careful, that this stuff hasn’t had the best of handling. We could be in for an unexpected surprise.
So, we redouble our efforts and are much more circumspect.
Knock-off this and fake-ass that.
All Chinese in origin. It might have worked one day; but after sitting in here, unattended, unturned, and uncared for? I’m ready to both literally and figuratively pull the plug on this whole fiasco.
Dax is all smiles.
“Doctor?” Dax asks, “What is it that would make you happy?”
“A nice fishing boat, a huge never-emptying bank account, endless cigars, and a comfy chair back in the north of Baja Canada in a tavern on a good fishing lake,” I replied.
“Well”, Dax smiles, “I can’t do that, but how about this?” as he opens a cleverly hidden door.
I look in, let my eyes adjust to the low-light scenario to see no lakes, no huge bank accounts, nor fishing boats; but what I do see makes me smile wide.
It’s a sub-locker full of familiar Made-in-the-USA, True Blue, American-manufacture cyclo-trimethylene-tri-nitramine, or Good Ol’ C-4 explosive. Block after lovely hexahedral block of the stuff.
“Dax”, I say, “Take a gold star out of petty cash. You’ve just saved the mission.”
“I’ll settle for a tall vodka and one of your cigars”, Dax smiles.
“Later”, I say, “We now have a little job which to attend.”
With C-4, designing the impulse charges is seriously a walk in the park. They’re already waterproof, so all I need is water depth and the number of seconds to which they want to record data. I can bundle a series of blocks of the stuff, charge them with a couple-three or four, just in case, blasting caps, and connect them with stout lengths of demolition wire. These will be dragged, with a ‘Herring Dodger’, to control depth, behind the boat as we are underway.
It’s a novel idea, I know. One that’s only been in use in the west for about 60 years.
We’ll drag a daisy chain of C-4 packets. One after another, individual charges in the packets will detonate milliseconds apart. I can bundle the packets so that we can run a charge string of up to 12 discrete packets which will attenuate the amplification of the arrhythmic flux, I tell one of my Korean onlookers.
With this set-up, we can record data for literally sea-miles.
First, we will moosh the C-4 into a flattened, semi-hydrodynamically stable pancake or airfoil, OK, hydrofoil, shape; wire three or five of them together, charge them, then repeat.
Depending on what parameters Volna and Ack supply, the chain will just be a number of similar packets, trailing one after the other, detonating from back to front; down below the hydrophones, but well above the seafloor.
We know that the hydrophones will be at or very near the surface, but we need to know, explicitly, the basal bathymetry of the area we're about to shoot. Wouldn’t do anyone any good if we drove over a seafloor hump and dragged the C-4 over it to have it detonate prematurely.
Or not at all.
So, we need to plot our course and sail it today while we get the hydrophone arrays built and we image the seafloor where we’re going to do some blasting. After that, it’ll probably be an all-nighter to create the blasting strings so we can spend the next day recording, and then head for home as we’re nearly out of victuals and potables.
At least, that’s the plan.
I convene a quick meeting and we plot a course on the latest charts. 30 kilometers of recording.
Shit, that’s going to be a lot of explosives. Doable, but a pain.
Remembering the quality of the recording equipment, I suggest we do a test run in the morning of just 5 kilometers. If that works, and we can up it in increments.
Dax, Sagong the head Korean geophysicist, and I go to visit the Captain.
We visit the Captain and lay out our plans. He has no objections, as were in Best Korean waters and there are no obstacles out here like sunken wrecks, kelp forests, American aircraft carriers, or other impediments.
With that, we tell him to align the ship and let us know when he can begin doing the recon sortie.
He says that he can do that immediately, and before we're out of the pilothouse, we’re recording bathymetric, i.e., depth, data. The technology’s not much different, nor advanced, than a standard Lake Winnebago fish finder, so that’s one disaster sorted.
We are sailing along in a series of parallel straight lines, which when the data are played back and deconvoluted, will give us a good idea of the bathymetry which we’ve been motoring over. It’ll basically give us both a depth map and a surface, ok, bottom, map of the seafloor above which we’re sailing. A little basic submarine hyperbolic quantum trigonometry and well, we have the data we need to plug into the various equations to see what we’ll require when we want to record seismic data to 5000 milliseconds.
With that, there’s not much else to do until we have the survey map. I dragoon Dax and Cliff into helping me inventory the explosives bunker.
“The hell with the dynamite, PrimUcord, and other Oriental-Knockoff Horseshit”, I instruct my helpers, “Let’s just count up the C-4, and see what our tally is. Oh, yeah, give me a tally of the blasting caps. Gotta use those ratty bastards, they’re the only actuators here I sort of, kind of, trust.”
With Dax, myself, and Cliff, we’re done in less than an hour. I decide that I’ll be the keeper of the keys and take them back to the Captain my own self. Rules of engagements, chain of command and all that hogwash.
I hand the keys over to the Captain and instruct the co-pilot to make an entry in the logbook that I returned the key to the Captain, this date, this time.
“By the book. It’s not just a good idea, it’s the law.” I muse.
To be continued…

casino domain names ideas video

#2) Shortlist your ideas. Once you’ve developed a list of possible names, do an analysis of your ideas. Remove any names that could be hard to remember, spell or speak aloud. Keep names that are brandable, sound great, are memorable and communicate your brand values, product or service to your target audience. Try NameSnack — a free and intuitive business name generator that uses machine learning and instant domain search technology to generate scores of brandable business name ideas. Simply enter a few keywords and you'll have results within moments. If you see a speakeasy business name you love, consider purchasing the matching domain name before someone else snaps it up. Discover a list of cool, creative and catchy company name ideas to inspire you. Receive great, customized brand name suggestions instantly. Find unique names by industry, popular words, ideas, and more. Work with 100’s of naming experts. Choose an online Casino domain name. You should go for a domain name if you want your business to work online. In this process, you should choose a simple name because long and complicated names are difficult to search online. Secondly, lengthy names are also hard to remember and understand. In the above article, we have tried to cover different lists of shop name ideas for you to choose from if you are looking for some ideas for gift shop names or any other type of store. From funny names to cute names, we have covered it all. These names will help you to attract more and more customers as the name of a store plays a major role in gaining more and more customer footfall. This list of available five letter domain names can be used in any niche. Just pick one and let’s start! 2. Product Name Generator. When you are looking for a product name always consider that the names have to be catchy as catchy names will stick into your customer’s minds. This cool product name generator will allow you to generate name ideas that will stand out from the crowd. Also when ... Hold a contest to get 200+ available name ideas. 7983 contests held. Start a Domain Name Contest; Need help? 4632 names generated. 4632 names generated. Hide taken domains 100 per page chevron_left chevron_right Exact Match Add 207 wordlists to your word /domain-search/append. Cool.com. swap_horiz similar : Check all names Check TheCoolElement.com. swap_horiz similar : Check all names Check ... If you fall in this category and wish to share your ideas with everyone, read the names below for your DIY blog. Eco-Friendly Goals: Decorate the Pots: My Arts and Crafts: Tastefully Loaded: The Artistic Arsenal: Fragile Lanterns : Incenses & Candles: Cut-outs and Arts: Origami Illusions: Creative Corners: Design’n Decorate: Fairy Lights & Glam: Draw, cut, & paste: Artistic Patterns ... Jan 30, 2019 - Explore India Byers's board "Casino theme parties", followed by 185 people on Pinterest. See more ideas about casino theme parties, casino theme, casino. Try NameSnack — a free and intuitive business name generator that uses machine learning and instant domain search technology to generate scores of brandable business name ideas. Simply enter a few keywords and you'll have results within moments. If you see a casino business name you love, consider purchasing the matching domain name before someone else snaps it up.

2021 Cool Business Names Ideas List Creative Brand Name ...

casino domain names ideas

casino domain names ideas - win

Economic Symbiogenesis

Skill-Based Slot Machines: What Are They and How They Work?

What Are Skill-Based Slots?

How Does a Skill-Based Slot Machine Work?

How Slot Machine Skill Games Work?

What is the Difference Between Regular and Skill Based Slots?

How Much is Actually Skill and How Much Pure Luck?

What is the Difference Between Arcade Slot Machines and Skill Based Slots?

Can You Make Money Playing Skill Based Slot Games?

The Case of PA Skill Machines (Pennsylvania Skill Machines)

Are Skill Slots the Future of the Slot Machine Industry?

Conclusion

Wealth Formula Episode 237: Is Angel Investing Right for You?

Economic Symbiogenesis

Has anyone seen this proof before?

Comprehensive Comic Book Catch-Up Guide

OBLIGATORY FILLER MATERIAL – Just take a hard left at Daeseong-dong…7

FLIP

casino domain names ideas video

casino domain names ideas top