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BigDickerDaddy's 10k Karma Knowledge Drop
u/Shine_speed9 made a post today asking a couple of question about programming, I was going to response with a monster comment but decide to make it a really in depth post instead hoping more people will see it, also It's my 10k karma post most which was gained from helping people on sprinting so figured I'd give a little more. ****************************************** Post mentioned above This is mainly for coaches to share knowledge, advice and help.
what do you coach?
what is your base training strategy? i.e. are you a plyometric junkie, sprint based, strength based, olympic lifter, Velocity based training, complex training/french contrast
how do you set up workout sessions? both offseason and in season? i.e. warm up-sprint work-plyos-gym-conditioning-cool down. what does your sessision look like more often than not
who are some of your influences and books you reccommend?
anything else you would like to share to help or educate
****************************************** Since no one has responded yet and I already have to your DM I’ll just add in here what I do, I’m not a team coach I coach myself and have had a lot of success doing so mostly thanks to learning how to train through trial and error, in high school my 100 and 200 prs were 12.3 and 24.77 respectively, now I’m looking at running 10.5 and 21s indoors potentially. I also ran track all 4 years of high school and was generally a pretty gifted athlete in other sports that were more skill based but I was too small until I grew finally the end of junior year to make them viable options. So those track numbers basically weren’t just some one and done never run before I had put in the work and seen no results basically for all 4 years. It took me really probably about a year and a half of good well thought out progression to get to where I am now. I also train with several D1 level athletes and they generally will follow my plans and technical alteration suggestions I have and they’ve found quite a bit of success as well. I spit all that out because I think it’s important to know that I’m not just someone who’s read up a bit but I’ve also put myself and others through the work. Base training strategy should always be sprinting. Really nothing else matters, yes it’s all helpful but everything you should do should be in addition to the focus which is sprints. I got caught up with this at first, sometimes the number chasing in the weight room makes sense but you can lose focus on what’s the most important thing really quickly. This is partly an answer to 2 and 3. All lifts have their place, for me it follows a progression of building maximal strength in compound lifts and transference to acceleration, so building up like a really strong squat and sealift and then moving over to heavy sled pulls and acceleration focus work on the track with more horizontal based plyometrics like speed bounds. Then as the season progresses you should be building up maximal velocity mechanics and moving over towards Olympic style lifts or just lifts where the bar has a really high velocity, electronic velocity based training is helpful but sometimes you just need a coaches eye on it or get the feel of it, plyometrics should be gradually becoming more vertical in nature like power bounds and depth drops, sprints should be stuff like flys and working in some speed endurance. By the time you hit peaking month/months really you should have dropped the volume by about 20% overall and upped the intensity of everything your doing, stuff like medball max effort throws depth jumps, long 30m flys stuff like that with some really heavy powercleans and snatches if you have the ability to perform them properly. Some key mistakes people probably make is losing focus on what they worked on in the previous blocks, about 10-20% of your working volume should be focused on the stuff that's not your primary concern at the moment to make sure you maintain your ability's otherwise you will definitely lose it, some of its just a little bit of thinking, acceleration always has a place in literally every track session you do anyway so once that's done being primary its not huge deal to lose a decent amount of specific acceleration work. Another mistake is trying to complete lifts you can't, everyone at some point should learn how to powerclean and deadlift and squat properly so throw the ego out the window and work up in weight until your able to put out a max effort with pretty solid technique in the weightroom. Also if your a begginer to intermediate athlete and not a prolevel or high level D1 caliber athlete you don't need any fancy gear to get your weight work done, just do it and done do all this fancy pants banded triple resisted shit specific squat to try and work on your 135lb one rep max. Sometimes the opposite goes for the running portion in terms of intensity and technique, sometimes when it comes to the flys and stuff you need to just fucking run and not worry too much about how naturally pretty it is, now if you look like a monkey on speed trying to run then maybe get your technique down before you do anything too out there. Also the biggest mistake I've made in the past is to not rest enough, I've also taken too much rest as well. There's a fine balance between frequency volume and intensity that should be a huge concern when looking at the overall programming. One last trick is to film as many reps as you can, it's absolutely possible to get faster every day if you pay attention to what you're doing, its the little things that build on each other that make superior athletes who they are. In the scope of overall programming recognizing that every hard workout counts is key, in a 3 week strength block I can get probably 8 days of really hard work done, that's a workout with 2 days of rest in between each time, a workout for me is the run, the plyos, and then the lift, I just count that as one session pretty much although it can be split. If you're keeping track of your weightroom numbers, which you should also make a priority, you'll notice it only takes a workout or two to add on a couple pounds to a lift if you're not pushing your natural limits. I've read a lot, listened to many podcasts, watched 1000s of hours of film, the problem with a lot of people is they have biases, even I do get caught up in certain aspects of technique and training concepts for a bit every now and then until I find either a way to usefully implement it or trash it. The people who you should listen to are the grinders, people who don't have what it takes at first to be a naturally good athlete but got there anyway. Powerlifters and Olympic lifters are always super informed regardless of how they started, they're a group of athletes who lift heavy and lift heavy fast for their sport and you should listen to them if you incorporate similar working aspects into your program. I spent a good portion of my time in a hardcore powerlifting gym over winter break filled with 6'8 350lb juggernauts who are repping out a minimum of 500lbs for their working sets and I learned a lot from them. Coaching podcasts are good but everyone's got something to sell so when you hear them talking about some wack concept that will supposedly revolutionize individual training and results be wary. I'm gonna put a couple guys on the burner mostly from instagram who sometimes have the right idea but a lot of times are just trying to sell shit but I'll tell you if they've got anything I like. Really there is a limit to what you need to know about progression in strength sports and everyone should follow the general methods of progressing because they just work. BarrRunning - what the fuck is all this talk about levers and falling, running is based on power output not how fast you have to catch yourself, the most recent thing he's been talking about is running on the heels, I think anyone can recognize this is just wrong. Will try and sell you expensive programs to explain it probably but not sure. Christian Thibaudeau - Actually a really informed guy and good coach with some solid books, my personal favorite "Theory and Application of Modern Strength and Power Methods: Modern Methods of Attaining Super-strength" is what I used to build a decent base of knowledge about strength training. What I don't like is this neurotyping shit, apparently has scientific backing, maybe, not really, doesn't make much sense and isn't practical. Just Fly Performance Podcast - Has a lot of interesting coaches and some decent talks about training methodology but has a lot of wack shit coaches are trying to push out there like Barr Running and Christian this Neurosicence fuckery. Athlete.X - Honestly the most informed guy in terms of sprinting you can probably find on the internet, has anything and everything you want to know, sells probably well set up programs but first and foremost has a huge base of general free knowledge that everyone should know. Listen to him. He is smart. Also he posted in our sprint sub the other day I'm actually just gonna tag him here maybe he'll see this post and have something to add. u/athlete-x SprintScholar - Dude on Instagram who has no base of athletes that he coaches who have shown results as far as I'm aware of, heavily biased on a lot of subjects especially resisted sprints, is most definitely not willing to change his mind regardless of results. What I do like is he pushes the idea of a short - long progression and emphasizes running fast, and short, and often, all things people don't really get when they start. Also hates tempos with a passion which I would probably agree with depending on the sprinter type. Lester Spellman - Crazy smart, hardworking, scientifically and result based coach. Mostly a speed coach for field athletes he's a real hustler if you listen to his personal story. He's got some podcasts up now that I'm sure are worth listening too, although I personally have not yet, and an instagram that's got tones of info on it as well. Every year he puts out some of the fastest guys in the NFL combine and has all sorts of fancy equipment to get results but you don't necessarily need to get there. The fastest guy I can think of that he's worked with is probably Carlin Lisles whos a freak of nature athlete. Another guy you should really listen to I would put my life on anything this guys says. FastUniversity - good team set up if your a coach working with a big group of guys, they're smart and know how to train developing athletes in highschool although if you were working with an individual I would maybe change it up a bit but they're a pretty good baseline. Juggernaut Training Systems on youtube - Chad Wesley smith is a really really smart guy, this is a powerlifting channel so take what you can from it and apply it to your weightroom stuff, they have a playlist cause Scientific Principles of Strength Training as a playlist on their youtube channel that I believe is also a book but I would just watch the videos. Got nothing bad to say about this dude really smart and informative, also has some serious personal results. Garage Strength - Smaller youtube channel that is ran by a super informative guy, can't believe its not bigger to be honest he's a goldmine of information and is specifically geared towards strength training for athletes outside of power and olmypic lifting. Performance lab of California - puts out a lot of speed analysis stuff that's super technical based on youtube, really informative if you can watch them all the way through and understand it. One thing is sometimes the ideas he has in his head about running in my opinion are just a little to technically sound if that makes sense, yeah there's a proper way to run but it's not always so black and white. PJF Performance - has a podcast and an instagram, really reputable NBA performance coach a lot like Spellman but different sport, he's focused a lot on vertical and jumps performance where you can incorporate some of his plyometric stuff, he also did a collab on programming with Spellman and like I said, would put my life on Spellman, so can't really go wrong. OvertimeAthletes - Smart dude, a lot of it's weightroom and agility work, to be honest not very track specific but I think there's stuff to learn in his videos. Sika Strength - couple of irish dudes who like olympic lifting a lot, if you watch their videos they drop lots of little tidbits that are relevant to weightroom work that I think can in general help you with Olympic stuff. Zack Telander - Olympic lifting coach who is super passionate and very result orientated a lot like Sika strength, good info. BenTheBounce - olympic bobsleigh athlete, also a talented strength and speed coach, has results to prove it and some really good drills and ideas on his page. MikeYoungPHD - Track team coach for some club that has good athletes, he's a really smart guy and has tons of information in his page if you're paying attention, if you keep up with what his team is doing you can see the progression as well. u/thesprintdoctor - yeah one of our own guys, if he comments on your post listen up. He works with the Lyles brothers and PURE athletics. Working with super high caliber guys and other coaches who have a huge base of knowledge as well. Don't go pestering him for info in the DM's though I'd feel bad about it, I believe he sells programs as well and will probably work with you pretty close so if your interested in an online coach maybe check that out. Ok, so I'm going to get into some pretty controversial and soft stuff here real quick because when you go to a lot of these weightlifting and powerlifting channels it's going to be one of the most talked about subjects that's brought up but I'm going to give it to you as straight as I can, drugs in sports are a thing if you weren't aware. If your in this sub your probably into fitness and bodybuilding or strength sports as well and you should know drugs are at the top of the list when it comes to getting an edge on the performance so you're gonna hear about it regardless I would just rather give you my take with some more experience than sending you off convinced you need to run a 52 week cycle of Dbol and Tren. The vast majority of pro athletes and more than likely all of them who are within world record range are doping one way or another. Bolt is not a natural athlete. Naturally gifted? yes. Naturally running 9.58? No. Sorry to kick you in the nuts like that, I want to make an important point out of this, DO NOT SET YOUR EXPECTATIONS TOO HIGH. They should be something you have to push for, you shouldn't be crying and shitting yourself on the floor at 4 in the morning because you didn't run a 9.3 after learning what depth jumps are. Athletes like Bolt, and Norman, and Powell, and every legend you see would be the most gifted athlete on the planet regardless of dope or not but the truth is simply that you will not make it to that level. If you do gimme a call I'd love to buy you some lunch. Drugs are also a huge part of NCAA, I of all people would know, I'm deep into the field and am more than aware of what's going on. Usually it's not the people you would expect. A lot of the time the coaches know about it or encourage it, but not all do, generally its the guys who go off on their own and get busted because they're clueless about pharmacokenetics. Not everyone can take drugs and be good, it's all genetics and how well you can respond. I'm going to tell you why you shouldn't do PED's, first of all you can absolutely wreck your health and fuck yourself up super bad, second it's probably illegal, third I'd bet your too young to even know what the consequences of this are or how far you have to be willing to go if you start. Before you ask, no I am not doping and never will, I simply see no use in it as I don't have the potential to go pro, otherwise maybe I would consider it knowing the money and fame on the line. regardless of health. If you want to try and argue with me on why you think Usain Bolt would never do drugs and how Drug testing is so top of the line feel free to get on me in the comments and honestly I'll maybe respond the the first comment that says something about it but you will eventually realize the reality of the situation. Sprinters are born AND made. I'm proof. That should be all. You can get faster it's a trainable attribute just like anything else physical. Genetics will be a limiting and also natural starting point factor for everything in life and you can't always outwork genetics but the likelyhood that you will even hit your true genetic potential without drugs is wayyyyy too low to honestly consider it. Maybe you do start at a 16 second 100 and your fastest potential time is 13 seconds, how are you ever gonna know if you don't try? You can always get faster than your last week. Plan ahead, periodization is arguably one of the most important parts of becoming an athlete and an absurd amount of people just go and do random things every day that are related to sprinting and not understanding how it won't really help them if its not consistent or managed work, a big part of this is testing maxes and times and deloading based on intensity and volume. Every practice you can get faster and stronger. Like I said before it doesn't take as much as it seems 3 weeks is a really short amount of time and you can definitely make significant gains in that time if done right. Most people in here shouldn't see a stall in their training progress unless their not doing something right probably. Everybody gets a slump month or workout not every single one can be great. A really concerning note, not all NCAA coaches are good coaches, especially at the D1 level, you would be surprised by the lack of care they can have for athletes sometimes and will just break them basically, they overwork you, burn you out, and throw you in the trash if you run bad. If you're reading this post and have a bunch of offers on the table be REALLY careful, talk to athletes on the team, see how they're doing, DM them though don't get the cookie cutter bullshit they'll be forced to tell you when you visit, maybe the programs got one or two phenom athletes who have always been good and any type of training at all works for them, but the rest of the team is loaded with broken tired kids who can hardly run cause all they've done for 40 weeks is repeat 400's and depth jumps. I'm not saying every NCAA affiliated coach is bad, just that there's a lot of them that got to that position being a good athlete and not a good coach with results I think that's pretty much all I have to say for now. There's a lot in here but honestly it's not even a quarter of what I have sitting around in my brain, you should aim to try and be just as educated. Being smarter is the best way to get faster.
The Tinley’s Beverage Company CSE: TNY OTC: TNYBF The TLDR: Tinley is a combination US & Canadian cannabis beverage play, while simultaneously attacking the zero alcohol category with the same drink minus the THC. On top of their own brands, Tinley is securing revenue at their industry leading California bottling facility using it as a platform for other companies that want to tap into the THC beverage market. Tinleys is an acquisition target for big alcohol or bigger THC companies looking to get into beverages. Valued at only $50M, there is a lot of room to grow considering the exit valuations of other successful startup beverage brands, and existing THC beverage partnerships. Why Beverages?
Raw leaf is a commodity that when competition increases usually ends up with profit margins racing to the bottom. Final products like beverages hold brand value which allow them to maintain high profit margins. Humans consume beverages socially, and the fact that thc has a similar effect as alcohol but without the calories or hangover, it is very likely to replace a decent % of the alcohol industry, especially for people who have to go in to work the next morning.
On their leadership team, Tinley has a lineup of former executives from massively successful brands. Their roster is deeper than your wife’s boyfriend’s favourite sports team. Mark Benadiba, Advisory Board
Former CEO of Cott Canada, EVP Cott USA
Ted Zittel, Director & Brand Manager
Former President of Cott’s Retail Brands International
Richard Gillis, President Western USA
Former Executive vice president of Coca Cola, Western USA.
Jeff Maser, CEO Co-Founder
Former Cott corporation
Banking experience
Andrew Stodart, Advisory Board
Launched Crystal Head Vodka,
Oversaw Dan Aykroyd Wines
Former International brand manager for Black Velvet Whiskey (Constellation Brands)
MBA, NYU Stern School of Business; MS, Chemical Engineering, Colombia University.
Sven Stalley, General Manager
Partner, Critical Mass Group, a Los Angeles-based agency specializing on building emerging beverage brands by providing outsourced sales force management, sales execution, distribution management, beverage formulation and manufacturing
10 years in digital branding
Tinley’s THC line: They are now licensed to bottle & sell THC beverages in California, and have already applied to Health Canada for their license to do the same in Canada. They also have plans to expand to Nevada in the medium term. The drinks have great reviews, and apparently taste amazing, having already won awards. They use a Sativa strain which supposedly gives you a more uplifting euphoric feeling, rather than a glued-to-the-couch feeling. I haven’t tried it myself, but the reviews online all seem positive. Without speculating why, research suggests that people are moving away from alcohol over time. On the other hand, cannabis use grows & many experts believe that THC beverages will make up a large % of the total Cannabis market share. “Molson president and CEO Mark Hunter told analysts that although it's difficult to provide a number because cannabis beverages were illegal at the time, he believed the total cannabis market in Canada to be about $7 billion to $10 billion in size, with beverages accounting for anywhere from 20% to 30% of the total, or as much as $3 billion. Even on the low end that's a $1.5 billion opportunity.” Big companies have already made bets on this, like Constellation Brands taking a 4 Billion stake in Canopy Growth Corp to develop THC beverages and Molson Coors starting a joint venture with Hexo.AB InBev & Tilray invested $100 million Joint Venture into THC beverages creating the Fluent Beverage Company. Tinley’s non-infused non-alcoholic Beckett’s line: Their non-infused, non-alcoholic brand “Becketts” is currently in the trial phase in Costco, BevMo, Ralphs & Kroger, which appears to be going well as they have made reorders. Though it’s essentially the same taste as their THC beverage, they treat their Beckett’s brand as a separate entity to avoid the red tape associated with the THC line. They are essentially attacking two growing categories at once with essentially the same drink, which also gives cross-brand awareness & additional revenue. Beckett’s has recently partnered with Todd Chrisley, the patriarch of the Chrisley Family with an audience of over 2M instagram followers who has the successful reality television show “Chrisley Knows Best” that also has an audience of 2M. I don’t really have a lot to say about Becketts, as I don’t know a lot about the non-alcohol industry other than according to data it is a growing industry. I don’t really care about it that much either, because to me Beckett’s is just a cherry on top - this beverage line is literally just duplicating their THC beverages and taking out the THC and calling it a product. It seems like a smart move to increase their revenue without reinventing the wheel. A lot of other Tinley investors seem to think it will be a short term catalyst for the SP as it gets carried in more and more mainstream store locations. Co-packing deals: Their bottling facility allows for a multitude of different styles of beverages & different concentrations of THC. From single serve bottles, to mini-shots, to multi-serve bottles, carbonated or not carbonated, and with a variety of different flavors. They announced late last year that they already have at least 12 co-packing clients, 2 of which they have just press released, with 10 more to come in short order. This means that investing now is a great time to take advantage of the information disparity before their blockbuster deals get announced. Copack deal1: SIP Elixirs Copack deal2: Cannabis Quencher’s There’s rumors the CEO has already rejected offers to acquire the company, but the way the company is set up to allow other brands to use them like a turn-key beverage platform is screaming for some whale to come in and buy them out at a premium. This licensing process takes years, and Tinley is among the first-movers. For example, Molson & Hexo announced Truss Beverages in 2018, but they only received their license to produce THC beverages at their belleville facility in 2020. Currently Tinley’s has no debt, and is positioned well in the THC bev space to act on both Canadian and US markets. To give you an idea, they use the same distributor as Aphria for Canada and have already received demand from the provincial cannabis boards across the country have given strong indicative interest in carrying Tinley’s products. I’m currently in BALLS DEEP at $0.43/share
The Tinley’s Beverage Company CSE: TNY OTC: TNYBF The TLDR: Tinley is a combination US & Canadian cannabis beverage play, while simultaneously attacking the zero alcohol category with the same drink minus the THC. On top of their own brands, Tinley is securing revenue at their industry leading California bottling facility using it as a platform for other companies that want to tap into the THC beverage market. Tinleys is an acquisition target for big alcohol or bigger THC companies looking to get into beverages. Valued at only $50M, there is a lot of room to grow considering the exit valuations of other successful startup beverage brands, and existing THC beverage partnerships. Why Beverages?
Raw leaf is a commodity that when competition increases usually ends up with profit margins racing to the bottom. Final products like beverages hold brand value which allow them to maintain high profit margins. Humans consume beverages socially, and the fact that thc has a similar effect as alcohol but without the calories or hangover, it is very likely to replace a decent % of the alcohol industry, especially for people who have to go in to work the next morning.
On their leadership team, Tinley has a lineup of former executives from massively successful brands. Their roster is deeper than your wife’s boyfriend’s favourite sports team. Mark Benadiba, Advisory Board
Former CEO of Cott Canada, EVP Cott USA
Ted Zittel, Director & Brand Manager
Former President of Cott’s Retail Brands International
Richard Gillis, President Western USA
Former Executive vice president of Coca Cola, Western USA.
Jeff Maser, CEO Co-Founder
Former Cott corporation
Banking experience
Andrew Stodart, Advisory Board
Launched Crystal Head Vodka,
Oversaw Dan Aykroyd Wines
Former International brand manager for Black Velvet Whiskey (Constellation Brands)
MBA, NYU Stern School of Business; MS, Chemical Engineering, Colombia University.
Sven Stalley, General Manager
Partner, Critical Mass Group, a Los Angeles-based agency specializing on building emerging beverage brands by providing outsourced sales force management, sales execution, distribution management, beverage formulation and manufacturing
10 years in digital branding
Tinley’s THC line: They are now licensed to bottle & sell THC beverages in California, and have already applied to Health Canada for their license to do the same in Canada. They also have plans to expand to Nevada in the medium term. The drinks have great reviews, and apparently taste amazing, having already won awards. They use a Sativa strain which supposedly gives you a more uplifting euphoric feeling, rather than a glued-to-the-couch feeling. I haven’t tried it myself, but the reviews online all seem positive. Without speculating why, research suggests that people are moving away from alcohol over time. On the other hand, cannabis use grows & many experts believe that THC beverages will make up a large % of the total Cannabis market share. “Molson president and CEO Mark Hunter told analysts that although it's difficult to provide a number because cannabis beverages were illegal at the time, he believed the total cannabis market in Canada to be about $7 billion to $10 billion in size, with beverages accounting for anywhere from 20% to 30% of the total, or as much as $3 billion. Even on the low end that's a $1.5 billion opportunity.” Big companies have already made bets on this, like Constellation Brands taking a 4 Billion stake in Canopy Growth Corp to develop THC beverages and Molson Coors starting a joint venture with Hexo.AB InBev & Tilray invested $100 million Joint Venture into THC beverages creating the Fluent Beverage Company. Tinley’s non-infused non-alcoholic Beckett’s line: Their non-infused, non-alcoholic brand “Becketts” is currently in the trial phase in Costco, BevMo, Ralphs & Kroger, which appears to be going well as they have made reorders. Though it’s essentially the same taste as their THC beverage, they treat their Beckett’s brand as a separate entity to avoid the red tape associated with the THC line. They are essentially attacking two growing categories at once with essentially the same drink, which also gives cross-brand awareness & additional revenue. Beckett’s has recently partnered with Todd Chrisley, the patriarch of the Chrisley Family with an audience of over 2M instagram followers who has the successful reality television show “Chrisley Knows Best” that also has an audience of 2M. I don’t really have a lot to say about Becketts, as I don’t know a lot about the non-alcohol industry other than according to data it is a growing industry. I don’t really care about it that much either, because to me Beckett’s is just a cherry on top - this beverage line is literally just duplicating their THC beverages and taking out the THC and calling it a product. It seems like a smart move to increase their revenue without reinventing the wheel. A lot of other Tinley investors seem to think it will be a short term catalyst for the SP as it gets carried in more and more mainstream store locations. Co-packing deals: Their bottling facility allows for a multitude of different styles of beverages & different concentrations of THC. From single serve bottles, to mini-shots, to multi-serve bottles, carbonated or not carbonated, and with a variety of different flavors. They announced late last year that they already have at least 12 co-packing clients, 2 of which they have just press released, with 10 more to come in short order. This means that investing now is a great time to take advantage of the information disparity before their blockbuster deals get announced. Copack deal1: SIP Elixirs Copack deal2: Cannabis Quencher’s There’s rumors the CEO has already rejected offers to acquire the company, but the way the company is set up to allow other brands to use them like a turn-key beverage platform is screaming for some whale to come in and buy them out at a premium. This licensing process takes years, and Tinley is among the first-movers. For example, Molson & Hexo announced Truss Beverages in 2018, but they only received their license to produce THC beverages at their belleville facility in 2020. Currently Tinley’s has no debt, and is positioned well in the THC bev space to act on both Canadian and US markets. To give you an idea, they use the same distributor as Aphria for Canada and have already received demand from the provincial cannabis boards across the country have given strong indicative interest in carrying Tinley’s products. I’m currently in BALLS DEEP at $0.43/share
RoyalRoad Next Story contains a lot about markets, logistics, development, and the best and worst of human history. Not so much Space Marines nuking aliens. If you enjoyed the trade negotiations and Senate politics in the Star Wars prequels, and wished that there was an entire standalone story consisting solely of those parts, this might be for you! In response to all the helpful feedback I've gotten, I am making major revisions to the start of this story, especially focusing on chapters one through three. While this occurs, there may be some inconsistencies. The names of the brave astronauts aboard the first manned FTL spacecraft will forever be recorded in the annals of human history as a triumph of human ingenuity, determination, and international cooperation. However, what came immediately after would be far more remembered. "Hello, people of Earth! Humans! Welcome to the galactic community." A shocked planet watched on their screens as an utterly alien character that looked like it was lifted out of a bad sci-fi show spoke. The alien mouth movements of what could only be described as a frog creature did not match the very human words that came out of the robotic translator. The aliens did not pirate TV networks, nor did they hack into important government websites. They simply broadcast this openly on satellite TV for anyone with an antenna to hear. And for anyone who did not, there were CNN and social media. "First, we would like to congratulate you on your first successful use of the blink drive. That itself is a feat of enlightenment most species we monitor do not achieve. Indeed, the physics of it all is not only extremely complex, it requires the cooperation and sacrifice of many beings, over many generations." The young people at Mission Control in Johnson Space Center patted each other on the back tepidly as they watched the green headed frog-like alien addressing their hard work on the main screen. "We come in peace. We are representatives of the Galactic Trader Guild." Some humans let out a sigh of relief. Others, skeptical, watched intensely on. "We are not here to take your resources or your people. The thousands of planets and species in the galaxy live in total peace and harmony with each other. Regional conflicts on planets are inevitable, but one thing we as a Guild pride ourselves on is our ability to ensure that none has ever reached the sacred frontiers of space." That's a little odd, most people thought, and probably at least a little propagandized. After all, war is such a big part of human history and the human condition that it was hard to imagine an entire galactic community of thousands of FTL-capable species that never fought in space. "Our spaceships represent millions of years of hard work, and these incredible investments must never be put into jeopardy. Therefore, weapons designed for use in space are banned. This ban will be enforced by regular ship inspections from your local Guild representatives, who are exceptions to this rule." Most of the peace-loving people of Earth thought this was great news. After all, many nations had banned the usage of weapons in space. The only exceptions were, of course, the nations that actually had the capability to make use of space weapons. Government lawyers in the world were already starting their first drafts on their inevitable memos on how these rules obviously wouldn't or shouldn't apply to their country. "As our name implies, we are a trade organization. We have rules for proper trade conduct that ensure a free and fair exchange of goods. All offworld traders from your planet must abide by them. Any breach of our bylaws and all fraudulent transactions can be reported to your local Guild representative. All our Guild documents will be transmitted to your people, translated to your dominant language." A quick string of bytes followed on the digital transmission. Amateurs on the Internet quickly decoded the document. The content was a goldmine of information about the galaxy. Coordinates for alien planets on the blink drive, some engineering documents, and standardized units of measurements. These are the temperatures and pressures at which pure water boils. This is the standard strength of iron. This is the distance light can travel in a vacuum while certain atoms decay. And so on. Indeed, the big frog alien continued, "inside, you will find the specifications for an FTL beacon and the requirements for a standard trading spaceport. Once you have built them, traders around the galaxy will make the journey to make fair exchange with your people. Commonly traded items are food, manufactured goods, and workers. We are certain that your planet has many items of value for trade." "We hope that you have a good cycle, and we eagerly await the arrival of you and your descendants in our spaceports!" With that message transmitted, they and their ship disappeared. There were no negotiations. No exchange of handshakes. As their ship blinked away, humanity pondered the colossal implications. "Which planet is next on the list?" asked the big green frog as he parched his throat with water after the broadcast. "That was it, representative. The railgun upgrade betting pool has Planet-3822 and Planet-8901 as the most likely next contenders for enlightenment. Would you like to place a wager?" Some governments decided to suppress the news. North Korean state television cut to an orchestra playing classical music. Others made laws prohibiting the distribution of the material transmitted by the aliens until further study could be made. In most of the connected world, the Internet rendered these measures pointless. By the end of the day, everyone had seen the aliens and that's not a genie that you could put back into the bottle. Most governments used this as an opportunity to justify dramatic increases in funding for space programs and defense. There were very few incidents of the often exaggerated threat of civil unrest. Most people went on with their lives. They went to school, to work, and to ball games. The arrival of the aliens had profound implications on the future of human philosophy. Most major religions had a dogma-compatible explanation by the end of the hour. Some sects even proclaimed this as evidence that their worldviews were correct. In the stock market, this news was a massive upheaval in expectations. Thousands of alien worlds. This meant new markets with potentially trillions of customers. It also meant that potential alien technology could put entire industries out of business. Stock prices swung wildly as uncertain traders rapidly changed their positions. Several development companies immediately announced their intentions to start construction on the spaceports mentioned in the Guild documents. As it turned out, building a place for spaceships to land wasn't that complex. You just needed something hard, durable, and flat that could withstand a bit of heat and wear. Using the formulas provided by the documents, experts agreed that the asphalt concrete normally used for airport tarmac would do just fine. Normally, environmental reviews would need to be done, the sound pollution would need to be contained. Hundreds of tests needed to be conducted on site, but from what the frogheads said, if you built it, the traders were going to come. Nobody wanted to be left out of what was going to be the new gold rush. So, money changed hands to grease the gears that ensured these new projects went through. Some lobbyists in Washington DC made a lot of money ensuring that no new regulations on "spaceport construction and operation" were added. Even in California, the capital of NIMBYs and tree huggers, people could smell an opportunity if it boomed down from orbit and bonked them in the nose with it. Which it did in this case. Thus, Livermore Spaceport. What used to be a bunch of warehouses and parking lots just a short five-minute drive from Lawrence Livermore National Labs became a rapidly growing construction site. It was close enough to the San Francisco Bay Area metro that people could commute to it and see the first of the new generation FTL spacecraft take off and land, but far enough that they didn't have to hear about it when they slept. BREAKING: LIVERMORE SPACEPORT OPERATIONAL Looking up from her morning coffee, that's what the muted TV screen was trumpeting in big words on the CNN ticker. The mayor was talking, judging by the scrolling captions, something about how this will bring new jobs and money to the city. Sarah snorted. Everything is always breaking news. She absent-mindedly watched as the TV played stock footage of the construction workers installing the antenna last month and humanity's first interstellar ships took off and landed on the concrete lot as she sipped her coffee. Sarah Miller would not call herself a hard worker. She graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in Communications, not exactly a field high in demand. When she got offered a job as a "marketing person" at a tech startup in SF, she grabbed it, more like you'd grab a life raft and less like it was an opportunity of a lifetime or anything. Then, two years later, the startup failed. Funding dried up, and now she was out of a job in a metro with some of the highest cost of living in the world, with not exactly the hottest resume. So now she was sitting at a breakfast shop just outside her rented apartment in Livermore, checking her emails to see whether she got any replies on her job applications (she had not) and contemplating how long she'd last before she'd have to go home to live with her parents in Seattle. It was not exactly a fun thought. "You going to the spaceport opening too, Sarah?" Rudely interrupted from her self-pity, she looked to see the woman across from her. She racked her memory to match the face to a name, but nothing came immediately. Mid to late 20s, Asian American, hipster glasses, t-shirt and jeans. The writing on the coffee cup in her hand said her name was "Jan". Ah, yes, they met a few times on the BART commute into the city. Was her name Jan or… "Hey Jen, naw I was just staring at the news. How's it going?" "Great! What about you? Haven't seen you on the BART for a few. You still working at that place downtown?" Sarah sighed internally, here it is again. "Not anymore, we just got shut down. So, I'm pretty much just lounging around." "Aww that's terrible!" Then Jen thought for a second. "Listen, I've got a business idea about the spaceport stuff, but no one to share them with. You should come with me to the opening." "Oh yeah? Why's that?" Sarah asked, leaning forward. Normally, this would sound like the start of some kind of MLM scam or something, but she'd been unemployed long enough but that the word "business" piqued her interest. She knew that Jen was some kind of fancy engineer who made enough to still have savings despite living in one of the most expensive places in the world, so she probably wasn't asking for money. Jen almost whispered, "my cousin's one of the construction workers at the spaceport, and he said he could get me in. They have a lot of big companies bidding to get on the ground floor of the alien trade with truckloads of all kinds of goods, but he's got an employee pass that'll get us in on day one." "Wait, what?" Sarah said, confused. "I thought we were just going to see the opening." "We are," Jen replied, "but I'm thinking we rent a truck, load it up with food, and see what the aliens will give us!" "What do you need me for?" "Well," Jen hesitated, "I have money for the truck and the food, but I don't know much about selling stuff…" Neither did Sarah. She was in marketing, not a saleswoman. But she wasn't going to mention that. "Sure, I sell a ton of stuff on Craigslist," she said instead, "but I'm sure nobody has experience selling to aliens!" Jen looked relieved. Really, she just wanted some kind of backup instead of going alone. "Ok, since I'm putting up the money, and you're going to do the selling, I think we split profits fifty-fifty after I recoup the cost of the U-Haul rental and the food. How's that sound?" Sarah thought for a while, but not too long. It probably wouldn't make them that much money, she thought. Then again, she wasn't putting anything on the line. And she needed money, if there were any to be earned here. She reached her arm out for a handshake. "Deal!" It's not like she had anything else to do on Saturday. Costco, Livermore The froghead had said that aliens traded food, and food was relatively cheap, so it was probably a safer bet to stick to than manufactured goods. Who even knew if the aliens could ride a bicycle or were interested in a PlayStation? The part he mentioned about trading workers sounded an awful lot like slavery, so that was an obvious non-starter. "Do you think the aliens eat meat?" Sarah asked, holding up a massive bag of hamburgers. Jen considered that for a second. Some vegetarians and vegans would probably postulate that a morally superior species would not partake in the consumption of animal flesh. Then again, she didn't have to guess. She pulled out her phone, and looked up the Guild documents summary someone had helpfully compiled into Wikipedia. "Hmm it says that many of the other alien species are omnivores because that's how they get a wider variety of calories," Jen said after browsing a while. They loaded one bag of each of meat onto their carts, and made sure to buy ice boxes to keep them frozen. It took several trips to their rental truck, but they finally loaded it with enough fruits, vegetables, and frozen meats to make a dent in Jen's sizable bank account. They hoped that these aliens liked apples and pears. Those were on sale. Livermore Spaceport, Earth It looked like the entire Bay Area showed up and were lining up to get in. Tourists were bussing in from out of town. They saw several groups of international tourist groups that were corralling their customers around with loudspeakers. As they drove past the long line towards the vehicle entrance, they waved at the excited crowds and got a few whoops and cheers in return. The security guards at the gate checked their pass and let them through to the security checkpoint. Several men that looked like they meant business opened up their truck and scanned it carefully with metal detectors and x-ray scanners to ensure that no one got any funny ideas. There was a short delay while the customs officer tried to figure out whether they needed to fill out an elaborate looking form for the fresh food in the back of their truck. A few calls to his supervisor later, amid angry glares from the truck drivers waiting behind them, he let them go. Sarah and Jen drove into a parking lot closer to the landing pads. The pads were large concrete surfaces with white and yellow painted targets. Off in the distance, they could see hangars and a tower that looked like an airport traffic control tower. There were also a few buildings under construction, including one that looked like the start of an upscale luxury dining establishment. From behind, they saw some of the crowd were filing into a waiting area from where they could observe the aliens from afar. Jen felt lucky. If the food in the back was the price of admission for seeing the visitors from outer space up close and personal, to her, it would have been well worth it. Sarah was checking the battery on her phone to make sure that there would be enough left to take pictures or video, if the opportunity arises. Most of the other trucks in the parking lot with them had logos of recognizable companies on them. Several tech companies in the Bay Area that sponsored the construction of the spaceport won bids to get in on the action. Others were some local companies that had connections to the spaceport like Jen did. Sarah saw them first before she heard it. First one, then several more, spaceships descended from the sky, accompanied by sonic booms as the excited crowd looked up into the sky with hands on their brows shielding from the sun. The alien spaceships couldn't be mistaken for human rockets, but there was a certain familiarity. Long, pointy, utilitarian hull shapes with rocket flames coming out the bottom. Like modern cars that all look like they're designed in a wind tunnel, it seems like there's one efficient way to build spaceships, and everyone stuck to it. It's nice to know that at least we were on the right track, Sarah thought to herself as the ships touched down gently on the target landing pads. Human ships can't maneuver as sharply, nor are they anywhere near the same scale and size, but at least we got the shapes right. The cargo-plane-sized spaceships settled on the concrete landing pads without so much as a crunch. Small hatches opened at the bottom of each, and walkway ramps rolled down. At some hidden signal, the security guard gestured to the parking lot that they were free to approach, and the dazed merchants sprang into action. The alien they've just greeted through a translator calls himself "Zarko". He was apparently part of a species of rock planet humanoids called the Zeepil that came from a system about 200 light years from Earth, and his skin had a charred appearance that made him look like a heavily sunburned sloth on two legs. "Let me guess, what you've brought is your native foods," Zarko's translator said in a monotone Stephen Hawking voice that did not match the movement of what looked like his lips. "Yes! How did you guess? Can you guys eat the fruits and vegetables that we have?" Sarah asked. She stopped herself from mentioning the steaks and chicken in their ice boxes. She figured there's no knowing whether these aliens thought about carnivores, so she started with the safe stuff first. "We consume silicon and uranium for sustenance," Zarko made a strange face and then burped, "I am joking. Every newcomer species asks the same question. Most species share the same diet. Some species eat meat from other animals. Sapient meat is of course illegal on most planets." Relieved that Jen didn't just waste thousands of dollars on the meat, they showed Zarko their wares. And with their permission, he sampled some of each goods they had, including a bit of the raw meat. "Good, good," Zarko was pleased. "I detect a high amount of sugar and starch in a lot of your wares. I would take it all." The Gaks would be impressed the next time he stopped at their planet. "Can we see what you have?" Jen asked excitedly. She pushed a funny image of the aliens grabbing all their stuff and just taking off out of her mind. They wouldn't go through all the trouble of coming here just to steal some food… would they? "Yes, yes," Zarko pulled out a tray of gadgets and started describing his goods to them. "This is a spaceship rated fire extinguisher," he described several slightly oversized aerosol cans, "good for even reactor fires!" "First aid kits for basic bandaging and wound cleaning, compatible with human physiology." They were several plastic looking boxes with an alien looking skull marked on all six sides. It looks like the red cross symbol wasn't so universal anymore. "Civilian hunting rifle," Zarko set it on the table. "Powered by laser. Holds twelve shots." It was a familiar looking weapon. Jen and Sarah looked nervously around at the security guards, but they didn't seem to notice. This was very illegal in the state of California. They shook their heads at that one and asked to see something else. Whoever was dumb enough to buy that one would probably get it confiscated on their way out of the spaceport. "Advanced mathematics calculator, base-24," he said. This one looked like a regular calculator but with more buttons. Interesting, but probably not that useful to humans. "Stasis box. Keeps food safe to eat for years. Operates on solar power." Ah, a space fridge, basically. Finally, something that would probably cover their expenses. Zarko also claimed to have tons of raw materials in his ship, including what he called "better concrete" and "better steel". The translator had some problems with these; it seems like they just hadn't been invented on Earth yet. But Zarko had customers for those on other planets already, so he didn't bother to put them out for display. After a little haggling, Sarah and Jen settled on four of the first aid kits, six of the fire extinguishers, and one of the stasis boxes. Sarah reasoned that the stasis box could probably fetch a much higher price if they resold it as "alien technology" online, and Jen deferred to Sarah's experience in selling her old stuff online. Zarko printed out instructions for each of the items in English, even if they did all look fairly intuitive to use by themselves. The aliens may look different from them, but by the way the fire extinguisher buttons seem to activate, the way they made their stuff did not seem that different. The most significant difference they saw between the alien goods and what their human counterparts would be is the amount of care that clearly went into making each item. Each of the first aid kit boxes, Sarah observed, looked just a little different from each other. The adornments and decorations on the side were painted or carved on with details that weren't exactly the same, and one even had a bright gold finish. She wondered why. As she got home around midnight, Sarah immediately got onto Craigslist and thought about where to list "alien first aid kits". Technically, it could be under "household items", or "tools", but "collectibles" would probably get them the most- That's when she found the "alien" section. Of hecking course. For a website that looks like it was made in the 90s, they'd already adjusted to the latest fad with remarkable speed. She found dozens of listings of alien items that she saw that Zarko was parading around, and quite a few that he didn't have. There were no other first aid kits listed on the market. Which was strange because she definitely saw dozens of those being sold by the other traders. Hm… without a starting price, it was hard to gauge how much she should be selling it for. She refreshed the page out of habit and watched the new items scroll in. Her first reaction was: Ah, someone just posted a first aid kit. Her second reaction was: Wait, for how much? There was a listing of a first aid kit for $20,000. Which was ridiculous. It's a collectible, but a box of bandages was not worth the price of a brand-new car. Something nagging at her instinct, Sarah opened one of them up. It was just a bunch of bandages, syringes, and basic medical stuff. Some of it had the wrong shapes, or had a different color than they'd normally be, but there's only so many ways to bandage an open wound, and everything looked familiar-ish. She read the English manual that Zarko had printed for her. It said: "Rated for human use. Includes: Bandage 4 rolls, Skin adhesive 16 pieces, Pain relief cream 2 ounces, Radiation exposure injection 2 doses, Cold relief medicine 24-" Wait, what? Radiation exposure injection? Like in case the spaceship hull leaks or something? Sarah skimmed through the list and looked at usage instructions for: "Radiation exposure injection: use in case of emergency hull exposure. Rapidly repairs cell and bone marrow damage for patients with acute radiation exposure and kills all cancer cell growth in body. Dose takes effect within 30 seconds. Side effects may include nausea, dehydration, drowsiness…" Her blood chilled. She read it again. And again to be certain. Then she wiped away the sweat around her eyebrows to make sure she wasn't dreaming. "Kills all cancer cell growth in body." She looked at her laptop and refreshed the page. The previous first aid kit listing she saw had been taken down, presumably sold for $20,000. If this kit did what it said it would… Excited, she refreshed the online listing page again. She saw two listings for the alien first aid kit, both up to well over $100,000 now. Refresh. A million. Some guy was selling a darn first aid kit for a million dollars. This was incredible. Some corner of her brain whined something about putting a price on health, but she cast that out of her mind to refresh again and see more listings in the millions of dollars. And she was holding four of them in her lap. Half an hour later, it seemed that the prices had stabilized around $4 million, the price of a small closet in downtown San Fran. This was evidently the market price for the life of a cancer patient. Horrific. She put up a listing for $15 million for her four boxes. Instantly, her email inbox started getting notifications, a number of apparently wealthy individuals with sick relatives desperate to buy a miracle cure that hadn't even been tested or proven on humans yet, introducing themselves and sharing their life stories. There was a guy who owned a large database company but had recently been diagnosed with lung cancer. He knew he should have stopped smoking years ago, but he needed something to manage the stress. Another, a business executive, who had a heartbreaking story of her dad dying of liver cancer. Then, a short and simple "Willing to offer twenty million in cash today for all 8 doses of anti-radiation medicine in alien aid kit, J&J VP of Research and Innovation, Alexi G." She looked him up online. He was legit, from a big pharma R&D. She reasoned that maybe selling to someone who could do research on it would help more people. And he was offering more… She replied. He wanted to meet at their company office downtown first thing in the morning. Downtown San Francisco Alexi had made good on his offer. He hadn’t tried to haggle the price, as she’d know some Craigslist buyers would try to do once you met them in person. It was generally considered a jerk move. It was Saturday, so the offices were mostly empty, except for one conference room with several employees as well as Alexi. She handed over her duffel bag with the four kits, he opened and checked each to make sure their contents were all there, and handed over a cashier’s check for the agreed amount. And that was it. It had taken her bank an hour to process the check, and several additional hours to clear it. The money appeared in her account around midnight, at which point Sarah let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding for a day. Sarah was rich. Sarah got out her phone to text Jen the news. Huh, there was an email notification "Hey Sarah, thank you for your interest in applying to be our marketing assistant. If you can send us your resume and a co-" Delete. Twenty million dollars was a lot of money. Neither Sarah nor Jen had ever seen that much money, but they knew enough to leave something like this to a professional. An accountant at a Big Four company helped them divide up the assets and ballparked how much they’d eventually need to render unto Uncle Sam the things that were his come April 15th. Sarah paid all her bills on time, a first in months. Jen quit her job the next day. After all, what was the point of being a web developer for a measly six-figure salary when there was a gold rush next door? Figuratively speaking. They both vaguely knew the history of the gold seekers during the California Gold Rush. Some of them struck it rich, but some found nothing in the river beds of the Sacramento. The people who had made the most money in 1849 were actually not the flood of gold prospectors who came into the area. The people who had gotten the richest out of the gold boom were the merchants who sold them the prospecting equipment they used, the services they needed, the food they ate, and the clothes they wore. The masses of pioneers who came for a new life in the American West: they were the real gold rush. Most people today do not know the name of a single gold seeker. Most people today have heard of some of the merchants who got rich off the gold seekers’ businesses. Levi Strauss, John Studebaker, Sam Brannan. And of course, Henry Wells and William Fargo. This was the fourth time they've been back to the spaceport, Sarah thought, and they'd gotten something new each time. They'd dealt with different traders each time, though they did see Zarko at least one other time as he was leaving with a full hold of fresh fruit. After the first couple days, the alien traders had noticed that there seemed to be shortage of first aid kits on Earth, and the inevitable flood of anti-cancer syringes put online dramatically lowered its listing price. Several large pharmaceutical companies had also issued press releases that they were within months of the development of generic anti-cancer medicine. The lawyers were working overdrive over the IP implications of adapted alien technology, but there didn't seem to be any laws preventing companies from doing it… This brought its price down to the tens or hundreds of thousands. Nothing to sneeze at for most people, of course, but it was a literal cure for cancer and well within range of some other items the aliens were bringing. Today, Zarko was trying to sell her and Jen on some kind of liquid medical adhesive in industrial quantities. Some hardy tree-like species use it to glue deep wounds together or something, but Sarah saw a few listings for it on Craigslist a couple of days ago that had no takers, even for cheap. Medical companies must have thought it not really worth pursuing as Earth already had similar products. Unfortunately for Zarko, he'd already filled his cargo hold with tons of the liquid after hearing how well medical supplies were selling on Earth. His reward for his entrepreneurial spirit was an empty paw. It was beginning to look like he'd need to dump his cargo for a few boxes of worthless Vton trinkets on his way home. Sarah and Jen had driven all the way out here with a U-Haul truck worth of pears, and most of the other traders were ready to leave for the next cycle of traders to come in anyway. They could dump their goods on Zikzik, the trader next door, but all he had left are a bunch of "better steel". Apparently some construction companies were learning to work with it, but from what she heard, it was annoying to sell those because the government was still looking at the regulations around these new building materials. And they looked soooo heavy to have to carry home. Sarah had learned to read a little more of the humanoid sloth's facial expressions, and he was clearly not happy about having made a trip for nothing. "Tell you what, Zarko. I'll give you the fruit, and you can bring me my goods the next time you come back," she said. Zarko's snout perked up as he thought. Fundamentally, Zarko considered himself an honest trader. He didn't cheat or skimp on quality of materials, and he didn't lie about what he sells. Sure, he embellished a little sometimes, as all traders do, but who doesn't? Zarko had never taken on debt to a customer. He's heard of other traders doing this, but the far more common use of debt across the galaxy was to trap people into a lifetime of hard work in unpleasant conditions. But Sarah and Jen didn't seem like the kind of people who would be capable of doing that. For a second, Zarko thought about cheating them. Just take their fruits, and never come back to Earth, but immediately he put the thought out of his mind. That was not the right thing to do. Zarko agreed. He would just have to remember to bring more first aid kits next time right? "Did you see the way Zarko reacted to the IOU?" Sarah asked Jen on the way home. "Yeah, do you think he'll just abscond with the fruit?" "Nah, apparently the pears are selling out like hotcakes. He can't just leave Earth and never come back. I heard Zikzik say he got a brand-new reactor upgrade just from one trip of pears alone," Sarah sounded confident, and hoped that she was right. Something else was bothering her about the alien traders. "Good. Maybe he's worried we're naive or something and someone else will take advantage of us," Jen brainstormed. Naive? For what? Getting cheated out of a truck full of ugly pears Safeway was going to throw out at the end of the day? Then, it dawned on her. "I think there's something missing," Sarah said slowly, thinking about their past interactions with the alien traders, "they don't think about selling things the way we do." "You mean they don't have money?" Sarah smiled and rolled her eyes in her head, of course Jen was thinking about money. "Yeah. Come to think of it, they clearly don't live in some kind of Star Trek galaxy where everything is free," Sarah continues her train of thought, gears turning in her head, "they just barter and haggle for all our stuff." "They don't have money, they don't have debt, they don't have Craigslist!" Jen blurted, the implication of this was beginning to excite the inner businesswoman in her that she's been discovering the past week. "Coming to the spaceport is their Craigslist, but without money or debt, they must also not have a lot of the other stuff we take for granted," Sarah was already making a list in her head, "that explains why the small variety of consumer goods they have are all related space travel and cargo storage, and why most of their big trade is in industrial goods. They can't have banks! What about loans and mortgages! What about paying fines! How do they even buy stuff normally?" "Ah, must be such a simple and happy existence without having to think about money," Jen said wistfully. "Yup," Sarah grinned, "let's go ruin it!" RoyalRoad Next
My first DD: The TInley Beverage Company OTC (TNYBF) - Located in California
The Tinley’s Beverage Company CSE: TNY OTC: TNYBF The TLDR: Tinley is a combination US & Canadian cannabis beverage play, while simultaneously attacking the zero alcohol category with the same drink minus the THC. On top of their own brands, Tinley is securing revenue at their industry leading California bottling facility using it as a platform for other companies that want to tap into the THC beverage market. Tinleys is an acquisition target for big alcohol or bigger THC companies looking to get into beverages. Valued at only $50M (CAD), there is a lot of room to grow considering the exit valuations of other successful startup beverage brands, and existing THC beverage partnerships. Why Beverages? Raw leaf is a commodity that when competition increases usually ends up with profit margins racing to the bottom. Final products like beverages hold brand value which allow them to maintain high profit margins. Humans consume beverages socially, and the fact that thc has a similar effect as alcohol but without the calories or hangover, it is very likely to replace a decent % of the alcohol industry, especially for people who have to go in to work the next morning. On their leadership team, Tinley has a lineup of former executives from massively successful brands. Their roster is deeper than your wife’s boyfriend’s favourite sports team. Mark Benadiba, Advisory Board Former CEO of Cott Canada, EVP Cott USA Ted Zittel, Director & Brand Manager Former President of Cott’s Retail Brands International Richard Gillis, President Western USA Former Executive vice president of Coca Cola, Western USA. Jeff Maser, CEO Co-Founder Former Cott corporation Banking experience Andrew Stodart, Advisory Board Launched Crystal Head Vodka, Oversaw Dan Aykroyd Wines Former International brand manager for Black Velvet Whiskey (Constellation Brands) Baron Davis, Advisory Board Former 2x NBA all star Early investor in Vitaminwater Brought in to develop branding partnerships with celebrities and sports icons. Curt Marvis, Director MTV Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, Former President, Digital Media, Lionsgate Entertainment (NYSE:LGF.A) Douglas Fulton, Director LA-Based, European Emmy Award-winning television executive Co-Founder of LA Christine, a line of premium skincare products Ricky Talati, Head of Operations Senior Commercialization Manager, Senior Technical Program Manager and Senior Manager, Supply Chain Integration, Pepsico Beverages Led 10 startups to launch 30+ products in California. Manager, Alvarez & Marsal Private Equity – implemented performance improvements for portfolio companies. MBA, NYU Stern School of Business; MS, Chemical Engineering, Colombia University. Sven Stalley, General Manager Partner, Critical Mass Group, a Los Angeles-based agency specializing on building emerging beverage brands by providing outsourced sales force management, sales execution, distribution management, beverage formulation and manufacturing 10 years in digital branding Tinley’s THC line: They are now licensed to bottle & sell THC beverages in California, and have already applied to Health Canada for their license to do the same in Canada. They also have plans to expand to Nevada in the medium term. The drinks have great reviews, and apparently taste amazing, having already won awards. They use a Sativa strain which supposedly gives you a more uplifting euphoric feeling, rather than a glued-to-the-couch feeling. I haven’t tried it myself, but the reviews online all seem positive. Without speculating why, research suggests that people are moving away from alcohol over time. On the other hand, cannabis use grows & many experts believe that THC beverages will make up a large % of the total Cannabis market share. “Molson president and CEO Mark Hunter told analysts that although it's difficult to provide a number because cannabis beverages were illegal at the time, he believed the total cannabis market in Canada to be about $7 billion to $10 billion in size, with beverages accounting for anywhere from 20% to 30% of the total, or as much as $3 billion. Even on the low end that's a $1.5 billion opportunity.” Big companies have already made bets on this, like Constellation Brands taking a 4 Billion stake in Canopy Growth Corp to develop THC beverages and Molson Coors starting a joint venture with Hexo. AB InBev & Tilray invested $100 million Joint Venture into THC beverages creating the Fluent Beverage Company. Tinley’s non-infused non-alcoholic Beckett’s line (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tinley-beckett-tonics-launch-costco-123000505.html): Their non-infused, non-alcoholic brand “Becketts” is currently in the trial phase in Costco, BevMo, Ralphs & Kroger, which appears to be going well as they have made reorders. Though it’s essentially the same taste as their THC beverage, they treat their Beckett’s brand as a separate entity to avoid the red tape associated with the THC line. They are essentially attacking two growing categories at once with essentially the same drink, which also gives cross-brand awareness & additional revenue. Beckett’s has recently partnered with Todd Chrisley (https://www.instagram.com/tv/CLCq8tVHlND/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet), the patriarch of the Chrisley Family with an audience of over 2M instagram followers who has the successful reality television show “Chrisley Knows Best” that also has an audience of 2M. That video was launched 24 hours ago and last time I checked had amassed 177k views, so don't discount Todd's reach if you have never heard of the guy. (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/america-1-dad-todd-chrisley-130000476.html) I don’t really have a lot to say about Becketts, as I don’t know a lot about the non-alcohol industry other than according to data it is a growing industry. I don’t really care about it that much either, because to me Beckett’s is just a cherry on top - this beverage line is literally just duplicating their THC beverages and taking out the THC and calling it a product. It seems like a smart move to increase their revenue without reinventing the wheel. A lot of other Tinley investors seem to think it will be a short term catalyst for the SP as it gets carried in more and more mainstream store locations. Co-packing deals: Their bottling facility allows for a multitude of different styles of beverages & different concentrations of THC. From single serve bottles, to mini-shots, to multi-serve bottles, carbonated or not carbonated, and with a variety of different flavors. They announced late last year that they already have at least 12 co-packing clients, 2 of which they have just press released, with 10 more to come in short order. This means that investing now is a great time to take advantage of the information disparity before their blockbuster deals get announced. Copack deal1: SIP Elixirs - Nevada's #1, #2, #3 and #4 cannabis drinks. (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nevada-1-cannabis-drink-produced-120000639.html) Copack deal2: Cannabis Quencher’s longtime leader in California will produce 3 flavours in Tinley's factory. (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nevada-1-cannabis-drink-produced-120000639.html) There’s rumors the CEO has already rejected offers to acquire the company, but the way the company is set up to allow other brands to use them like a turn-key beverage platform is screaming for some whale to come in and buy them out at a premium. This licensing process takes years, and Tinley is among the first-movers. For example, Molson & Hexo announced Truss Beverages in 2018, but they only received their license to produce THC beverages at their belleville facility in 2020. Currently Tinley’s has no debt, and is positioned well in the THC bev space to act on both Canadian and US markets. To give you an idea, they use the same distributor as Aphria for Canada and have already received demand from the provincial cannabis boards across the country have given strong indicative interest in carrying Tinley’s products. I've been sitting on this stock for years right around this price because no one foresaw the bureaucratic hurdles that this company had to jump through in order to become operational. They had to change labels on the fly, for example, and the licensing process itself took them two years to attain. But now, they are the only guys in town with the capability to do what they do. The team they have assembled is unmatched in the industry, the lessons learned are valuable in themselves and serve as a roadmap for future expansion when they decide to branch out to another state. Drinks are growing faster than any other category within the cannabis industry and through their state of the art facility they have control the supply side of the equation. Additionally, non-alcoholic drinks are bigger than the entire cannabis industry and only a handful of companies have even attempted to go after the liquor inspired segment. The majority of the category is saturated by near beer, which is a perfect time for new offerings like Becketts to come in and take a piece of that pie. This company has taken 5 years to get to where they are and just now are in a position to capitalize on the work they've done in formulating, testing, building distribution and a sales structure that could send the stock to the moon. They have made no revenue in the last 4 years, but they have a strong base of support from long term investors who believe in the story, and who are confident that the next few quarters are going to be a turnaround for this company. Take a look and make up your mind. I'm not a financial advisor... don't take my advice. blah blah... Good luck.
The Tinley’s Beverage Company CSE: TNY OTC: TNYBF The TLDR: Tinley is a combination US & Canadian cannabis beverage play, while simultaneously attacking the zero alcohol category with the same drink minus the THC. On top of their own brands, Tinley is securing revenue at their industry leading California bottling facility using it as a platform for other companies that want to tap into the THC beverage market. Tinleys is an acquisition target for big alcohol or bigger THC companies looking to get into beverages. Valued at only $50M, there is a lot of room to grow considering the exit valuations of other successful startup beverage brands, and existing THC beverage partnerships. Why Beverages?
Raw leaf is a commodity that when competition increases usually ends up with profit margins racing to the bottom. Final products like beverages hold brand value which allow them to maintain high profit margins. Humans consume beverages socially, and the fact that thc has a similar effect as alcohol but without the calories or hangover, it is very likely to replace a decent % of the alcohol industry, especially for people who have to go in to work the next morning.
On their leadership team, Tinley has a lineup of former executives from massively successful brands. Their roster is deeper than your wife’s boyfriend’s favourite sports team. Mark Benadiba, Advisory Board
Former CEO of Cott Canada, EVP Cott USA
Ted Zittel, Director & Brand Manager
Former President of Cott’s Retail Brands International
Richard Gillis, President Western USA
Former Executive vice president of Coca Cola, Western USA.
Jeff Maser, CEO Co-Founder
Former Cott corporation
Banking experience
Andrew Stodart, Advisory Board
Launched Crystal Head Vodka,
Oversaw Dan Aykroyd Wines
Former International brand manager for Black Velvet Whiskey (Constellation Brands)
MBA, NYU Stern School of Business; MS, Chemical Engineering, Colombia University.
Sven Stalley, General Manager
Partner, Critical Mass Group, a Los Angeles-based agency specializing on building emerging beverage brands by providing outsourced sales force management, sales execution, distribution management, beverage formulation and manufacturing
10 years in digital branding
Tinley’s THC line: They are now licensed to bottle & sell THC beverages in California, and have already applied to Health Canada for their license to do the same in Canada. They also have plans to expand to Nevada in the medium term. The drinks have great reviews, and apparently taste amazing, having already won awards. They use a Sativa strain which supposedly gives you a more uplifting euphoric feeling, rather than a glued-to-the-couch feeling. I haven’t tried it myself, but the reviews online all seem positive. Without speculating why, research suggests that people are moving away from alcohol over time. On the other hand, cannabis use grows & many experts believe that THC beverages will make up a large % of the total Cannabis market share. “Molson president and CEO Mark Hunter told analysts that although it's difficult to provide a number because cannabis beverages were illegal at the time, he believed the total cannabis market in Canada to be about $7 billion to $10 billion in size, with beverages accounting for anywhere from 20% to 30% of the total, or as much as $3 billion. Even on the low end that's a $1.5 billion opportunity.” Big companies have already made bets on this, like Constellation Brands taking a 4 Billion stake in Canopy Growth Corp to develop THC beverages and Molson Coors starting a joint venture with Hexo.AB InBev & Tilray invested $100 million Joint Venture into THC beverages creating the Fluent Beverage Company. Tinley’s non-infused non-alcoholic Beckett’s line: Their non-infused, non-alcoholic brand “Becketts” is currently in the trial phase in Costco, BevMo, Ralphs & Kroger, which appears to be going well as they have made reorders. Though it’s essentially the same taste as their THC beverage, they treat their Beckett’s brand as a separate entity to avoid the red tape associated with the THC line. They are essentially attacking two growing categories at once with essentially the same drink, which also gives cross-brand awareness & additional revenue. Beckett’s has recently partnered with Todd Chrisley, the patriarch of the Chrisley Family with an audience of over 2M instagram followers who has the successful reality television show “Chrisley Knows Best” that also has an audience of 2M. I don’t really have a lot to say about Becketts, as I don’t know a lot about the non-alcohol industry other than according to data it is a growing industry. I don’t really care about it that much either, because to me Beckett’s is just a cherry on top - this beverage line is literally just duplicating their THC beverages and taking out the THC and calling it a product. It seems like a smart move to increase their revenue without reinventing the wheel. A lot of other Tinley investors seem to think it will be a short term catalyst for the SP as it gets carried in more and more mainstream store locations. Co-packing deals: Their bottling facility allows for a multitude of different styles of beverages & different concentrations of THC. From single serve bottles, to mini-shots, to multi-serve bottles, carbonated or not carbonated, and with a variety of different flavors. They announced late last year that they already have at least 12 co-packing clients, 2 of which they have just press released, with 10 more to come in short order. This means that investing now is a great time to take advantage of the information disparity before their blockbuster deals get announced. Copack deal1: SIP Elixirs Copack deal2: Cannabis Quencher’s There’s rumors the CEO has already rejected offers to acquire the company, but the way the company is set up to allow other brands to use them like a turn-key beverage platform is screaming for some whale to come in and buy them out at a premium. This licensing process takes years, and Tinley is among the first-movers. For example, Molson & Hexo announced Truss Beverages in 2018, but they only received their license to produce THC beverages at their belleville facility in 2020. Currently Tinley’s has no debt, and is positioned well in the THC bev space to act on both Canadian and US markets. To give you an idea, they use the same distributor as Aphria for Canada and have already received demand from the provincial cannabis boards across the country have given strong indicative interest in carrying Tinley’s products. I’m currently in BALLS DEEP at $0.43/share
The Tinley’s Beverage Company CSE: TNY OTC: TNYBF The TLDR: Tinley is a combination US & Canadian cannabis beverage play, while simultaneously attacking the zero alcohol category with the same drink minus the THC. On top of their own brands, Tinley is securing revenue at their industry leading California bottling facility using it as a platform for other companies that want to tap into the THC beverage market. Tinleys is an acquisition target for big alcohol or bigger THC companies looking to get into beverages. Valued at only $50M, there is a lot of room to grow considering the exit valuations of other successful startup beverage brands, and existing THC beverage partnerships. Why Beverages?
Raw leaf is a commodity that when competition increases usually ends up with profit margins racing to the bottom. Final products like beverages hold brand value which allow them to maintain high profit margins. Humans consume beverages socially, and the fact that thc has a similar effect as alcohol but without the calories or hangover, it is very likely to replace a decent % of the alcohol industry, especially for people who have to go in to work the next morning.
On their leadership team, Tinley has a lineup of former executives from massively successful brands. Their roster is deeper than your wife’s boyfriend’s favourite sports team. Mark Benadiba, Advisory Board
Former CEO of Cott Canada, EVP Cott USA
Ted Zittel, Director & Brand Manager
Former President of Cott’s Retail Brands International
Richard Gillis, President Western USA
Former Executive vice president of Coca Cola, Western USA.
Jeff Maser, CEO Co-Founder
Former Cott corporation
Banking experience
Andrew Stodart, Advisory Board
Launched Crystal Head Vodka,
Oversaw Dan Aykroyd Wines
Former International brand manager for Black Velvet Whiskey (Constellation Brands)
MBA, NYU Stern School of Business; MS, Chemical Engineering, Colombia University.
Sven Stalley, General Manager
Partner, Critical Mass Group, a Los Angeles-based agency specializing on building emerging beverage brands by providing outsourced sales force management, sales execution, distribution management, beverage formulation and manufacturing
10 years in digital branding
Tinley’s THC line: They are now licensed to bottle & sell THC beverages in California, and have already applied to Health Canada for their license to do the same in Canada. They also have plans to expand to Nevada in the medium term. The drinks have great reviews, and apparently taste amazing, having already won awards. They use a Sativa strain which supposedly gives you a more uplifting euphoric feeling, rather than a glued-to-the-couch feeling. I haven’t tried it myself, but the reviews online all seem positive. Without speculating why, research suggests that people are moving away from alcohol over time. On the other hand, cannabis use grows & many experts believe that THC beverages will make up a large % of the total Cannabis market share. “Molson president and CEO Mark Hunter told analysts that although it's difficult to provide a number because cannabis beverages were illegal at the time, he believed the total cannabis market in Canada to be about $7 billion to $10 billion in size, with beverages accounting for anywhere from 20% to 30% of the total, or as much as $3 billion. Even on the low end that's a $1.5 billion opportunity.” Big companies have already made bets on this, like Constellation Brands taking a 4 Billion stake in Canopy Growth Corp to develop THC beverages and Molson Coors starting a joint venture with Hexo.AB InBev & Tilray invested $100 million Joint Venture into THC beverages creating the Fluent Beverage Company. Tinley’s non-infused non-alcoholic Beckett’s line: Their non-infused, non-alcoholic brand “Becketts” is currently in the trial phase in Costco, BevMo, Ralphs & Kroger, which appears to be going well as they have made reorders. Though it’s essentially the same taste as their THC beverage, they treat their Beckett’s brand as a separate entity to avoid the red tape associated with the THC line. They are essentially attacking two growing categories at once with essentially the same drink, which also gives cross-brand awareness & additional revenue. Beckett’s has recently partnered with Todd Chrisley, the patriarch of the Chrisley Family with an audience of over 2M instagram followers who has the successful reality television show “Chrisley Knows Best” that also has an audience of 2M. I don’t really have a lot to say about Becketts, as I don’t know a lot about the non-alcohol industry other than according to data it is a growing industry. I don’t really care about it that much either, because to me Beckett’s is just a cherry on top - this beverage line is literally just duplicating their THC beverages and taking out the THC and calling it a product. It seems like a smart move to increase their revenue without reinventing the wheel. A lot of other Tinley investors seem to think it will be a short term catalyst for the SP as it gets carried in more and more mainstream store locations. Co-packing deals: Their bottling facility allows for a multitude of different styles of beverages & different concentrations of THC. From single serve bottles, to mini-shots, to multi-serve bottles, carbonated or not carbonated, and with a variety of different flavors. They announced late last year that they already have at least 12 co-packing clients, 2 of which they have just press released, with 10 more to come in short order. This means that investing now is a great time to take advantage of the information disparity before their blockbuster deals get announced. Copack deal1: SIP Elixirs Copack deal2: Cannabis Quencher’s There’s rumors the CEO has already rejected offers to acquire the company, but the way the company is set up to allow other brands to use them like a turn-key beverage platform is screaming for some whale to come in and buy them out at a premium. This licensing process takes years, and Tinley is among the first-movers. For example, Molson & Hexo announced Truss Beverages in 2018, but they only received their license to produce THC beverages at their belleville facility in 2020. Currently Tinley’s has no debt, and is positioned well in the THC bev space to act on both Canadian and US markets. To give you an idea, they use the same distributor as Aphria for Canada and have already received demand from the provincial cannabis boards across the country have given strong indicative interest in carrying Tinley’s products. I’m currently in DEEP at $0.43/share
Plagiarize my work and trash talk me? I will incinerate you.
TL: DR at bottom Hi everyone. I posted this story a while back but recently became privy to some vital information. What I learned, confirmed that I am neither crazy nor did I overreact when I roasted this beast into oblivion. I previously wrote about this person here, here, here, here, here, here and here. If you would like to have better context on what a horrible person she is, I suggest you read either any or all of the linked posts. I had once referred to feckless waste of oxygen as “Karen,” but have since chosen “Molly” for her alias as its meaning is: unfortunate or ill-fated. If you choose to read this in its entirety, you will see that it makes perfect sense. About this story: all names contained herein are fictitious hence the quotation marks around them. Our cast includes: Me: Writer, quirky creative movie geek Molly: Thieving, entitled wannabe “actress” who is as talented as she is honest Judy: My now-retired former mentor Don: My graphic web designer friend and still photographer Tom: Film producer Jim: Film director Lana: Actress, Tom and Jim's friend Andrea: My caustic, yet lovable roommate. Onto the story. I was once a young, naive and perhaps a little too trusting aspiring writer. I met “Molly,” mid-forties, blonde, blue-eyed and Caucasian (relevant to the story), through, “Judy,” my mentor, when I was trying to get my first screenplay, a murder mystery, produced into a feature film. Being green, I had never worked in the business before and I trusted Judy implicitly. She was gold, a wonderful person and, as it would turn out, the polar opposite of Molly. By the time I met Molly, a spoiled toddler trapped in a 40-something woman's body and self-proclaimed ‘20-year theatre veteran,’ my work had been copyrighted for six months (PSA: it's imperative to protect your creative property and me doing just that saved my butt). Judy had previously worked with Molly on a prior film and suggested her for a dayplayer role in my murder mystery. For those who don't know, a dayplayer is an actor with approximately half a dozen lines and can usually film their part in a day or less. I trusted Judy's judgment so I messaged Molly and sent her the entire script. My first mistake. PSA: Never send your entire script, only script sides (sample dialogue), and a bio/description of the character. You'll save yourself a lot of headaches, both physical and legal. I ended up having several conversations with Molly. She seemed quite lovely. I will give her that she definitely had her phone etiquette down pat. Little did I know, she was just getting me to lower my walls before she went in for the kill. Molly had accepted the role in the tentative production and we talked virtually daily after that. She was quickly becoming one of my go-to confidants. My second mistake. As Molly and I grew closer, Judy and I grew further apart. One day, Molly wrote and asked me if I needed my script proofread. I told her there was no such need for that as it was already copyright protected including any errors that might be present. This becomes relevant later. She practically begged me and claimed she ‘just wanted to help.’ I told her, if she took it upon herself to do that, she would not be paid as there was no money and her efforts were pointless. Her behavior struck me as odd. How this seemingly, strong and confident woman had bizarrely behaved like a child, begging her daddy for candy, didn't make any sense. About a week had passed, Judy wrote me and asked if I was able to speak on the phone. I told her I was available and she called me. She greeted me and promptly got to the point. She inquired why Molly was now claiming she was the cowriter of my script. I was floored. I told her I didn't know what she was talking about. I thanked her, ended the call and immediately phoned Molly. Being continually unemployed, all Molly did was chain-smoke in her bathrobe and surf the net all day while her saintly husband worked a hard-labor job. She answered on the first ring. I asked if she knew anything about what Judy had told me. She paused before answering then tried to pass it off as ‘a misunderstanding.’ I decided to play my hand and bluff that other people had told me the same thing. Busted, she caved. Molly: “Well, I did help you correct everything.” Me: “Volunteering to copyedit my script does not make you the cowriter. You did a poor job, by the way. My work was already copyright protected in my name six months before I met you. This constitutes plagiarism.” Molly: “No, it doesn't!“ She paused then, “What's plagiarism?” I was dumbfounded. The fact that she denied being guilty of something without knowing the meaning of the word was perplexing. Me: “Look it up. Delete your copy of the script right now. You will only get a new one when and if I choose to cast you.” By the time I ended the call, it was obvious she was angry. Her pride had been wounded and I should have anticipated her retaliation. Again, hindsight. The next time I was over at her house, I went on her computer when she wasn't looking. On a hunch, I checked her hard drive and there it was: my script. I deleted it. She later finagled a new copy from a well-meaning cast member and repeated the whole illegal rewrite. It was then that I found out, she was not only claiming to have written the entire script herself, but was also going to have the leading role. Both counts were easily debunked as:
I had the copyright certificate to prove I was the sole writer
The female lead is a 23-year-old woman of Puerto Rican descent (Molly is white, blonde-haired, blue eyed and, at the time, was in her mid-forties)
Molly’s writing was absolutely terrible bordering on indecipherable.
The fact that she was insisting she’d written anything, other than a bad check or a grocery list, was laughable. Despite her claim of having a four-year college degree, she made countless careless, lazy mistakes, that to a casual observer, would suggest she dropped out while in elementary school. Examples include everything ranging from: run-on sentences consisting of only lowercase letters, failure to capitalize proper nouns, using ‘and’ in the same sentence more than once, using commas as end punctuation, misspelling simple grade school-level words, mixing up her homonyms, using clumps of periods to break up her sentences, etc. All of which completely contradicted her claim that she had written a 100 plus page pristine screenplay. In addition to a highly-embellished typo-filled résumé, she tried passing off an overly filtered camera phone photo as a headshot and had no material for an acting demo reel. Anyone with ‘20 years in the business’ would have had all of these things and more. It should go without saying: if you can't prove something, do not put it on your résumé. Thanks to the efforts of “Lana,” Molly had gotten into the good graces of, “Jim,” the noted award-winning director. Lana was the big-hearted other lead actress and his close friend. Molly had spun one of her infamous tales of woe i.e. poor me, my life sucks which led Lana to stick up and vouch for her. Molly's entitlement and complete lack of professionalism was duly noted by Jim. Despite her questionable spotty résumé, he only tolerated her for two reasons: she was the ‘writer’ and he felt professionally obligated to as a favor to Lana. I later came to learn, Jim was just biding his time until Molly either shaped up or until she failed her audition and he shipped her out. The role Molly wanted required a very strong actress which she was not. Failing her inevitable screen test, would have given Jim the grounds to have her replaced and, more accurately, fired. This wasn't his first rodeo. In the meantime, Jim knew Lana could keep Molly in line. I don't fault Lana at all for buying into Molly's tall-tales, as she excelled at emotional manipulation and tugged at people's heart-strings to get her way. This, however, was the beginning of the end. Molly immediately threw her weight around like she was, in her words, ‘the second coming of Meryl Streep’ and ‘being the writer’ demanded a producer credit as well. Her narcissism had reached new heights. Think Faye Dunaway’s portrayal of Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest and you'll get the idea. Unfortunately, for her, Jim was quickly losing his patience. Upon learning that Molly was now claiming she wrote the entire script, I sought out Judy for advice. Regrettably, Judy hated conflict and had long-since grown tired of playing referee between me and Molly. She dropped out of the production. I was left to fend for myself. Retrospectively, I realize her exit caused me to have to put on my big boy pants and confront my dilemma. On one hand, I was this close to spear-heading my first feature film. I wasn't a greedy person. All I wanted was my writing credit and a walk-on role in it. On the other hand, the working script bore little to no resemblance to my original source material. It had practically been taken over by a talentless wannabe ‘produceactress’ whose stiff acting would have looked out of place in an adult film. It was clear, the costs of being associated with Molly far outweighed the next-to-nonexistent benefits. I was on the fence, but knew what I had to do. I was backed in to a corner and was about to break out my secret weapon: my copyright certificate. It would later turn out, Judy was the first of several people to leave referring to Molly as ‘unprofessional,’ ‘a crazy bitch,’ ‘an amateur,’ ‘a pain in the butt’ and everything in between. I had heard whispers, but I wouldn't become aware of much of the internal conflict, with her as the cause, until after the fact. Molly, of course, always had an answer for everything, including why people kept dropping out i.e. schedule conflicts, production delays, etc. It all seemed feasible, because these things do happen in the film world. Then, one day, I got a message from, “Don,” the California-based graphic web designer, with a copy of the conceptual video done based on my screenplay. This was news to me. Lo and behold, guess who was in the leading role? If you guessed Molly, you get a cookie. The entire storyline had been completely changed. In the credits she was listed as the writer. My name was nowhere to be found. Her excuse for why I was not in any way involved with the shoot for the promotional video? There was ‘no time’ to get me involved. My name being mistakenly absent from the credits? A clerical error she promised to have fixed (it never was). I brought up that, Don, had been flown in from across the country to be the still photographer, yet I, who lived less than 60 miles away from the filming location, was left out of the loop. She ignored my question and blew me off. It felt like my soul had been crushed. My labor of love, my first screenplay had been absconded with by this...no-talent, phony! I was caught between tears and rage for a while. It was around the same time I decided to enact my revenge, that I received a panicked phone call from Molly. She had a habit of calling at the most inopportune times. I could have been on a date, sleeping, working, etc. This instance was no exception. After both my landline and cell phone rang multiple times, I finally picked up the landline from which I gave her an aggravated greeting. The following conversation is mostly from memory and paraphrased as it was a long time ago: Me [annoyed]: “What do you want?” Molly: “No time (insert emotional rant as she beat around the bush in an attempt to justify her despicable, entitled behavior all the while maintaining she was just an innocent bystander yet acting guilty as sin).” Me: “Who did you piss off this time?” Silence. Me: “You overstepped your bounds again.” More silence. It turns out Molly had tried to play the big boss and no one was having it. She copped an attitude with “Tom,” the producer, stating ‘her orders were the director's orders.’ Her power-play backfired when Tom called Jim to confirm. Jim saw red and had effectively went on strike with Tom following suit. Between Tom and Jim, they had a combined 60 years experience in the business whereas Molly had virtually none. I later learned, Lana apologized profusely for bringing Molly into the fold and had reluctantly played mediator between her two friends. She tried, in vain, to prevent Tom and Jim from quitting, but they had made up their minds. Neither of them wanted anything to do with Molly. The ultimatum was brought down: either Molly went or they went. Them leaving would have created a domino effect and led to the production being halted. That is why Molly was flipping out, not because she was about to be outed as the cause of the whole mess. By this point, I knew her too well and saw right through her drama queen antics. Me: “What right did you think you had to do that, Molly? Keep in mind, I know more than you think I do. If you lie, I will know. ” After a long pause she shakily answered. Molly: “Because I'm the cowriter.” Me: “No, you're not. I'm so sick of you saying that. It's not only untrue, it's fraud.” Molly: “But I made changes to it.” Me: “Unauthorized changes. You just admitted to plagiarism and copyright infringement. Can you bring forth documented proof that you were given permission from me to rewrite my entire script? You can't. What you did was highly unethical and illegal.” Molly: “But...” Me [raised voice]: “I'm speaking! You're listening. I'm not gonna keep going in circles with you on this. If I have to scan my copyright certificate and put it on the net for everyone to see, I will.” Dead silence. I turned my printescanner on and scanned a blank document. It had the desired effect as she totally freaked out when she heard it. She was caught in her tangled web of deception and her brain was short circuiting as she kept trying to come up with convincing lies. Me: “You did know my work was copyright protected, didn't you? If you did and I know you did, that doesn't just make you a criminal, it makes you a stupid criminal. You knowingly committed willful copyright infringement. I have a lawyer on retainer and the means to pursue a lawsuit. Believe me, when I tell you, I have more than enough solid evidence to prove my case if I choose to sue you.” Molly: “Don't do that!” Me [patronizing]: “You're right. I'm not gonna waste my time dragging you into court when the court of public opinion is so much more effective.” Molly [stunned]: “What?” Me: “I have a file ten inches thick: screenshots, text messages, e-mails, all detailing the subterfuge and dubious tactics you employed to try to screw me out of my creative property. I also have the plagiarized hard copies containing your distinctive moniker on the title page in place of my name. All have time stamps. Add all that to my original hard copy of my script and my copyright certificate? I swear, I'll crucify you. All people have to do is Google your name and they see you're full of it. Being a wannabe is one thing, but you'll never be able to shake the reputation of being labeled a liar and a thief. If this gets out, you'll be unemployable. It's not like people are beating down your door with job offers. Stick a fork in you. You're done.” Dead silence. Me: “What? No retort? No spin doctor explanation? Go on. Lie. It's what you do best. Of course, you could always shock the hell out of me and give the truth a whirl.” Molly [meekly]: “I'm sorry.” Me: “Why? Because you're wrong, because you're caught or because now everyone knows you for the scam artist that you are? Maybe all of the above. Either way, it's absolutely clear you have nothing even remotely resembling a conscience. Your pride and ego are too big to leave room for one.” Molly: “I'm really am sorry.” Me: “Ooh. Not yet, but you will be.” Molly [horrified]: “What are you gonna do?” Me: “‘What am I gonna do?’ What am I gonna do? Hmm. Well, for starters I'm going to use the ‘F’ word. Fired. You're fired.” Molly: “You can't fire me! I...” Me: “I'm speaking! I can do whatever I want. I own the copyright to (script name). I'll say it again in case you weren't listening. I own the rights to (script name).” Molly: “I know.” Me [yelling]: “Then why did you do it?! Did you honestly think you’d get away with trying to usurp my work and turn it in to your own little vanity project?“ Silence. Me: “You know what? It doesn't matter anymore. Now, starting now, your name is off of this project. That's my call. The writing credit you think you deserve because you plagiarized my script? Gone. The leading role that you retooled to fit someone of your age and appearance? Gone. The producing credit you demanded you receive for illegally rewriting my script? Gone.” Molly [fake crying]: “Why do you hate me?” Me: “Spare me the crocodile tears. If you put the energy you wasted conning people in to actually going out on auditions and booking jobs, you’d be a working actress right now. Instead, you're a nobody that no one wants to work with, let alone be around. You're just a bored housewife chasing a pipe dream. Make no mistake. I'm not calling you a has-been. You're a never-was.” Silence. Me: “Seriously, how many people, have to go no-contact with you before you realize that you're the problem? Even your own daughter doesn't talk to you because you're a vile bitch and you can expect your son to do the same when he goes off to college. You're a compete failure as a professional, a horrible excuse for a human being and not worth any more of my time.” Molly [no longer fake crying, pleading]: “You don't have to talk to me like that. I can change. I promise I can change.” Me: “Cut the bullshit! Save your empty promises for someone who cares, because I have no more fucks left to give. You better hope Lana can do some fancy footwork and prevent Tom and Jim from quitting. I won't blame them if they do. They're professionals. They don't need to put up with this crap. You also seem to have forgotten, the entire cast and crew was recruited at their invitation. Once they abandon ship, word will spread like wildfire and everyone will mutiny. With them gone, I guarantee you everyone will walk off the set. If this whole thing ends up dead in the water, you can bet your butt, I'll make damn sure to point the finger at you as the reason why. If that happens, I swear on my father's grave, in every way that it matters I'll be done with you. Do you understand?” Silence. Me [shouting]: “Do you understand?!” Molly: “Yes.” Me: “You see, Molly, I haven't trusted you for quite some time. Now I just don't like you. Get a life. One that doesn't involve me.” When I ended the call, I was raging hot. The entire conversation was cathartic and liberating. Unlike Molly, I keep promises. I sent all of my documented evidence to Don who then forwarded it to Jim, Tom and the other producers. One by one, all of them publicly quit. They made detailed posts on their Facebook pages. Molly wasn't called out by name specifically, but anyone remotely connected to the production knew the identity of the ‘unprofessional individual’ they alluded to. The production ultimately ended up being canceled. It eventually came out that I was the only writer and the script presented to them was plagiarized by none other than Molly herself. Those who were unaware of the behind the scenes drama, started blowing up her social media demanding an explanation. Molly, who always had something to say and craved attention, had finally gotten her wish granted by karma. All eyes were on her, just not in the flattering way she wanted. It should come as no surprise, Molly offered up no satisfactory answers to any questions asked and took no responsibility for her monumental screw up. Unable to take the heat, she, in a demonstration of her trademark cowardice, tucked her tail between her legs and went off the grid. Even though, by then everyone knew of her dirty deeds, Molly never did admit she was the reason why everything went to hell in a handbasket. Shocker. For several months after that, Molly left me alone. Considering she used to stalk me online, I find it amusing she didn't notice when I blocked her on all my social media. I changed cellphone providers shortly thereafter. I also made certain that she never got my new number. I kind of wish I could have seen the epic tantrum she, no doubt, threw when she realized I had gone no-contact with her. About a month after purging the leech of a fake bitch, known as Molly, out of my life, I got a call on my landline from an unfamiliar number with an out of state area code. I didn't answer but, “Andrea,“ my roommate listened to the voicemail. It was Molly calling to inform me that Jim, the director, had passed away due to a heart attack. I didn't listen to the message. Andrea gave me the gist. Molly sounded panicked and, in her typical entitled fashion, turned the tragedy into a story about herself: Molly: “Great. Now the movie's never going to get made.” What a cold-hearted bitch. I was speechless. We were both stunned. Forget the fact that Jim's wife was now a widow or that his children were now fatherless or that his grandchildren would never know their grandfather. Her ego being stroked as a Grade B-movie actress was more important. Andrea deleted the message and I headed to work. Being that I was unable to block her number on the landline, Molly later made another attempt to get my attention with her histrionics. I was still at work when Andrea intercepted the call. A little fact about my roommate: she is a German-Jew native New Yorker with a very big mouth. She takes absolutely no crap and makes Judge Judy Sheindlin seem like a cream puff by comparison. You can just imagine how that entire call went. Here's a snippet: Andrea: “Molly, the man died. Does that mean anything to you, you selfish cunt?” Upon being told off, Molly quickly tried to end the conversation but not before leaving a message to have me call her back. Andrea: “Molly, OP blocked you on everything for reasons that are already well-known to you. Fuck. Off.” After delivering that rebuke, which left Molly in tears, Andrea hung up. Needless to say, I never did return her call. When Andrea spilled the tea, of how she kicked Molly when she was down, I hugged her and bought her a bottle of her favorite sangria as a thank you. It's been over six years. I haven't heard from Molly since and don't care to ever again. I'm finally starting to achieve my dreams. I recently produced and had a small role in my first short film for which I wrote the script. It was such a fulfilling and rewarding experience. The whole shoot was so overwhelming in a good way. Being a big softie, I did cry on set. I'm finally doing what I know I was born to do. In case you're wondering, yes. I still plan to produce my murder mystery without any involvement from Molly. EDIT: For those of you who have been asking, I have since met a very talented director, who is as big of a movie geek as me, and is the complete antithesis to Molly. I don't leave a single exchange with him without feeling educated or inspired. He's a wonderful guy and he loves my murder mystery. Currently, there are plans to get it into development as soon as the coronavirus craziness dies down. EDIT: UPDATE II: In having several in-depth conversations with Don, I learned of the catalyst that caused Tom and Jim to quit. Don is about six months younger than me and quite introverted. Molly had him under her thumb. So when she insisted that he write a letter to Tom ‘defending her honor,’ he did. What Molly didn't count on was Don being hip to her manipulative, schoolyard-bully ways: he covered his backside by copying both Lana and Jim in the e-mail as well. Naturally, being the oblivious waste of flesh that she is, Molly did not notice that her whiny, entitled rant (it was clear that they were her words, not Don’s) had been sent to the director himself. She realized she had screwed up when she received a scathing text/reply from Lana about the huge mess she had caused. This is what spurred Molly’s panicked phone call to me in which I introduced her to the concept of being murderedbywords. EDIT: UPDATE. I reconnected with one of Molly's former friends, “Amelia,” with whom I was cordial during those days. Amelia had been friends with Molly for 10 years before cutting her off. After reuniting, my graphic web designer friend, “Don,” created a group chat between the three of us. Ever since then, Amelia has been spilling the tea left and right. It should be of no surprise whatsoever, that Molly has absolutely no performing background at all. Her flimsy claim of having ‘20 years experience in theater’ is just one of the many delusional figments of her diseased mind. It turns out, it was actually Amelia who was active in the local community theater scene. Naturally, Molly was insanely jealous of her so-called ‘best friend's’ talent and ambitious ways. Also, the cock and bull story about her being a former department store runway model when she lived up north is just that: bull. She's only 5’2”. Anyone who knows anything about fashion knows you have to be at least 5’7” to do runway. Amelia also confirmed that Molly has always been a lazy unproductive member of society and that her kids had it bad as long as she can remember. Amelia is delighted that Molly's now-grown children have escaped her clutches and have little to no-contact with their poor excuse for a mother. Upon learning that Molly's daughter doesn't let her see her only grandchild, Amelia laughed manically then said: “Karma's a bitch.” Amelia is also shocked that Molly and her husband are still together. She put it, and, I quote: “I'm surprised they haven't murdered each other yet.” You may be wondering what led Amelia to go no-contact with Molly. If you read any of my other stories, it was similar instances of rampant entitled behavior. The last straw came when then-newlywed Amelia was expecting her first child. Being the attention whore that she is, Molly was extremely jealous that Amelia “never had time for her” anymore. She made some very cruel comments about Amelia's then-unborn son (she has a daughter now as well) and that pretty much ended their ten-year ‘friendship.’ Amelia said her stress level dropped by 99% ever since she blocked Molly out of every aspect of her life. TL: DR: Narcissistic, wannabe “actress” tries to steal my script from me and produce it as her own little vanity project. I kept a detailed record of all her illegal, libelous, malicious deeds and turned everyone against her.
The Tinley's Beverage Company The Tinley’s Beverage CompanyCSE: TNYOTC: TNYBFThe TLDR: Tinley is a combination US & Canadian cannabis beverage play, while simultaneously attacking the zero alcohol category with the same drink minus the THC. On top of their own brands, Tinley is securing revenue at their industry leading California bottling facility using it as a platform for other companies that want to tap into the THC beverage market. Tinleys is an acquisition target for big alcohol or bigger THC companies looking to get into beverages. Valued at only $50M, there is a lot of room to grow considering the exit valuations of other successful startup beverage brands, and existing THC beverage partnerships.Why Beverages?Raw leaf is a commodity that when competition increases usually ends up with profit margins racing to the bottom. Final products like beverages hold brand value which allow them to maintain high profit margins. Humans consume beverages socially, and the fact that thc has a similar effect as alcohol but without the calories or hangover, it is very likely to replace a decent % of the alcohol industry, especially for people who have to go in to work the next morning.On their board of directors, Tinley has a lineup of executives from massively successful brands. Their roster is deeper than your wife’s boyfriend’s favourite sports team.Mark Benadiba,Former CEO of Cott Canada, EVP Cott USATed Zittel,Former President of Cott’s Retail Brands InternationalRichard GillisFormer Executive vice president of Coca Cola, Western USA.Jeff MaserFormer Cott corporationBanking experienceAndrew Stodart,Launched Crystal Head Vodka,Oversaw Dan Aykroyd WinesFormer International brand manager for Black Velvet Whiskey (Constellation Brands)Baron DavisFormer 2x NBA all starEarly investor in VitaminwaterBrought in to develop branding partnerships with celebrities and sports icons.Curt Marvis,MTV Lifetime Achievement Award recipient,Former President, Digital Media, Lionsgate Entertainment (NYSE:LGF.A)Tinley’s THC line:They are now licensed to bottle & sell THC beverages in California, and have already applied to Health Canada for their license to do the same in Canada. They also have plans to expand to Nevada in the medium term.The drinks have great reviews, and apparently taste amazing, having already won awards.They use a Sativa strain which supposedly gives you a more uplifting euphoric feeling, rather than a glued-to-the-couch feeling. I haven’t tried it myself, but the reviews online all seem positive.Without speculating why, research suggests that people are moving away from alcohol over time. On the other hand, cannabis use grows & many experts believe that THC beverages will make up a large % of the total Cannabis market share.“Molson president and CEO Mark Hunter told analysts that although it's difficult to provide a number because cannabis beverages were illegal at the time, he believed the total cannabis market in Canada to be about $7 billion to $10 billion in size, with beverages accounting for anywhere from 20% to 30% of the total, or as much as $3 billion. Even on the low end that's a $1.5 billion opportunity.”Big companies have already made bets on this, like Constellation Brands taking a 4 Billion stake in Canopy Growth Corp to develop THC beverages and Molson Coors starting a joint venture with Hexo. AB InBev & Tilray invested $100 million Joint Venture into THC beverages creating the Fluent Beverage Company.Tinley’s non-infused non-alcoholic Beckett’s line:Their non-infused, non-alcoholic brand “Becketts” is currently in the trial phase in Costco, BevMo, Ralphs & Kroger, which appears to be going well as they have made reorders. Though it’s essentially the same taste as their THC beverage, they treat their Beckett’s brand as a separate entity to avoid the red tape associated with the THC line. They are essentially attacking two growing categories at once with essentially the same drink, which also gives cross-brand awareness & additional revenue.Beckett’s has recently partnered with Todd Chrisley, the patriarch of the Chrisley Family with an audience of over 2M instagram followers who has the successful reality television show “Chrisley Knows Best” that also has an audience of 2M.I don’t really have a lot to say about Becketts, as I don’t know a lot about the non-alcohol industry other than according to data it is a growing industry. I don’t really care about it that much either, because to me Beckett’s is just a cherry on top - this beverage line is literally just duplicating their THC beverages and taking out the THC and calling it a product. It seems like a smart move to increase their revenue without reinventing the wheel. A lot of other Tinley investors seem to think it will be a short term catalyst for the SP as it gets carried in more and more mainstream store locations.Co-packing deals:Their bottling facility allows for a multitude of different styles of beverages & different concentrations of THC. From single serve bottles, to mini-shots, to multi-serve bottles, carbonated or not carbonated, and with a variety of different flavors.They announced late last year that they already have at least 12 co-packing clients, 2 of which they have just press released, with 10 more to come in short order. This means that investing now is a great time to take advantage of the information disparity before their blockbuster deals get announced.Copack deal1: SIP ElixirsCopack deal2: Cannabis Quencher’sThere’s rumors the CEO has already rejected offers to acquire the company, but the way the company is set up to allow other brands to use them like a turn-key beverage platform is screaming for some whale to come in and buy them out at a premium. This licensing process takes years, and Tinley is among the first-movers. For example, Molson & Hexo announced in 2018 they will be making beverages, and they are still not approved.Currently Tinley’s has no debt, and is positioned well in the THC bev space to act on both Canadian and US markets. To give you an idea, they use the same distributor as Aphria for Canada and have already received demand from the provincial cannabis boards across the country have given strong indicative interest in carrying Tinley’s products.I’m currently in DEEP at $0.43/share Submitted February 04, 2021 at 11:35PM
This is NOT "Freedom Week 2.0" YET! Please read this for more information on why it isn't.
Last Update: Edit #16 - October 2, 2020 Ok, already seeing misinformation going out here (at least Reno pulled down his video). It seems a majority of people here putting up posts, videos, and others are up-voting misinformed comments whoi are not actually READING. It is not hard to get this information guys... You can see the ruling on the document HERE where it says under conclusion: "We AFFIRM the district court’s grant of summary judgment for plaintiffs-appellees." What does this mean? It means that the 9th circuit has AFFIRMED Judge Benitez's summary judgement. Now if there was no stay on this summary judgement this means that the judgement stays in effect. HOWEVER because Benitez put a STAY on HIS OWN JUDGEMENT that summary judgement is NOT in effect. This means it is NOT legal to purchase new magazines YET. What would need to be done to get Freedom Week 2.0 started? Judge Benitez's stay would have to LIFT his own stay would have to be lifted. This would allow the summary judgement to be in effect once again. The stay on his judgement will be lifted upon "final resolution" of the appeal. I am updating this so as to avoid confusion, refer to the lower edits for information on this. Will Benitez lift his stay stay be lifted soon so as to allow for Freedom Week 2.0 to begin? My crystal ball says no because if he does then the stay gets lifted before the appeal process is finalized then the DOJ will ask for an "emergency" stay with their en-banc appeal and they will get a stay written by the 9th (based on the 3 judges handling these stays, they change every month - don't forget what happened to Rhode v. Becerra (the ammo case)) and you can bet it will not be as lenient as Benitez's current stay is. tl;dr The ruling is still stayed because Benitez has NOT lifted his stay nor has the requirements been met to lift that stay (i.e. appeals process being completed). All that happened was the 9th agreeing with Benitez's SUMMARY JUDGEMENT (which is currently stayed by Benitez himself). Once again, stop spreading misinformation. You guys are going to get people who may not know any better in serious hot water and THEY will be paying the legal consequences... It could happen to you or someone you know. Please do not be careless and stop writing without thinking... We got really good news here, let's wait a little bit and see how Benitez AND the CA DOJ respond to this. Edit: EVEN Chuck Michel is publicly saying this is not "Freedom Week II" yet. For those who only sit on this sub and have no idea who he is, he is the President of the CRPA. Edit 2: If you want to hear my theory on what will happen now it is that Benitez will not touch his stay unless the 9th denies an en-banc hearing or they approve the en-banc hearing and then affirm Benitez's judgement. Edit 3: The Original Stay issued last year can be found here clearly states:
THEREFORE, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the Judgment is stayed in part pending final resolution of the appeal from the Judgment
What does "final resolution of the appeal from the Judgement" mean? It means that either the state does not try to appeal the 9th's affirmation (or they run out of time to appeal the decision (very unlikely)) OR the 9th circuit denies en-banc AND SCOTUS denies cert. Currently the appeals process is still open, it is not final. Edit 4:Here is a post from FPC (Firearms Policy Coalition) basically reiterating what this post already says Edit 5: "Ok so you said a lot of stuff, what's going to happen now and when will it happen?" -> My prediction is that the state is going to file for an en-banc hearing and that Judge Benitez won't be touching his injunction. I can imagine this will be filed within a week or two and the 9th will sit on it "pending the decision of Young v Hawaii". Edit 6: "Why are there some companies saying they'll ship? How is that legal?" -> Technically it is not illegal to sell a magazine of any size to a California resident so long as that sale is not conducted within California and that resident does not import the magazine into California. Realistically speaking the only one who's really taking the legal risk of purchasing these magazines online and having them shipped to California right now is YOU. You are going to be facing more liability than the companies will (especially considering most of those companies aren't even in California). Remember those companies have very likely retained big law firms and you (likely) don't have that kind of money to retain that level of legal support. Edit 7:Here is some useful information regarding how soon these appeals must be filed.
Becerra has 14 days from August 14, 2020 to file an appeal for an en banc hearing. If he doesn't do this it is possible for a Judge to call a vote for an en banc hearing 7 days after that without the appeal, it is also possible an extension can be granted. There are other factors to take into account here but the main point is that if the process to hear an en banc has not been started by August 28, 2020 then either an extension has to be granted or one of the judges has to start the process. This means that September 4, 2020 is the last day we can hear anything regarding an en banc hearing so if nothing has started (i.e. they have not begun the process for voting on whether to hear it or not) then that would be mean the state loses out on its chance to appeal to the 9th (this is good for us).
In order for the 9th to approve an en-banc hearing at least 51% of the court has to approve the appeal to hear the case. This means that 14 judges have to vote yes. There are currently 16 judges who were nominated by a Democrat President (this includes Thomas). The 9th typically has a maximum 35 days from the day the appeal is filed to vote on it (14 days to vote after distribution which has a max of 21 days).
But wait there's more! The state still has the option of appealing to the Supreme Court (we'll see if they bother to hear this one given it's coming from an anti-gun state). A petition is due either 90 days after the decision (so from today that would be November 12, 2020) or 90 days after the 9th denies to hear the case en-banc (and this could be up to 35 days after the appeal is filed).
So when is the absolute last chance for the state to file an appeal for anything? By my current calculations and accounting for the maximum amount of days listed without accounting for any extensions (because there is no way to know) the day that Becerra will have his last chance to file an appeal is January 7, 2021 (this could happen sooner if the 9th acts quick and denies the en banc hearing sooner) but this will only be the case if the 9th denies en-banc, otherwise if the 9th en-banc appeal is never filed then the last day to file would be November 12, 2020. SCOTUS is not required to respond to cert. on or before this day it is merely the final day that Becerra can file a petition for cert. After this day the appeals process becomes finalized for this case with the 9th's 2 - 1 opinion becoming final. As a result it would result in a "permanent" Freedom Week 2.0 for magazines as Benitez's stay would be lifted.
"This is too much to read and I'm confused, if we don't take into account any unpredictable factors (i.e 9th granting extensions) when is the last day that this appeals process can be continued in any way?" January 7, 2021 is going to be the last day Becerra has to file any sort of petition for an appeal in regards to this case given that the 9th takes their time to deny an en banc appeal. If for whatever reason Becerra does NOT file an en banc appeal AND/OR the 9th does not call for an en banc vote on their own (they can call for a vote even if Becerra does not file an appeal) then November 12, 2020 is going to be the last day Becerra can file an appeal to SCOTUS. The last day for an en-banc appeal to be considered/filed is September 4, 2020 (not counting any extensions).
I will try to keep updated as much as possible and post here with the relevant information. It is very difficult to give the time frame for anything right now because nobody knows what the state is going to do. My best guess is they are preparing an en-banc appeal and that they will not risk going to SCOTUS at this time. If Trump wins re-election it is highly unlikely that they will seek out a SCOTUS appeal and the en-banc appeal will be the final appeal by the state. Edit 8: Largely the same as above but this time I found a flowchart made by Michelle & Assosciates regarding how the en-banc process works. You can view this En-Banc Flowchart here. Edit 9: CRPA now has released a FAQ regarding the current situation (it is essentially the same as I've written here - and before someone asks, no I do not work for CRPA), you can view this here. They have a different view than I do on "final resolution" meaning they think Freedom Week 2.0 could come sooner, about 90 days sooner than the farthest date I noted above (I have written previously that it could come a lot sooner; nobody knows for certain however, I just personally gave a very liberal prediction). Edit 10: I forgot to consider something that might result in Freedom Week 2.0 coming sooner (I didn't consider this because it's a bit unpredictable)! If the en-banc appeal is denied then that could be considered "final resolution" of the appeal. As a result Judge Benitez's stay might be lifted as the 9th would hand the case back to the district court (i.e. Judge Benitez). Now, does this mean all is good and Benitez can right away lift the stay? Well yes (probably) but... the state could ask him to keep his stay in place while they file cert. to SCOTUS. However after considering how the state has been treating him (i.e. the "threats" to tell him to put a stay on his judgement or they would go to the 9th) I seriously doubt he is going to grant such a request. There is also the possibility that the state ask the 9th to stay its mandate while a cert. petition is filed but if they would deny en-banc then I find it unlikely they would stay that mandate. So what does this mean? It means that if en-banc gets denied then it could be just a matter of days before Freedom Week 2.0 is active. Now of course there is still the possibility that SCOTUS could get involved following a cert. petition as they have a tendency to do as they please (I don't think anyone here needs any examples of this (cough NYSRPA v NYC cough)). I doubt I (or anyone in my network) am going to be able to accurately predict how SCOTUS would act in such a situation but my prediction as of today (August 16th, 2020) would be they would either deny cert. or GVR it (GVR would not be good for us). Edit 11: This Friday (August 28, 2020) will be 14 days from the 9th's opinion. By that day (or on that day) ether an en-banc appeal will be filed, an extension request will be filed, or nothing will be filed. Edit 12: It is currently August 28th, 2020, 10:30 AM. We have not seen an en banc appeal or an extension come through. Does this mean we're in the clear? Not yet. Remember that any judge from the 9th can call a vote to re-hear this case and it is likely that this will happen. I have spoken to a few people in my network and an interesting theory was drawn. Some believe that Becerra will not file an en banc appeal because it is an election year and the gun community has grown to include those who previously were all for restrictive gun laws. Instead Sydney Thomas (the 9th's Chief Judge) will make the call to vote on whether to re-hear this case or not (i.e. sua sponte). As for what I personally think? I think that we can expect to see something from the CA DOJ by the end of the day. They will probably file for an appeal and drag this out. Whether they use that 14 day extended window to file an appeal request or not, I have no clue. They will want to drag this out as much as they can in hopes that Trump will not win re-election, but then again that is just my opinion. I'll make an update tonight at 11:59 PM or when CA DOJ makes a move on this case, whichever happens to come first. Edit 13: The request for an en-banc hearing has just been filed. This can be seen here. What now? Within the next 21 days either a 14 day extension will be granted, the 3 judge panel will choose to re-hear the case after being requested by another 9th judge (likely Sydney Thomas), the 3 judge panel will choose to not re-hear the case after being requested by another 9th judge, or the 9th does nothing and ignores the request (unlikely). It is also possible (however unlikely) that a vote for an en-banc hearing is called without a request to the 3 judge panel. If the 3 judge panel chooses not to re-hear the case then any judge who was not on the panel (likely to be Sydney Thomas) will call for an en-banc vote within 14 days after the request to the 3 judge panel went out, 21 days after the petition (this appeal so 21 days from today, August 28th), or 14 days after circulation of the party response (if filed), whichever is later. The 3 panel can stall for 90 days after this request is made. The "simple" explanation: "So what do we do now? When will we find out something at the soonest?" -- Expect to see something around September 18, 2020 at the earliest. A 14 day extension can be granted before any request is made to the original 3 judge panel. There is also the chance that the 3 judge panel could stall for 90 days (in the hopes that Trump wins re-election). It is also possible that Sydney Thomas calls for an en-banc vote without talking to the 3 judge panel from the get go. "What's likely to happen?" -- My crystal ball says that it is likely the judges will stall when that request is made up until the election. As such it is very possible that the Chief Judge Sydney Thomas is going to call an en-banc vote for this case some time in September. Extensions and stalling can go either way here, it is all dependent on who is going to win the election in November. Edit 14: Not much to say except a bunch of Amicus Briefs were filed in support of CA DOJ. These can be seen here: First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth -- On a side note I want to pull your attention to the fifth one linked. Some of the states that are in that Amicus Brief do NOT have magazine restrictions in their state so it is really, REALLY interesting to see them arguing in support of such a restriction. I would let those in your network who live in those states know about this, it might be important for how they vote in their future state and local elections. Aside that, as I wrote above we can expect to see some movement on September 18th, 2020. This will probably be the response from Michel & Associates. We can also expect to see some more amicus briefs in support of Michel soon after. As for when they'll vote on whether to to do en-banc or not? Probably late September or early October if there are no extensions but nobody can really tell for sure. I'll also put a note at the top of the post in regards to when this gets updated. Edit 15: The opposition to the en-banc hearing has been filed. You can view this here. "What does this mean?"
Not much at this point. We all knew that Michel & Associates were going to oppose it.
"What happens now?"
We wait. We did see something by September 18, 2020 after all.
"What will we see in the coming weeks?"
Probably some amicus briefs from states and organizations that support our cause within the next 10 days (that's the limit). Then we'll see if the original panel will re-hear the case or decline to do so. It's a possibility that Thomas could just call for an en-banc vote without letting the 3 judge panel decide. I don't want to fill this edit up with conjecture on how they could act and why they would do so. Instead I'll just say to check back in a week for those amicus briefs and keep routinely checking back.
"When is the latest we can expect to see the next thing (besides amicus briefs?)"
This is dependent on how the 9th is going to handle it from here. There are a few options. Crystal ball says we should see the newest development on this case before the end of October (i.e. we should see the next action by the 9th in the coming weeks). In a nutshell, expect something significant from the 9th between today and the end of October.
The state of California does not legalize, regulate, license, or authorize any California sports betting sites. The state does not offer its residents any legal California sports betting sites. Even though they were on track to make online betting USA legal in California before the end of 2020. Colorado: Legal. Colorado became the 19th state to legalize betting and as of May 1, 2020 multiple operators allowed residents to open accounts online and place wagers. Records show there have been no prosecutions related to illegal online gambling in California. Nevertheless, no online gambling laws have been passed for a long time. And while some bills do... Games played with a dice or ball, like craps or roulette, are illegal in California. Certain establishments in the state have found a way around this by putting their own spin on the games, using cards instead of dices or balls. Online gambling sites have not yet been legalized in California. While the future of online sports betting in California is not entirely certain, it’s a safe bet to say that legal sports betting will arrive in the state sometime in the next few years. The Supreme Court overturning PASPA was a game-changer and studies clearly show a significant number of Californians support their freedom to make safe and Yes. Because BetOnline is based out of the Republic of Panama, it is out of reach of United States laws like the Wire Act of 1961 and the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA, 2006) and therefore can operate legally and legitimately. As for other potential US and state laws, there is no law that says an American resident is not allowed to join a site like BetOnline. RANK: Patently Illegal. California. California had four different bills introduced in 2015 that would have legalized and set a regulatory framework for intrastate online poker, but all four bills died a Legislative death due to inaction as of a few months ago. New bills may be reintroduced. California Gambling Control Resource Book 2020, pdf The following regulations have recently been approved by the Office of Administrative Law. The regulations below are not included in the most recent version of the California Gambling Law and Regulations. NIGC – MICS States, California is widely considered to have the biggest sporting fan base in the country. Unsurprisingly, there is a massive number of people here that love to bet on their favorite sports. Today, our team of experts is here to help you find the best California sports betting sites currently operating. While California online sports betting and poker playing are still illegal, the state has not taken action against offshore entities that accept California players. Current Challenges Faced There is currently a fierce dispute between the Indian casinos and the card rooms as to which games the card rooms may offer and what constitutes a banked
An introduction to YouTube policies and guidelines - YouTube
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