I was with you till the last paragraph. Banks having a huge short position is a false conspiracy theory.

Can either one be proved?

You would think, if banks did have a huge short position, they would have announced large losses in Q4 after metals mooned. They did not.

If the banks had massive short positions, why didn't they report huge losses in Q4?

I think gold will keep going up over the next few years, because many central banks are converting from dollar reserves to gold. That means very large demand which is mostly price-insensitive.

China only has one silver fund (SLV equivalent), and it stopped creating new shares. So the existing shares trade at a large premium to the value of the underlying metal. Is that the "Shanghai physical" price you're talking about?

This was an inevitable correction. Gold and silver had gone parabolic for the past month. Nothing goes straight up. This takes the gold price all the way back to where it was last week.

Honestly, I don't think Warsh's appointment had much to do with it.

Doesn't this reset the silver price to where it was at the start of the month? This is hardly news, people got a bit over-excited in January. The spike is more newsworthy than the fall, and neither are all that interesting.

Silver was around 1/3 of the current price a year ago. Calling this a crash is a bit much. If it hits $20 then it's a crash.

Side note and completely unrelated, but I got my kid a 10 oz .50 caliber silver bullet last year and kicked myself for spending that much on a gag gift (like $300). . . . Should have bought a box of them.

I don't think people are thrilled with Warsh as much as they are relieved it wasn't Hassett or like Kevin O'Leary or something really insane. Warsh has relevant experience and knowledge. He is too close to Trump (and Ron Lauder) but hopefully knows better than to cause havoc.

Yeah, I think this is a good take. It was a combination of a very steep runup, and then the needle to the balloon was to take the possibility of a truly unhinged nominee off the table.

None so blind as those who refuse to see.

The overriding motivation to see what you want to see isn’t limited to one side.

Which race and gender do you need?

I take the opposite view - Adams was an awful troll for years, and he deserved cancellation long before he got it.

Long before the racism thing, I remember how grossed out I was by him complaining that he only got to have sex when his girlfriend wanted it, therefore his girlfriend, and women in general, were the "gatekeepers" of sex.

Completing failing to recognize that consent is a two person affair.

The weird part is, calling women gatekeepers of sex. When it is also men who gatekeeps.

The gross part is, that this reminds of older times, when men had the legal right to have sex with their wife whenever they wanted (it is a quite new thing, that there can be rape in marriage, the current chancellor of germany famously opposed this legal change). In short, patriarcharical BS that women are objects owned by men and that this is the natural order.

> "Why are we only allowed to have sex when you want it?"

> "Um, no honey, we both have to want to have sex in order for us to have sex."

> "Exactly, so men are only allowed to have sex when women want it. Access to sex is strictly controlled by the woman."

Two fundamentally different ways of looking at the same thing. Why did he feel like it ought to be any other way?

I would guess that Adams probably wanted to have sex more than his girlfriend did, which meant that he had lots of personal experiences of his girlfriend not wanting to have sex when he did; and few if any personal experiences of not wanting to have sex when his girlfriend did. From his perspective, this looks like women (his girlfriend in particular) being the gatekeeper of sex. And this is what he was complaining about.

On a society-wide level, men are systematically more interested in having sex more often and in more contexts than women are. So lots of people in heterosexual relationships have experiences similar to Adams' (sex not happening in cases where the man wants it and the woman doesn't), which is why the rhetorical trope that women are the gatekeepers of sex exists.

The outfit she's forced into by Jabba? And then she kills him?

I've never understood why Jabba, a male Hutt, would enjoy seeing a female of a completely different species in a revealing outfit.

The real answer is because it's a pulp sci-fi movie and Jabba is a gross evil slug monster and him having Leia chained up like that just shows how depraved and dangerous he is. Also Carrie Fisher looks really hot in that outfit and most of the audience is likely to be adolescent boys and men.

The funny answer is.and in a universe in which it's common for alien species to intermingle, and where humans (being the Imperial species) are particularly common, being a "humanophile" might be a kink, the galactic equivalent to being a furry or "monster fucker" in our world.

> Also Carrie Fisher looks really hot in that outfit and most of the audience is likely to be adolescent boys and men.

Well said. It feels really weird to have to defend this in this day and age.

It's ok for a hot actress to be dressed in a skimpy outfit. It was a big deal for our young selves when we watched her. Leia also ends up kicking butt (or kicking Hutt) and it's not like she's underdressed or incompetent in the movies.

This is driving me nuts, people making a big deal out of the slave Leia costume. The only person who had a right to complain was Carrie Fisher -- and she did, because it was an uncomfortable costume.

It's ok to have sexy accesses in sexy outfits. It's not ok if those are the only roles they get, but this wasn't the case.

It's not even a given that Jabba has her in that outfit because he finds it attractive. It could just as well be to titillate human guests or a pure power play.

Fair, although I think in Doylist terms it isn't that deep, especially when we're considering George Lucas. It's a common enough villain trope.

But Jabba did give her a good lick, so it seems like there's something he liked.

You're going to struggle with humans shaving and prostituting orangutans, having sex with horses and dogs, etc. then.

As do the majority of people. Still, it happens :/

Thanks, you successfully ruined my day. /s

Assets, not other currencies. Equities, commodities, consumer goods.