1/. SBF as Sam Bankman-Fried is known was just indicted for major fraud....the largest case ever.....
Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images
At the center of Sam Bankman-Fried’s $32 billion crypto empire was a lie: His two businesses had nothing to do with each other.
There was FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange that was the driver of the 30-year-old’s massive wealth, a supposedly safe and easy-to-understand business that took fees when traders bought and sold their digital money. Then there was Alameda Research, his hedge fund, which was something of a black box. He always insisted that the two were at arm’s length and no financial institution — not even his own — ever got special treatment on FTX.
2/. The Biden administration just authorised more free Covid tests....four per household, order yours here.....takes two minutes!
3/. Bob lefsetz with one of his riffs on culture, relevance and the news.....and also how to survive the new Media jumble......it's all about your tribe.....
A very interesting post, well worth reading....
It’s not politics, it’s cultural identity.
I’d say this is why you should never believe someone when they say they’re independent, but this is a cultural signifier too… They don’t want to be aligned with either side, they want to be seen as independent thinkers, even though they almost always vote for one side or another.
Have you been combing the Best of 2022 lists? It’s overwhelming, because of so much you do not know. And there’s so much you do not know that you don’t even bother to check out that which you’re unaware of. And the more product there is, the worse it is. Since TV is so expensive to make, there’s less of it, it’s easier to get a handle on it. And you know if you watch a popular show, you’ll bump into others who’ve seen it. But music? There’s so much of it you don’t know where to start. And the dirty little secret is music is no longer cohesive, it’s all a bunch of verticals, and oftentimes the verticals are very narrow. And the big verticals punch above their weight, just like in politics, people are vocal about their passions, they belong to the tribe, whether it be the BTS Army or the Swifties… You marvel that you don’t know anyone who is a passionate member, and if you cross those who are passionate, you get extreme blowback, just like with politics.
4/. Charlie Brown's gone QAnon/Woke....
5/. If you read the story last week on how Mexican cartel super strength fentanyl and meth are devastating our cities and making the homeless problem much worse, according to this long and detailed story the relationship between the DEA and the Mexican police has broken down, which means the inflow of these synthetics is unstoppable.
The story is about the investigation of a cartel, the eventual arrest of the Mexican Defense Minister [a General in the Mexican military] and his release by [of course] William Barr....
A scary article.....long but fascinating.....
Cienfuegos wore a face mask with a clear plastic shield over it, but there was no hiding his confusion and anger. There must be some mistake, he insisted. “Do you know who I am?”
The agents did. For years, U.S. law-enforcement and intelligence agencies had been watching Cienfuegos as he rose through the Mexican Army to become defense minister in 2012. Since late 2015, the D.E.A. had been investigating what it believed were Cienfuegos’s corrupt dealings with a second-tier drug gang based in the small Pacific Coast state Nayarit. In 2019, he had been secretly indicted on drug-conspiracy charges by a federal grand jury in Brooklyn.
6/. What a great movie....the original "Airplane"....here's how to deal with a panic attack...
7/. Governor Ron is proving he is a cruel and ruthless bastard, going after the trans community with bureaucratic sneakiness......
no matter if you feel the whole trans issue is overblown, it is still a medical decision, not political.
For months now, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been aggressively using his executive power to deny transgender medical care for two of society’s most vulnerable groups—children and the poor. In that, he has been far from alone, as Republicans across the country lean into an ugly backlash against the trans community and the science that supports it.
Along the way, DeSantis has been employing a power grab some fear will be adopted by other Republican governors—with disastrous results.
8/. Tom Tomorrow goes ribbit....
9/. I remember at the beginning of Trump's term there were very few media voices saying how bad it was going to get......one of them was
Andrew Sullivan, and he looks back at that era...
The term they came up with was Trump Derangement Syndrome, or TDS. We were all hyper-ventilating. Or they’d mock us as bots yelling “Orange Man Bad” in mindless unison. They minimized all the madness as “mean tweets.” They affected an ironic distance, telling us we were being trolled, or taking Trump “literally” rather than “seriously” — whatever the hell that meant. I remember the scoffs and eye-rolls as a handful of us predicted, from the very start, that Trump would never concede power if he lost re-election, and were told we had lost our marbles. He was never a real threat to democracy, they assured us. The word “tyrant” was absurd hyperbole. Calm down.
10/. This is coming!
11/. We all totally underestimate how much of the nation's housing stock is in the hands of the billionaires, hedge funds and giant corporations.
They want to get everyone renting....their houses and apartments!
Unlimited wealth accumulation is a mental illness, and the folks running JP Morgan Chase need to be checked into the nearest facility.
12/. A progressive group is running "Don't Run Joe" ads.....
13/ Yes this was last week, but it's an excellent illustration of how morally bankrupt the Republican Party is and how they are still terrified of Trump....
On Saturday morning, Donald Trump claimed, falsely, that the 2020 election was fraudulent because Democrats had been “working closely with Big Tech Companies” to defeat him. He concluded: “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”
It’s hard to imagine a clearer declaration of war against American democracy and the rule of law. But the same Republican lawmakers who excused Trump’s behavior for years—including his dinner with overt antisemites two weeks ago—are now excusing his explicit assault on the Constitution. Here’s how they’re responding.
14/. Interesting article, the Murdochs may have finally screwed themselves......let's hope so!
Rupert Murdoch, center, stands with sons Lachlan and James Murdoch. Photograph: Dan Steinberg/APRupert Murdoch rarely has to answer for the alternative realities presented by his hugely profitable US cable network, Fox News.
Its conspiratorial claims of a parade of cover ups from the 2012 Benghazi attack to the climate crisis and Covid-19 have been lapped up by Fox viewers and scorned by much of the rest of America, and then the world moved on. But on Tuesday, the 91-year-old billionaire media mogul will be obliged to answer difficult questions under oath about the inner workings of Fox.
15/. This is astonishingly bad - the official video for Trump Digital cards.......
But I read today these have all sold out....there were 44,000 NFT's offered, and it seems there are 44.000 complete idiots out there...
16/. it's finally sinking in to most Brits - Brexit has been a disaster....from the Guardian....
‘Leave campaigners knew reality was a hostile environment for the Brexit project, one that would expose its folly.’ Photograph: Francisco Seco/AP
17/. How much of a disaster? Umair tells us.....
18/. When Bob Lefsetz gets passionate about a TV show it's normally really good.....this one is "Stutz"....
Come for the personal information.
Take the therapy insights with a grain of salt.
I can’t really tell you whether you’ll be intrigued or bored by “Stutz” because it’s very hard for me to watch TV alone these days. Unless Felice is glued to the screen too, I keep checking how many minutes are left, wondering if I could make better use of my time. It’s not that I need to check my e-mail or social media feeds, it’s just that when I watch TV alone I start to squirm, I find it hard to sit still, it takes all my power not to shut off the presentation. Now there are exceptions, but they are rare. These are riveting streaming programs, but if they’re that riveting Felice wants to watch them too. However, she does have a limit when it comes to violence, so I’m on my own when it comes to those shows. I did watch all three seasons of “Suburra,” but I have not been able to bring myself to watch the original movie upon which the series is based.
19/. This is amusing - 45 signs you've become a Floridian.....
20/. Interesting premise for a movie.....an alien ship crash lands on Earth 65 million years ago....
IT’S ALIENS VERSUS dinosaurs in the new trailer for the upcoming sci-fi thriller, 65. The new film stars Adam Driver as Mills, a space pilot chartering a long-range exploratory mission with an array of cryogenically frozen passengers. During the journey, Mills’ craft is hit by an asteroid and he lands on a mysterious Earth-like planet that, it turns out, is actually Earth.
21/. Rolling Stone LOVES "The Eternal Daughter" with Tilda Swinton....
On Amazon Video for $15.....
Joanna Hogg’s The Eternal Daughter is, among other things, a spiritual sequel to her exquisite recent films The Souvenir (2019) and The Souvenir Part II (2021). Those movies studied a fledgling filmmaker named Julie Hart, who, bearing some autobiographical resemblance to Hogg herself, wound her way through memories of dating a charismatic, troubled drug addict, attending film school in England in the 1980s, and trying to carve out an artistic identity for herself under the conflicted but supportive eye of her parents and friends. In those movies, Julie was played by Honor Swinton Byrne. The character’s mother was played by the actress’s real-life mother, Tilda Swinton. There was, in other words, already an eerie, poignant echoing at stake in the Souvenir movies, with Byrne loosely playing a version of the director and Swinton standing in for both of their mothers, fictionalized and not. https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-reviews/the-eternal-daughter-tilda-swinton-ghosts-joanna-hogg-1234638152/
22/. Another excellent movie on Netflix....."The Wonder"...
Mary and I watched it last night, and it's an excellent movie....
‘Eerie, remarkable’ … Kíla Lord Cassidy, Tom Burke and Florence Pugh in The Wonder.Photograph: Aidan Monaghan/APChilean director Sebastián Lelio’s adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s 2016 novel is a completely absorbing descent into the mist – of 1860s Ireland, of mysticism, of religious fervour. Put aside the distracting framing device, two present-tense bookends assumedly meant to underscore our ability to suspend disbelief that end up undercutting this eerie, remarkable period film.
Today's video - I love this one, so no apologies for repeating it. Birmingham UK's airport in winter with horrendous crosswinds.....
Today's golf joke
A man and his wife walked into a dentist's office.
The man said to the dentist, "Doc, I'm in one heck of a
hurry. I have two buddies sitting out in my car waiting
for us to go play golf, so forget about the anaesthetic, I don't
have time for the gums to get numb. I just want you to pull a
tooth, and be done with it! We have a 10:00am tee time at
the best golf course in town and it's 9:30 already...I don't
have time to wait for the anaesthetic to work!”
The dentist thought to himself, "Well, well, now here's a dedicated golfer with real balls!!"
So the dentist asks him, "Which tooth is it, sir?"
The man turned to his wife and said, "Open your mouth Sarah and show the dentist the tooth...."
Sort of a joke....
A picture was posted on a website with this accompanying question;
"If you were in a public place, would you feel comfortable with him sitting ten feet away from your children with an open gun in a holster?"
This is the thoughtful response from one of the readers;
"I would gently explain to my children that while it is his absolute right to do it, I do not approve. In no uncertain terms I would tell them that if I ever catch THEM wearing brown slacks, blue socks and black shoes, IN PUBLIC, I will slap the shit out of them."
Today's senior jokes - male edition....
I was standing in the Club one night minding my own business. This FAT ugly chick came up behind me, grabbed my behind and said, "You're kinda cute. You gotta phone number?" I said, "Yeah, you gotta pen?" She said, "Yeah, I got a pen". I said, "You better get back in it before the farmer misses you." Cost me 6 stitches...but, When you’re seventy...............who cares? I went to the drug store and told the clerk "Give me 3 packets of condoms, please." Lady Clerk: "Do you need a paper bag with that, sir?” I said "Nah... She's purty good lookin'....." I was talking to a young woman in the Club last night. She said, "If you lost a few pounds, had a shave and got your hair cut, you'd look all right.” I said, “If I did that, I'd be talking to your friends over there instead of you.” Cost me a fat lip, but... When you’re seventy..............who cares? I was telling a woman in the Club about my ability to guess what day a woman was born just by feeling her breasts. "Really" she said, "Go on then... Try." After about thirty seconds of fondling she began to lose patience and said, "Come on, what day was I born?" Cost me a kick in the nuts, but... When you’re seventy...............who cares? I got caught taking a pee in the swimming pool today. The lifeguard shouted at me so loud, I nearly fell in. I went to the Club last night and saw a BIG woman dancing on a table. The girl giggled and said, "Do you really think so?" I said, "Definitely! Most tables would have collapsed by now." Cost me 6 more stitches, but... When you’re seventy...............who cares? |
+You+know+you%27re+
No comments:
Post a Comment