Don't Sell Short, Short Sell

The Two Are Not The Same

No, Vulnavia, we are not composing an Intro about the Canadian-American British-American-South-Canadian actor and comedian, whom Conrad remembers fondly in "The Three Amigos" and "Inner Space".  However - that word again! - since I have mentioned him I am now allowed to put up a picture in order to attract the masses, because I make the rules around here.  Art!

     The horrifying thing about this film is that it came out 37 years ago.  

     Here an aside - yes, already!  When you stop to think about it, this film owes a debt of honour to "Fantastic Voyage", except it kind of lacks a curvy lady in a swimsuit.  Perhaps I should have led with that, because it would have been an excuse/reason/justification <delete where applicable> to show Raquel Welch in said costume.  Art!

Conrad strongly suspects no Cymru heritage in her background

     The horrifying thing about this scene is that it's from 20 years prior to IS.

     Back to IS.  It also features the splendid Robert Picardo, who went on to international fame and fortune as the 'Holographic Doctor' in some "Starry Trex" iteration which I cannot be bothered to name, and he was by far the best thing about it in my not-very-humble opinion.  Art!

The Cowboy

     Where were we?

     O yes.  Sorry, the party in my head makes it hard to concentrate at times.  Keep it down in there!

     SO, Your Humble Scribe, like most normies out there, considers the stock market and shares and stocks and the like with a good deal of suspicion, not reduced one whit by the opinion of ex-colleague Mani, who was an Economics graduate.  "The London Stock Exchange is the biggest casino on the planet" he once tellingly informed me.  This, mind you, was decades before the emergence of crypto-currencies and their scambling market.  FSX, anyone?

     Here I have to apologise-not-apologise for bringing in a couple of graphs that illustrate how a certain person's Castles-In-Spain billions are evapourating daily.  Art!

TUESDAY

THURSDAY

     One can confidently predict that they will have lost $50 per share from their peak at almost $80 by tomorrow.

     This, gentle reader, is where 'short selling' comes in.  Allow me to provide an example.

     You approach a brokerage firm, set up a trading account, and decide that you want to 'borrow' 100 shares of Toxic Tangerine Toasties, at £10 per share, which you then sell on the market, netting yourself £10,000.  Art!

     Because you were a canny analyst, you knew that TTT's price would fall, because, honestly, can you see any sane person willingly eating them?

     So, you wait and see that they fall to a value of £50 per share, and you buy 100 of them back, for a cost of £5,000.  You then return the shares to your brokerage firm, having netted £5,000 profit despite the shares having declined precipitously in value.

     Of course it's not quite that simple, as the brokerage firm will be charging you interest and possibly fees, which will eat into your profit margin.  There is always the horrid possibility that, say, scientists discover that Toxic Tangerine Toasties cure cancer and banish acne, in which case the shares suddenly soar to £5,000 per unit and you're ruined.

     Doing this with DJT TMTG shares is problematic as there aren't that many of them in the wild, according to the share freaks and geeks who follow this sort of thing, the anoraks.

     Like Mani said, a casino.  Art!

     I think I need to have Ocado just deliver a bin-bag sized packet of popcorn on a weekly basis as I'm getting through so much of it.

Ah, If Matey Thinks He's Got Troubles

His 11th attempt to get his hush money trial delayed has been shot down, unlike the Ukrainian drones hitting Ruffian refineries, and his only 2 resorts which are officially Beyond Desperate, are to 1) Fake a serious illness or 2) Fire all his lawyers, in the manner all those Ruffian refineries are burning brightly.  Art!

Dramatic stuff indeed.  There is a second component to Ruffian oil refineries going still and silent, brought on by the undramatic yet unstoppable influence of sanctions.  Art!

     This is the Lukoil refinery in Nizhny Novgorod, and those two towers you see are "KK1" and "KK2".  Back in early January there was a cascading failure in KK1, when a turbine failed, and the whole Crude Distillation Unit had to be shut down.  The turbine was of South Canadian origin, you see, and there were no spare parts left to replace it.  Because of sanctions no more could be ordered from South Canada, and even if they could be - or, more likely, smuggled or grey market-purchased - the Ruffians don't have the technical expertise to install them.

     Conrad guesstimates that this will have cost Peter The Average around $250 million in lost revenue.  Tee hee!

     Hello, Ocado?

More Of "Crisis Point"

Because if I spent over 12 hours gaming and taking photographs, you are jolly well going to get the benefit of same.

     I should clarify that we were playing "Cold War Commander" rules, which are an extension of "Blitzkrieg Commander", a ruleset Your Modest Artisan is familiar with.  Briefly put, your side has HQ and CO units with a rating from 6 to 12, and you have to get less than that on a roll of two dice to be able to give orders to the rest of your force.  Art!

     Dex moves his armoured battalion on the right flank, and has suffered a couple of hits from Czech aircraft attacking him.  If a unit accumulates too many hits, it's destroyed.

     Conrad pushes his motorised infantry forward, straight into a defensive Czech artillery barrage.  Ooops.  This is bad; because they are still in their trucks, if a truck gets destroyed, so does the infantry.  I should have split the force up and had much wider separation, in what the military used to call 'artillery formation', to avoid just such repercussions.

     One lives and learns.  Fortunately for the Soviets, they can afford to lose tons of units without risk of breaking - 'Rigid Tactical Doctrine' as per the rules, doncha know.

"City In The Sky"

The Doctor is wrestling with a dilemma, involving the evillll alien squatters in the Australian outback. 

‘This is pretty heavy-duty stuff, Prof.  Are you sure it can be done?’

     ‘Ace!’ he chided.  ‘I spent two whole days analysing these blueprints and what we have to work with.  Yes, it can be done.’

     She eyed him suspiciously.  He hadn’t spent two days away from anywhere – ah, except his jaunt in the TARDIS; he could have had time stand still for himself in that blue box of tricks.

     ‘Yeah, rightttt.  Industrial-scale welding and riveting and adhering and cutting, all good stuff.  I can’t wait to get started.’

     The Doctor cleared his throat and balanced on his tiptoes.

     ‘Ah, yes, about that.  What I worry about is that the Lithoi will make their move first whilst we prepare the sphere.’

     He let Ace stew a bit over that.

     ‘And that would be bad, right, Prof?’

     ‘Yessss.  Tactical nuclear missiles, The Phage re-written, a million flying eyes with a million thermal lances.  And there is an unavoidable schedule to be followed up here, Upstairs,  that delays us for days if not weeks.’

     ‘Then – we need to stop them!’

     He looked at her with a wry smile.

     ‘Yes.  Yes, we do.  Unfortunately the people Downstairs have absolutely no idea what they are dealing with.  The people Upstairs who might help would need at least forty-eight hours to acclimatise to a non-spherical environment, and that much time again to acquire a tolerance to terrestrial micro-organisms.’

     Gosh, I wonder if anyone might want to volunteer to do Downstairs?  Anyone at all?

A Warning To The Darwin Award Hopefuls

Conrad read, with a sense of despair, about the loss at sea of a tourist aboard the "Liberty Of The Seas" cruise liner earlier today.

     When I say 'lost at sea' what I mean is 'jumped overboard from the 11th deck after a drunken argument'.  Art!

The Liberty

     The news item didn't say what time of day it was, so it's unclear if it was during daylight or night-time hours.  Since there were plenty of witnesses who raised the alarm, the ship rapidly hove to and search & rescue boats were lowered, carrying out an unsuccessful search for several hours.

     They were recalled when the US Coast Guard turned up.  The search was ended earlier today and the jumper is presumed dead.

     JUMPING INTO WATER FROM OVER 30 FEET CAN BE FATAL.

     If he did this from the 11th deck then that was towards the upper passenger decks, probably a height in excess of 100 feet; I had a look at dimensions and height is not something Royal Caribbean list for their vessels.  Art!

     Hitting the water from that height is like hitting concrete and he was very likely knocked senseless with serious internal injuries, so it's not surprising his body wasn't found.

     Here endeth the rather grim lesson for today.

Finally -

Let's go out on a lighter note, shall we?

     Hello, troglodytes of Orsk, are you paying attention?