I've Used This Word A Few Times Already
Whilst in normal everyday conversation, it merely means 'to lumber with' in the sense of forcing a person to carry around a 56-pound bag of potatoes <insert bizarre reason here>, it has a very definite legal and fiscal term: "To burden with debts and obligations". Thus, Donald Judas Trump's property portfolio is heavily encumbered with debt and loans and mortgages, making his claim to be a billionaire true only on paper. Art!
Honestly, I have no idea. My prompt for the AI art generator was going to be "Donald Trump" but - you may be ahead of me here - it came up with a warning about 'Potentially unsafe images' and wouldn't let me go any further so I used "Pimpkinhead" instead. The text sounds like garbled Dutch. Hang on - hmmm. the translator did say 'Hoek' is 'Angle' so per
ANYWAY where were we? O yes. Thanks to Farron Cousins on his "Ring Of Fire" vlog for firstly pointing out the problem, and then explaining the solution. Art!
Farron being furry
You see, the final quarter data for tax returns and audits and such business fripperies had only just been published this week, and the figures for the Trump Media and Technology Group, sole asset = "Truth Social", were out, and rather like those for Indy 5, which I can't be bothered to embolden or Fuschia, they are all bad. BAD!
This gives you an idea of how the stock performed - we'll come back to that.
You see, Truth Social was known to be in rather bad shape, and the end-of-financial year figures release showed it was doing even worse than believed - it barely raised $4 million in the fiscal year yet it blew through $58 million.
So, it made a LOSS of $54 million. How, as Farron exclaimed, can this abysmal company have a stock market valuation of $8 billion? Art!
This is Em. She's a sharp chick who works at "Business Insider". In terms of valuation, she pointed out that Apple, one of the most successful brands and stocks there is, only trades at 7x their annual revenue regards their stock. The 'DJT' stock is trading at 2,000x their annual revenue. We'll come back to that, also.
Fallon also gave examples of users (not mere visitors) to two other brands before they went public: Twitter had 215 users before their IPO (Initial Public Offering) and Facebook had 845 million. Truth Social has a feeble 850,000.
So - what happened? Art!
You can see how the price shot up. This is thanks to canny investors buying the stock the instant it came out, not because they had any fond regard for Donald Judas Trump or Truth Social, but because, in the words of one "The MAGA are crazy and will drive the price up".
Which they did. You can see the heights the stock rose to. At this point the canny investors immediately sold their stock and made a killing. Consequently, other investors see the share price begin to drop and they, too, sell, getting a lot less as the stock price is driven down. People then begin to panic and hurriedly unload stock to avoid getting stuck with a load of worthless paper, meaning the price still falls. The term for this is "Pump And Dump".
The MAGA cult faithful, of course - obviously! - will grimly retain their stock, as selling it probably equates with murdering one's firstborn in their minds. Art!
It's now hovering around $49 per share. Pumpkinhead has to wait another 5 months before he can touch this stock.
Bring on the buckets of popcorn!
"The War Illustrated"
Back to Issue whatever, as I've lost track and don't fancy trawling through the tome itself to find out. Issue 1,98247. There. Have that and be done with it. Art!
 |
| This is one of their montage pages that we'll deal with picture by picture |
This is a sequence that I've seen used elsewhere, depicting a Churchill tank of the 7th Royal Tank Regiment, part of 31st Tank Brigade (each of which had 3 regiments), operating in support with the 8th Royal Scots infantry. This was part of Operation EPSOM, as of 28th June 1944. Art!
This was the scene a few seconds earlier.
Operation EPSOM gave the Teutons an utter pasting that they never recovered from, though at considerable cost to the Anglo-Canadian forces <insert feeble pun about salts here>.
The info I provided about the units you see here was omitted by TWI, probably on the grounds that a bit of frothy blather was better than providing hard facts of potential use to the Teutons.
Torrents Of Temu Tat
Courtesy of "The Daily Beast". Temu is the dubious sidebar advertising source of those mysterious artefacts, some of which appear to have no real function - I mean, an electronic divot-digger for golfers? Pssshaw!
Well, today's is not quite as abstruse as many others. Art!
Meet Rod
Ruffian police baton for inflicting extra-special injuries on unarmed civilian protestors? Indestructible chew-toy? Scouring tool for blocked Scunge Bobblers? Let me cheat and click on the advert. Art!
The truth is deadly dull, I tell you!
"City In The Sky"
Ace and the Doctor are about to be re-united aboard Arcology One in orbit, which she cannot personally wait for, as things were beginning to pall in major fashion.
When the Doctor walked to Broughton to catch any Founder scions he
could, people stopped to stare at him in passing, pointing and whispering to
each other. He politely tipped his hat to them: they weren’t frowning or
pursuing him, which made a change from some of his visits –
- Emilia was present, composing a message to
send to the Americans. This wasn’t easy, since it had to be done via
signalling laser thanks to Lithoi jamming of the radio frequencies, and she
tried to make the message as terse and thus easy to tap out as possible.
‘Oh!’ she gasped. ‘You’re back!’
‘Rumours of my demise have been slightly
exagerrated,’ he said, a dry smile on his lips. ‘Through fire and water
and giant crocodile. Can you convene a meeting of your fellow Founders?’
Emilia sent the text to the astronomy section.
‘Yes I can - what is it about?’
‘Your future. No, I’m not going to be any more specific.’
Ace turned up within minutes, before all the
available Founders could, visibly chafing to get involved in whatever he had
planned. She explained about her mission in the now-damaged Pangolin, and
Barclay’s sacrifice.
‘That wasn’t really necessary,’ commented the
Timelord, sadly. Davy, looking more weary than ever, overheard as he
settled slowly into a wicker chair.
Ace, gel, the thing about planting rice paddies is that you will live to see the morrow.
Either The Zenith Or The Nadir
Number One in his list of "My Top Ten Dystopian & Post-Apocalyptic Books of All Time", from the Youtube vlog "Mike's Book Reviews".
What is Number One? Rather a surprise, I feel. Not that it's obscure or brand new, just rather out of left-field. Art!
For Your Information, 'Fahrenheit 451' is the temperature at which paper spontaneously ignites. The novel, in case you hadn't heard, is about a dystopian society which burns books, burning them to the extent that there is a special fire service dedicated to nothing but. Art!
Don't believe the taglines about action and romance, this is an art-house film by Truffaut. It is quite well-regarded and if you find your attention as regards the plot wandering a little, there is always Julie Christie to cast your glazzies over.
Yes, Conrad read the novel decades ago and only remembers that there were always jet fighters and bombers flying overhead. I would contend that we're already half-way to F451 and it's civilisation of illiterates, who sit around all day long watching television, or use social media on their phones, who have no idea what a 'book' is and whether you eat it or dig for coal with it.
Finally -
Your Humble Scribe managed to throw a book away. Yes indeed. It now resides in a bin-bag in the black wheelie-bin. It was that Michael Crichton one about <thinks> global warming as a conspiracy? and there was a Blue Ringed Octopus as a murder weapon. How stellar it was, that I cannot remember the title. That's gin, old age and a rubbish novel for you. Art!
Close enough.
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