If You Were To Hear "Pac Man"

Notice I Did Not Say Anything About Reading Or Seeing It

I have to sustain the level of mystique here, and keep the sleight of hand concealed, as it were.

     Actually, Conrad wonders if his audience are at all familiar with the ancient computer game "Pac Man", which must date back to the prehistoric era of the Eighties.  Art!

     Here you go, a browser game that one can play on a laptop, as opposed to the original arcade games that were as big as a fridge.  The game play is very simple: you are Pac-Man, whom you send along, eating up all the dots.  HOWEVER! - yet again - you see those other hemispherical blobs loitering about the board?  Those are <ahem> Binky, Inky, Pinky and Clyde.  They beetle about randomly and will terminate Ol' Packy with extreme prejudice if they catch him.  He can turn the tables and consume them if he eats a special 'power pellet'.  

     Of course, none of this is to do with the real subject matter of our Intro, as we rarely move in a straight line here, for it is the most boring of journeys.  Art!

     Hmmm this band always passed me by in their Seventies heyday, so you cannot call me a <coughcough> 'Pack Man'.  Besides, it gives me an excuse to smuggle in a picture of those 2000AD stalwarts - Art!

Described as a ' - foul pack of war-dogs'.  Don't sell 'em short!

     Okayyyy time to throw off the camouflage curtain and explain what we are really on about here, which is nothing to do  with video games, rock bands or free-booting future warriors.  Art!

David the Pakman.  He must have heard every variant of this going.

     David broadcasts on Youtube and in podcasts, and by South Canadian standards is left-wing, which would probably make him a centrist in Europe or a Liberal here in This Sceptred Isle <wrinkles nose at having to mention Politics>.  He has a Master's in Business Administration, which has a definite bearing on what follows.  Art!

     Yes, we are on about the DJT stock and share prices.  I notice that it rallied somewhat today, which may be due to Donald Judas Trump not being stuck in a courthouse all day Wednesday, and thus being able to lie about it extensively.

     "Where does Dav-"

     PATIENCE!  I am coming to that.  You see, David was as incredulous as the rest of us neutral observers about the performance of DJT's shares, and he did an excellent, comprehensible breakdown of how ridiculously over-priced they are.

PHYSICAL ASSETS: The value of a company's shares may be based on physical assets such as real estate, equipment or inventory.  Ol' Davy's example was the South Canadian retail chain Home Depot, who exist nationwide and have a gigantic inventory of everything from washers to ride-around mowers.  Art!

     DJT TMTG has 0 inventory.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: Share price may reflect the value held in patents, copyrights, trademarks or trade secrets.  One example - and it's a doozy - is Pepsi Cola.  Art!

     Truth Social is the only asset DJT has.  It's a cheap Twitter clone and would struggle to attain the status of a moronic property.

HIGH REVENUE: A stock valuation may be high because the business has a very high revenue stream, making lots and lots of money.  Art!

     This is the share price for Walmart.  You might wonder at the price, but this value is for over two and a half billion shares, or twenty times the number of DJT shares.  Not only that, Walmart did $640 billion in business in 2023.

PROFIT MARGIN: A company may have only a modest turnover overall, yet have high value shares because a lot of that turnover is profit.  When a typical company's profit margin is 11%, have a look at this one.  Art!

     VICIP have a profit margin of 47%.  Compare this with DJT, where Truth Social, their sole asset, made a loss of $54 million in 2023.  Ooops.

     Thanks to Ol' Davy for coming out with the examples, and Conrad for coming up with the graphs.

     I would like to end this Intro by mentioning Emily Stewart, the business editor for ABC.  She pointed out an industry leader, Apple, whose stock is traded at a value of seven times their annual turnover.  DJT, sole asset a Twitter knock-off with a very small user base, is trading stock valued at TWO THOUSAND times their annual revenue.  Art!

You're not kidding

"Sleeping Bear Dunes"

Conrad caught a YouTube short earlier today that featured this rather dangerous geological feature out in the wilds of South Canada.  On the shores of Lake Michigan, to be precise.  Let us prod Art awake and into sentience to earn his coal.

     This is the 'bluff' as they call it over there, a very steeply pitched incline that runs down to the beaches below, which by all accounts are very lovely indeed.  The trouble is that the incline you see here is all sand, which allows tourists to sand-ski down to the waiting waters in mere minutes.  As a Commenter on the YT short had it: "3 minutes to get down, two hours to get back up".  Art!

Beach at bottom

     When the waters of Lake Michigan are fully fed by rains and meltwater, the level rises to such an extent that portions of the beach cannot be exited (or entered, for that matter) by walking along the shoreline.  It's a trip up and down the bluff.  The local authorities have gotten fed up with rescuing Darwin Award winners.  Art!

     

     There are an average of 32 rescues per year.  Just to be clear, any rescue operation might involve the Park Rangers, who do not charge for carrying an Idiot Intervention, but there are at least five different Fire Departments who might respond, and they will impose a Bottomhole Tax.

     Nobody's yet explained why it's "Sleeping Bear" Dunes.

"The War Illustrated"

Nothing of financial matters here, nor beaches, as this is long after the Normandy landings of June 6th.  Art!

     At top you can see British infantry moving forward through cornfields, which provide concealment, not cover as wheat is most definitely not bulletproof.  You can see a platoon of Churchill tanks to port, in the middle of the infantry formation.  Out in front they'd be vulnerable to Teutons with hand-held anti-tank weapons; lagging behind, they'd not protect the infantry enough.  Note how the infantry have spread out, the better to avoid being hit by artillery or mortar fire.  Note also the absence of any British artillery fire; nobody has encountered any resistance yet.  Art!

     The terror of the Teutons; British 25-pounder field guns in action.  You can see the one to port is at maximum recoil as the barrel is as far back as it can go.  From the squarish cast of the muzzle these probably have the muzzle-brake attachment that minimises recoil and so saves the hydraulic buffers from the full impact of firing.  You can also see the ammunition limber under the tree to starboard, which carried the shells for ready-use; seventy-odd if I remember correctly.

"City In The Sky"

Ace is conducting Captain Kirwin around the ruins of a very battered New Eucla.

She turned to look around.  The pair stood on a low sandy hill towards dusk, with scrubby battered trees and bushes to their rear, beyond which a strange rushing noise came.  Before them stretched the mostly-wrecked township of New Eucla, and a damp trail led from beach to town.

     Ace led her down, along the muddy trail and between buildings wracked or sullied by mud and flotsam.  The odd dead fish lay festering in the gutters and a breeze made trembling buildings quiver and fall, carrying a vile smell reminiscent of rotten meat.

     ‘What a mess!’ ventured Ace.  ‘They really turned the turf over here.’  She caught Kirwin’s puzzled glance.  ‘The rock we dropped from orbit into the ocean hit this place with a miniature tidal wave.’

     Many buildings exhibited signs of blast damage, caused by the Lithoi flying eyes.  Kirwin made a short detour to examine the carcass of one flying eye, kicking it over with her foot and seeing rainwater dribble out from the broken seams.

     Two streets further on they came across the airborne stink’s source: the rotting body of a gigantic crocodile, swathed in layers of flies.  Both women kept a respectable distance.  Being a product of a controlled-environment that lacked such disgusting chaos, the captain decided that Earth had a few flaws to it.

     Rough with the smooth, hmmmm?

More Mystery MacGuffins From "The Daily Beast"

I shall exploit this as long as I can, for several days ago Your Humble Scribe cancelled the auto-renewal on their webpage.  That had better stick or you'll see a very cross Conrad.  Art!

     I'm really not sure about this.  Vacuum valve technology went the way of the dodo and the slide-rule in the Sixties.  Is it a deliberately engineered piece of retro-futuristic technology?

     Let us cheat and click on the link.

     I have no idea what any of that means.  Call it 'magic' and have done with it.

Finally -

Having a shower this morning was a bit of a waste, our remote Team Meeting got cancelled.  Still, I did look vaguely respectable when out doing the weekly shop in the evening.  Swings and roundabouts.

     Chin chin!