That Comma Is Important!
You know how we like to be verbally, grammatically and lexicographically precise, except when we're not and you see "Close enough" as the caption to a photograph.
Now, readers of a certain age will immediately mis-identify today's Intro as being about that comedy sports film from the Seventies, and if Art will oblige -
It's about a baseketball team, which is the South Canadian version of Rounders, where they indulge in single combat against each other with clubs, and the last one standing is the winner. Or something. Conrad never claimed to be an expert at sports.
Because Lo! we can identify three particular bears in question here. Ursa Major, Ursa Minor and Ursa Mediocriter, the first two being constellations and the third being Modern-day Mordor. SIT BACK DOWN! Art!
The Big, Little, and the Odious.
Incidentally, did you know that a young Jackie Earle Haley was in TBNB? Me neither. Gosh, that guy's been around. He plays a pretty damn good Ror
ANYWAY I want to blather on a bit more about bankruptcies, because we covered them in some detail yesteryon yet there is more to know about them. For one thing, they are not always a death-knell to the business that invokes this legal status, usually giving them time to retrench, find new funds, sell off unprofitable bits of the business and so on. However - that word again! - they often are the last step before an inevitable collapse. I did a little digging and came up with a list of South Canadian companies that came a cropper in 2024. Art!
Most I'd never heard of, but this one I have. I think it may even have had franchises in the UK. It was an ambitious seafood restaurant chain that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May of 2024, the result of many years of mismanagement that degraded marketing, food quality and customer service. After 4 months it emerged with new management, 100 fewer locations and a new menu. Time will tell if this revamp works, but it's an illustration of how a Chapter 11 filing can work. Art!
Another restaurant chain I've never been in. This particular beast filed for Chapter 11 in November last year, blaming Covid - which has been over for years - as the cause of falling customer sales. They have now closed some 130 sites from their original 260 in South Canada, and are $37 million in debt. They used a classic bit of manglement-speak to explain this away: "explore strategic alternatives in order to ensure the long-term viability of the brand" which means "selling off all the sites to get rid of the debt", in case you were wondering.
Reading the root causes of these problems is fascinating, but we need to move on to the Ruffian market, which makes those bankruptcies above look like model planning as done by the Better Business Bureau. Art!
For once, the AI Art Generator looks to have done it's homework; I asked for "Ruffian Bureau of Statistics", which is usually abbreviated to 'Rosstat'. Being head of this entity is a risky business, one of them has already been arrested for allowing the leaking of figures that make Bloaty Gas Tout look bad.
ANYWAY they, too, reckon that there's a glut of corporate bankruptcies due in the near future, because the Ruffian national corporate financial balance, which is profits minus losses, has diminished by 17% over 2024. In toilet-roll currency that equates to a loss of ₽5,000,000,000,000 or £3.87 in proper money or $51 billion in real money. Say about a billion dollars per week. Art?
It gets worse, Vulnavia. To parrot Mister Budanov, it will get worse. In 2025, Ruffian businesses are due to repay ₽7,500,000,000,000 or
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| Sad Bear Is Sad |
These are frighteningly high figures and make TGI's debt look like trivial pocket change. Jake Broe, financial whiz, says that Ruffian businesses have been very foolishly borrowing money in order to pay off the interest on money they have already borrowed. You can only do this for so long before the whole thing collapses in on itself and - a tsunami of defaults happen, triggering a chain-reaction in the market and destroying the Ruffian financial landscape.
Trust this man. He says everything is fine.
More Musings On "Lost"
Conrad was binge-watching Season One last night, thinking that he'd reached the last episode, and Lo! there was another disk and another 4 episodes to go. Michael asks a very good question as he, his son, Sawyer and Jin all gaze back at The Island.
"How did an island that large remain undiscovered?"
Art!
Don't look too closely unless you want SPOILERS
In Imperial dimensions, it measures 60 miles by 30 miles, or 1,800 square miles overall. That is rather a large island to remain undiscovered, isn't it?
Conrad - and bear in mind that I've only seen Season One and a couple of episodes from Season Two that have faded from memory - has a theory. Inevitably. Hey, thinking is free!
Say, twenty years ago, a group of very wicked, immoral, unethical and thoroughly evillll scientists decided that they wanted to research all sorts of scientific research that was absolutely beyond the pale. They have 'acquired' a vast amount of money, so they -
Buy The Island*.
Thus, it belongs to them. They don't allow anyone to visit or land, there are no overflights, no visiting ships or boats, no representatives of government. No oversight, no authority (save their own), no auditing or inspections or rules.
Believe me we shall come back to this. O yes indeed.
This Is Unusual
We have pretty much ignored the share value of the Orange Land Whale's TMTG since he got elected, so here is a snapshot of where their value has been over the past month. Art!
The thinking behind people buying this worthless stock was that, once Donold got back into power, the share value would accelerate into the stratosphere, they could sell at a fat profit and retire early. Or so they thought. Art!
That's the 6 month snapshot. They seem to bumbling along at about $30 per share, refusing to increase at all, which is very odd, given that DJ Tango is now Prez. There is something odd going on in the background here but Dog Buns! if I know what it is. Frost affecting the pistachio harvest in the Sanjak of Novi Pazar?
To Steal A Popular Song
About 'Mark Vicker' (sp?), and an annoyingly catchy song they had to back up what seemed to be a recruiting advert for the South Canadian Navy's jet jockeys - Art!
As the lyrics would have it, "I ain't worried bout it right now", whatever they were pontificating about on screen.
"Ah, but what are you pontificating about, O Snowy-haired Sage?" I hear you query.
O I thought you'd never ask! Art?
Ladles and germs, let me introduce you to 2024 YR4, an asteroid. This is one of that family of Near Earth Objects that stand a non-zero chance of hitting the Big Blue Ball. Currently, it's orbit is predicted to bring it into very close proximity with Planet Earth as of 22nd December 2032, with a 1.3% chance of hitting.
Now, the information on this particular Magic Sky Rock is somewhat deficient, because the size isn't even very well defined. "40 to 90 yards across" they say, which is greater than 100% error margin.
Why is Conrad unworried?
A couple of reasons. This kind of alarm isn't uncommon when dealing with relatively small asteroids, because they haven't been observed over a long period of time, so their orbits are always an approximation. Over time and repeated observations the orbit will be refined, and it's always meant that the asteroid will miss Earth. Art!
Thanks to it being a relatively small asteroid, the probability of it breaking up in the upper atmosphere is high, after which the remaining fragments will burn up, too.
Even were any large chunks of Magic Sky Rock to hit Earth, by raw chance hitting solid ground is only 33% and it will most likely only kill a whole lot of fish.
So - Conrad blithely unworried.
Finally -
The roadworks have gone yet the pikers haven't removed the fencing and signs from outside The Mansion. They made sure to come and collect from all around the bus stop but apparently we get special privileges of gazing at plastic fencing longer than anyone else. Art!
How lucky we are.
* There is a variety of precedent for this: Mustique in the Caribbean.
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