#IWokeUpLikeThis
Queen Elizabeth … a public servant, and an annual recipient of the taxpayer-funded sovereign grant — valued at $107.1 million (£82.2 million) in 2019…
buffoons
‘In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upward mobile — and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: Not necessarily to Win, but mainly to keep from Losing Completely…’ –Hunter S. Thompson
Among the lowlights is a text from Depp to CAA agent Christian Carino, who previously repped Heard, in which he wrote: “[Heard is] begging for total global humiliation. She’s gonna get it. I’m gonna need your texts about San Francisco brother … I’m even sorry to ask … But she sucked [Elon Musk’s] crooked dick and he gave her some shitty lawyers … I have no mercy, no fear and not an ounce of emotion or what I once thought was love for this gold digging, low level, dime a dozen, mushy, pointless dangling overused flappy fish market … I’m so fucking happy she wants to fight this out!!! She will hit the wall hard!!! And I cannot wait to have this waste of a cum guzzler out of my life!!! I met fucking sublime little Russian here … Which makes me realize the time I blew on that 50 cent stripper … I wouldn’t touch her with a goddam glove.” […]
Depp adds, “Let’s drown her before we burn her!!! I will fuck her burnt corpse afterwards to make sure she’s dead.” […]
while shooting Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales in Australia, Depp swallowed eight ecstasy pills at once […]
He dropped $30,000 a month on wine alone. And in perhaps the most extravagant move of all, he spent $5 million to have Hunter S. Thompson’s ashes fired from a cannon hoisted atop a 153-foot tower in a fleeting tribute to the gonzo journalist. […]
a personal sound technician to handle his earpiece needs — “so he doesn’t have to learn lines,” adds the source
‘The doors of hell are locked on the inside.’ –C. S. Lewis
What Trump needed to do to make Television City a reality was to bring together different stakeholders: locals (like the late actor Paul Newman) who wanted parks and a less imposing development, and Ed Koch [mayor of New York City]. […]
Koch said Trump was “squealing like a stuck pig.” Trump said Koch’s New York had become a “cesspool of corruption and incompetence.” Koch said Trump was a “piggy, piggy, piggy.”
Trump said the mayor had “no talent and only moderate intelligence” and should be impeached. […]
Trump promised that he would eventually build Television City “with or without the current administration” in City Hall. But he never did.
Although New York developer William Zeckendorf Jr. offered Trump $550 million for the site in 1989 — which would have given him a handsome return on the $115 million in borrowed money he used to acquire the Yards four years earlier — he refused to sell.
In 1994, with the Yards bleeding about $23.5 million in annual carrying costs, and long after Koch had departed City Hall, Trump’s bankers forced him to give up control of the site. The property went to a group of Hong Kong investors, including New World Development, for $82 million and the assumption of about $250 million in debt Trump had amassed.
‘Murder the Media’
The business challenges to launching a TV channel or other high-profile media property seem beyond the talents, resources and patience of Trump and his crew. This isn’t to predict that Trump won’t enter the media business, only to record that if he does, he won’t get very far. […]
Assuming that he can raise the hundreds of millions of dollars to stand up a competitive network—Trump has always preferred using other people’s money in his ventures—what sort of luck might he have in getting AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and other major cable companies to carry his new channel? He has no friends at AT&T […] Comcast doesn’t desire a new entry in the news market to go against its MSNBC property. As The New York Times noted in 2016, not even Oprah Winfrey, the queen of all media, succeeded in turning her personal franchise into a cable powerhouse. Can Trump do something the far-wealthier and much more appealing Winfrey couldn’t?
But let’s say Trump does the unlikely. If you think Fox has been distancing itself from the toddler-in-chief since the Biden victory, you can be assured that it will savage him when he poses a threat to its viewership and revenues. The same goes for the Trump-lovers at NewsMax and OAN. Trump’s better bet would be to buy NewsMax, something Trump allies flirted with in November, or even OAN. But again, doing so would draw the ire of Fox, where the majority of his followers currently park their TV sets.
related { A scholar of American anti-Semitism explains the hate symbols present during the US Capitol riot }
When is a theory a conspiracy theory?
Trump had tried to reach Raffensperger at least 18 times before Saturday’s call, according to Raffensperger’s deputy, Jordan Fuchs, but the calls were patched to interns in the press office who thought it was a prank and didn’t realize it was actually the president on the line.
‘A lie never lives to be old.’ —Sophocles
Senior campaign and GOP officials vented that Trump’s finance team, led by former Fox TV host and Donald Trump Jr. girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle, underperformed and was an HR nightmare. Trump couldn’t compete with Biden’s small-dollar fundraising machine, and some donors were horrified by what they described as Guilfoyle’s lack of professionalism: She frequently joked about her sex life and, at one fundraiser, offered a lap dance to the donor who gave the most money.
previously { Dear 45, I ain’t Kanye }
related { To the other educational benefits of Rudy Giuliani’s recent press conference in the parking lot of Four Seasons Total Landscaping, we can add the opportunity to learn about Hazard Communications (HazCom) signage | Language Log | full sotry }
image { Trump campaign dismissing its own appeal from the Nevada Supreme Court }
‘The Trump government in exile has established a foothold at Four Seasons Total Landscape and will begin exchanging ambassadors on Monday.’ –Jack Shafer
On November 8, 1932, Americans decisively rejected Herbert Hoover’s leadership; he lost the popular vote by 17 percent and the Electoral College by 472 to 59. Franklin Roosevelt won an overwhelming victory, promising hope and government assistance for those in need. […]
Despite his defeat, Hoover was unrepentant, and doubled down on the very actions that voters had rejected. He used the long period between the election and the March 4 inauguration to sow discord, undermine the economy, and constrain his successor’s options. Hoover even pressured Roosevelt to abandon his campaign promises and sign on to his own failed policies. […]
The Twentieth Amendment, ratified in 1933, moved the presidential inauguration to January 20, where it remains.
related { Trump Team Holds News Conference Outside Drab Landscaping Firm, Next to Adult Book Store [and Crematorium] | More }
We salute Trump for crush COVID given to him by Democrats
Sacha Baron Cohen has responded to Donald Trump’s remarks about Borat 2
Donald—I appreciate the free publicity for Borat! I admit, I don’t find you funny either. But yet the whole world laughs at you.
I’m always looking for people to play racist buffoons, and you’ll need a job after Jan. 20. Let’s talk!
{ Sacha Baron Cohen | Quote: Borat }
Only 4 more spray tans before we vote him out
This paper presents a model in which politicians can increase the probability of election by making exaggerated claims about the benefits of their own platform — referred to as positive campaigning — and by exaggerating the undesirable characteristics of their rival — i.e., negative campaigning. Such lies may be detected at some point in the future and thus result in a costly loss in reputation. Thus the politician must tradeoff immediate benefits against potential future costs.
Let’s honor National Substance Use Prevention Day
California is gonna have to ration water. You wanna know why? Because they send millions of gallons of water out to sea, out to the Pacific. Because they want to take care of certain little tiny fish, that aren’t doing very well without water.
the dick pics you’ve been waiting for
{ Huntington Beach, California, May 13, 2020 | more gloomy photos }
{Huntington Beach, California }
{ amazon.com | Related: Mrs. Trump had chosen some furniture for the White House residence […] in her absence, President Trump — whose tastes veer toward the gilded, triumphal style of Louis XIV — replaced her choices with several pieces he liked better. One of two people familiar with the episode cited it as an example of Mr. Trump’s tendency not to relent on even the smallest requests from his wife. | NY Times }
And the dneepers of wet and the gangres of sin in it!
Across four studies participants (N = 818) rated the profoundness of abstract art images accompanied with varying categories of titles, including: pseudo-profound bullshit titles (e.g., The Deaf Echo), mundane titles (e.g., Canvas 8), and no titles.
Randomly generated pseudo-profound bullshit titles increased the perceived profoundness of computer-generated abstract art, compared to when no titles were present (Study 1).
Mundane titles did not enhance the perception of profoundness, indicating that pseudo-profound bullshit titles specifically (as opposed to titles in general) enhance the perceived profoundness of abstract art (Study 2).
Furthermore, these effects generalize to artist-created abstract art (Study 3).
Finally, we report a large correlation between profoundness ratings for pseudo-profound bullshit and “International Art English” statements (Study 4), a mode and style of communication commonly employed by artists to discuss their work.
Are we someone else when we lie?
[Google CEO] Eric Schmidt continued: “Our business is highly measurable. We know that if you spend X dollars on ads, you’ll get Y dollars in revenues.” At Google, Schmidt maintained, you pay only for what works.
Karmazin was horrified. He was an old fashioned advertising man, and where he came from, a Super Bowl ad cost three million dollars. Why? Because that’s how much it cost. What does it yield? Who knows. […]
In 2018, more than $273bn dollars was spent on digital ads globally, according to research firm eMarketer. Most of those ads were purchased from two companies: Google ($116bn in 2018) and Facebook ($54.5bn in 2018). […]
Picture this. Luigi’s Pizzeria hires three teenagers to hand out coupons to passersby. After a few weeks of flyering, one of the three turns out to be a marketing genius. Customers keep showing up with coupons distributed by this particular kid. The other two can’t make any sense of it: how does he do it? When they ask him, he explains: “I stand in the waiting area of the pizzeria.” […] Economists refer to this as a “selection effect.” It is crucial for advertisers to distinguish such a selection effect (people see your ad, but were already going to click, buy, register, or download) from the advertising effect (people see your ad, and that’s why they start clicking, buying, registering, downloading). […]
The online marketing world has the same strategy as Luigi’s Pizzeria and the flyer-handling teens. The benchmarks that advertising companies use – intended to measure the number of clicks, sales and downloads that occur after an ad is viewed – are fundamentally misleading. None of these benchmarks distinguish between the selection effect (clicks, purchases and downloads that are happening anyway) and the advertising effect (clicks, purchases and downloads that would not have happened without ads).
It gets worse: the brightest minds of this generation are creating algorithms which only increase the effects of selection. Consider the following: if Amazon buys clicks from Facebook and Google, the advertising platforms’ algorithms will seek out Amazon clickers. And who is most likely to click on Amazon? Presumably Amazon’s regular customers. In that case the algorithms are generating clicks, but not necessarily extra clicks.
How do we make use of this life that we still have?
Several weeks ago, I met up with a friend in New York who suggested we grab a bite at a Scottish bar in the West Village. He had booked the table through something called Seated, a restaurant app that pays users who make reservations on the platform. We ordered two cocktails each, along with some food. And in exchange for the hard labor of drinking whiskey, the app awarded us $30 in credits redeemable at a variety of retailers. […]
To throw cash at people every time they walk into a restaurant does not sound like a business. It sounds like a plot to lose money as fast as possible. […]
If you wake up on a Casper mattress, work out with a Peloton before breakfast, Uber to your desk at a WeWork, order DoorDash for lunch, take a Lyft home, and get dinner through Postmates, you’ve interacted with seven companies that will collectively lose nearly $14 billion this year. […]
The meal-kit company Blue Apron revealed before its public offering that the company was spending about $460 to recruit each new member, despite making less than $400 per customer. […] since Blue Apron went public, the firm’s valuation has crashed by more than 95 percent. […]
photo { Detroit Science Center, 1979 }
unrelated { Apple announces $2.5 billion plan to ease California housing crisis }
Max Headroom was portrayed as “The World’s first computer-generated TV host,” although the computer-generated appearance was achieved with prosthetic make-up and hand-drawn backgrounds
In Siege, Wolff quotes Bannon saying investigations into Trump’s finances will cut adrift even his most ardent supporters: “This is where it isn’t a witch hunt – even for the hard core, this is where he turns into just a crooked business guy, and one worth $50m instead of $10bn. Not the billionaire he said he was, just another scumbag.”
In Norway, you can look up your neighbor’s income on the Internet
During a guided tour of Mount Vernon last April, Trump learned that Washington was one of the major real-estate speculators of his era. So, he couldn’t understand why America’s first president didn’t name his historic Virginia compound or any of the other property he acquired after himself.
“If he was smart, he would’ve put his name on it,” Trump said, according to three sources briefed on the exchange. “You’ve got to put your name on stuff or no one remembers you.”
The VIPs’ tour guide for the evening, Mount Vernon president and CEO Doug Bradburn, told the president that Washington did, after all, succeed in getting the nation’s capital named after him.
related { Donald Trump trademarked “Central Park” }
