Maybe now that they have the discount Hemsworth as Geralt, they could also bring in some other early-2000's one-time talent:

* Cahir - recast as Taylor Lautner
* Jaskier - recast as Josh Hutcherson

and so on...

To be fair, I thought the discount Hemsworth was fine in "Triangle" which is a pretty good mind-bending film, but he was very much a smaller support part.

Musk apparently also said this in the shareholder meeting yesterday, according to Elektrek:

"Musk again claimed that the “Optimus stuff is extremely underrated.” The CEO said that the demand could be as high as 10 to 20 billion units.

He went as far as “confidently predicting” that Optimus will account for “a majority of Tesla’s long-term value.”

Elektrek's usual obsequious reporting also provided this fawning praise on the now-handsy robots:

"The prototypes were walking slowly, but they appeared to be stable. While the tasks that they were performing were not really impressive, Tesla appeared to have made a lot of progress in developing the hands...The hands, which are arguably the most difficult part of a humanoid robot, are truly impressive here. Now I think we are still at least about three years from a useful product, but that in itself would be amazing. Mind you, that timeline is also when I think that Tesla will have a useful self-driving vehicle, which makes sense since Elon says that Tesla is leveraging its AI development for self-driving for Optimus...When you think about it, there’s no major engineering problem that needs to be solved in order to create a humanoid robot. It just needs to be efficiently packaged as well as designed and manufactured in a way that the robot doesn’t cost more than $100,000. People didn’t think that was possible with electric cars, but Tesla did it. I think they can do it for humanoid robots. The AI side is the more difficult challenge. That’s why I am talking about approximately three years for a useful product. That’s accounting for the fact that Tesla has already made a lot of mistakes in developing AI for self-driving. Those are mistakes that it won’t make for the robot, and at one point, it will run out of mistakes to make."

https://electrek.co/2023/05/16/tesla-bot-sideshow-new-footage-robots/

Yeah, Cramer's advice back in September 2008 was "Sell Sell Sell!": https://www.cnbc.com/2008/09/22/cramer-sell-sell-sell.html

Broad-based declines are pretty rare opportunities. When panicked selling pretty much aligns all correlations close to 1, there are always going to be some good opportunities for buying otherwise-solid and enduring companies that got punished as collateral.

But a lot simply depends on one's investment preferences. Active traders getting in and out of stocks are going to see things differently than buy-and-hold investors.

For what it's worth, if we're just looking at the S&P 500, we've seen negative returns 12 times for 5-year hold periods out of 89 such periods - 1927, 1928, 1929, 1930, 1937, 1970, 1973, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2004, 2007. All of these share one thing in common - they were the height of elevated broad-based stock values, either near the end of a long bull market (1927-1930 and 1998-200) or a brief bull surge (1937, 1970, 1973, 2004, 2007). For 10-year holding periods, there have only been 4 investing years out of 84 that yielded negative returns - 1929, 1930, 1999, 2000. There have never been negative 15-year or 20-year returns for the S&P 500, even counting the Great Depression, WW2, oil shocks, collapse in American manufacturing, skyrocketing inflation, financial crisis, etc.

On the flip side, the best years for investing typically were broad collapses following a bull market or being directly on the cusp of the next bull market. For 20-year returns that would be 1942,1943, 1944, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982. For 10-year returns it would be 1942, 1943, 1945, 1946, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1954, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1982, 1983, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991. For shorter 5-year holding periods it would be 1932, 1941, 1942, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1954, 1979, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1987, 1988, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018.

20-year returns across the history of the S&P 500 have ranged from about 184% to 2,684% with a median of 833%. A 20-year return has quintupled or more 50 times out of 80, and quadrupled or more 63 times out of 80. Pretty good odds when considering the remaining time periods were the aforementioned ones done at the very height of a bull market.

Here's one that I was always surprised never got challenged by the Beatles: "Back On My Mind" performed by Ronnie Milsap that hit #2 way back in 1978.

It's a pretty close copy of "Octopus's Garden"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRdKxNc44Wk

I think I recall one person posting a video of the arm getting its physics confused and becoming stretched super-long.

There was also the health meter, where the character looked down to her chest to see how she was doing healthwise...

RedEye9 wrote on Apr 19, 2023, 13:29:

Coalfax wrote on Apr 19, 2023, 13:21:
I am just really wondering why anyone would use this platform at all anymore. Its run as a useful and informative entity is gone and its a shell of its former self. Time to let it die like its owner appears to want it to do.

But on a good note it forced Tesla to cut prices for the sixth time this year and done wonders for the stock, if you’re a short seller. Reuters #BestPurchaseEver

One of the defenses from many of the acolytes on why Tesla would reign supreme over all other automakers was that (for the past year or two) Teslas were rated by at least one survey as the most profitable automobiles. The profitability was coming from expensive software upgrades that many Silicon Valley tech workers at the time didn't mind dropping 5-digits on at the time as well as some of the EV incentives. That kind of profitability is transitory and easily eroded from any number of directions (competition, decline in number of tech workers and others feeling insecure about their finances, government changes to incentives, etc.). Compare that to the profitability of Apple that comes from a combination of very refined logistics and manufacturing supported by an ecosystem that Apple has successfully built, defended, and improved to maintain that walled moat. Back on the automobile side, luxury makers like Mercedes also topped the profitability chart - because they've developed and defended a niche rather than claiming to take on the whole automobile industry.

RedEye9 wrote on Apr 6, 2023, 15:56:

Prez wrote on Apr 6, 2023, 14:09:
When is the last time this very successful man actually *succeeded* at anything?

His estimated net worth is 50 million.
I'd love to be a failure like him and there is no one here that wouldn't.

I've worked at 2 companies where someone cost the company a billion dollars and they were rewarded and promoted.

RedEye9 wrote on Mar 31, 2023, 10:24:

1badmf wrote on Mar 31, 2023, 04:45:
cuz for-profit education worked out so well at the university level. i don't even understand the right wing obsession with them theoretically, except that they're another chance from them to swindle the poor out of their money.

On the bright side, the check was cancelled before it could be cashed.
But using the classic far right “groomed” was a nice touch, us dim-libs would have gone with catfished. 😹

I would also not be surprised if her personal Facebook account has one of these posts on it:

"Don’t forget tomorrow starts the new Facebook rule where they can use your photos. Don't forget Deadline today!!! It can be used in court cases in litigation against you. Everything you've ever posted becomes public from today Even messages that have been deleted or the photos not allowed. It costs nothing for a simple copy and paste, better safe than sorry. Channel 13 News talked about the change in Facebook's privacy policy. I do not give Facebook or any entities associated with Facebook permission to use my pictures, information, messages or posts, both past and future. With this statement, I give notice to Facebook it is strictly forbidden to disclose, copy, distribute, or take any other action against me based on this profile and/or its contents. The content of this profile is private and confidential information. The violation of privacy can be punished by law (UCC 1-308- 1 1 308-103 and the Rome Statute. NOTE: Facebook is now a public entity. All members must post a note like this. If you prefer, you can copy and paste this version. If you do not publish a statement at least once it will be tacitly allowing the use of your photos, as well as the information contained in the profile status updates. FACEBOOK DOES NOT HAVE MY PERMISSION TO SHARE PHOTOS OR MESSAGES."

selection7 wrote on Feb 15, 2023, 22:12:
That second link is interesting, but after reading paragraph after paragraph, I still couldn't find the part where they explain how the "vehicle indefinitely" could be corrupt or actually end up back in the hands of those donating. Did I miss it? I see many, many paragraphs complaining that the money is tied up not actually doing good in the present, though.

Furthermore, the bit about the Heard-Depp trial seems to present evidence against the article's own position. I watched many, if not the majority of that trial's testimonies:

#1) The article very incorrectly states that Elon gave $5MM in Heard's name (in addition to $0.5MM). My mental alarm went off went I read that, because it's not remotely true (and is easily googlable). Only $0.5MM was given by Musk in Heard's name, and probably another $350k anonymously (the ACLU says they literally don't know the source). The difference between $750k and $5MM is a pretty egregious factual error to get wrong in an article that's trying to persuade us they know the facts better than us.

[Note that Heard, herself, gave away no more than 5% of her divorce settlement, keeping the rest for herself, even though she said publicly she'd give it all away. Johnny actually started the process of giving that divorce settlement money directly to the ACLU himself, but Heard's reps reprimanded Depp and said he should pay the money to Heard first—supposedly so Heard rather than Johnny would get the tax write-off, but of course there never was a tax write off because Heard never gave it away, which an ACLU lawyer sheepishly testified to in court. Also interesting is the article saying Depp's legal team "tried to undermine Heard's credibility", even though Heard steadfastly refused to admit on the stand that she never gave that money away, even years after she'd received the settlement and before Depp sued her for defamation in 2019. If you watched the trial, you'd know there was no "tried" to it—it was one of many things that led the jury to believe Heard's credibility was undermined (i.e., that she was a serial liar).]

#2) In the courtroom, neither the ACLU lawyer, nor any legal pundits on either side ever suggested the $500–750k Musk gave to the ACLU (through the investor donated fund) didn't actually go to the ACLU. We might debate whether the ACLU should be considered a non-profit charity, but we can't debate that it nevertheless is, and that Musk gave $500–750k to the ACLU through that fund.

Sorry for the late response. A great many billionaires take advantage of "charity" vehicles primarily as a means of tax write-off while controlling and preserving the funds. A widely-used vehicle is a "donor advised fund".

Generally with DAFs, there are no minimum distribution requirements. Many of them may also be structured in a way (such as an LLC rather than as a charitable foundation) to avoid reporting their actual activities. They have become very popular especially among wealthy individuals in the tech industry.

This article discusses some of the issues with DAFs not making disbursements.

John Arnold talks about his issues with DAFs here

The Flying Penguin wrote on Feb 15, 2023, 16:40:
Well I can tell you that he does have to report the charities he gave to in his 1040. I have to. This filing is likely one for the SEC because of the stock transfer.

His 2021 charitable contributions($5.7B) went to his own charitable organization.

As Bloomberg and many others have noted most of tehse types of donor-advised funds are tax write-offs and don't actually go to charity. They remain in the vehicle indefinitely.

Hi Blue -

Sorry you've had to go through all that.

I had something similar happen to me 30 years ago. I was driving down a wide (2 lanes each way plus turning lane in the middle and no esplanade) 40mph road in the curbside lane. I was driving at the speed limit but notably had an older vehicle with disk and drum brakes as well as being pretty solidly build with no airbags (this being again, 30 years ago).

A poultry and egg supply truck (basically the size of a UPS truck) was in the driveway of a restaurant on my side of the road. There was virtually no traffic except for me and 2 other cars approaching and it was a clear day with no visibility issues.

The truck decided to do a left turn across both of the incoming lanes of traffic without bothering to look at me and the other 2 cars. As he started to pull out broadside across our lanes, we were only 100 feet away and I saw him pause and turn his head and look at us. He was only across my lane at that moment and me and the car beside me were already braking and trying to swerve around him.

He suddenly decided, "What the heck? If a Ferrari can go zero-to-whatever in no time, surely this giant truck can! So he gunned his truck and blocked both lanes plus the middle turn lane by the time we were on him.

The car beside me and the one following that one managed to swerve wide around him. I went straight into his side still braking because I couldn't swerve that far out due to his compounding his initial idiocy with even more idiocy.

I actually took my hands off the wheel at the last moment because it managed to occur to me that bracing myself might break my arms on what was probably then around a 20mph impact into a large and solid immovable object.

My rear floor mats shot under the seats and ended up against the firewall beneath the dash. My left knee drove into the dash and cracked the dash which was (again, being an older 1980s car) very thick and solid plastic. I also ended up with a perfectly-shaped seatbelt bruise crossing my waist and diagonal to my shoulder.

I got a very stiff neck from whiplash and still have neck issues to this day when I get tense and my neck stiffens up and is painful.

The crappy insurance company for the poultry & egg truck refused to pay any of my medical bills or to pay out for my car until I signed an affidavit releasing them from any future claims. Being a very poor college student and not realizing at the time they were probably flaunting the law, plus I was getting overdue bills for medical costs I didn't have any money to pay to be later reimbursed by the crappy insurance company, I eventually settled for the accrued medical costs and market value of the car, so around $3,000 total. I'm sure they were pleased with that outcome.

So...I am glad you stood up and sued. I wish I had.

FWIW, Mish Shedlock believes Apple, Google, and Microsoft are in the running for being the next tech companies to lose $1 Trillion in market cap. But Tesla is not far behind (currently at about $860 Billion down from its November 2021 peak)

https://mishtalk.com/economics/what-company-will-be-the-second-to-lose-1-trillion-in-market-cap

Another good article:

At Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk was a jerk with a grand vision. At Twitter, he's just a jerk.

Fion wrote on Dec 14, 2022, 13:07:
Wonder if they'll kill off the main character again and then try to get us to sympathize with her killer.

Yeah, that would work. Dina remains resentful toward Ellie because Ellie didn't keep her promise to drop the whole revenge thing with Abby over Abby killing Joel.

Abby decides she isn't satisfied with just the 2 fingers she bit off Ellie. So she ambushes Ellie and finishes her off.

Dina, who was previously innocent and nice, goes on a rampage of revenge against Abby.

But eventually, Dina's young son convinces Dina to just drop the whole revenge thing with Abby, and for awhile, Dina does.

But then Dina can't abide it any longer and goes in search of Abby and fights her, losing 2 fingers to Abby's gnashing teeth. Dina decides to drop the revenge thing and returns home to find her son gone and estranged from her.

This sets things up for The Last of Us: Part 4 where the following happens:

Dina's son remains resentful toward Dina because Dina didn't keep her promise to drop the whole revenge thing with Abby over Abby killing Ellie.

Abby decides she isn't satisfied with just the 2 fingers she bit off Dina. So she ambushes Dina and finishes her off.

Dina's son, who was previously innocent and nice, goes on a rampage of revenge against Abby.

But eventually, Dina's son's new girlfriend convinces Dina's son to just drop the whole revenge thing with Abby, and for awhile, Dina's son does.

But then Dina's son can't abide it any longer and goes in search of Abby and fights her, losing 2 fingers to Abby's gnashing teeth. Dina's decides to drop the revenge thing and returns home to find her new girlfriend gone and estranged from him.

Which sets things up for The Last of Us: Part 5, where Dina's son's girlfriend goes on a rampage of revenge against Abby for killing Dina's son.

RedEye9 wrote on Dec 8, 2022, 00:48:
"Elon Musk’s Bankers Consider Tesla Margin Loans to Cut Risky Twitter Debt"
The new margin loans would be backed by Tesla's stock to replace some of the high interest debt on Elons folly, his Twitter deal.

Now all Musk needs to do is to create some off-balance sheet vehicles to move those liabilities (and potential losses) off Tesla's books so the company's financials look great.

GE under Jack Welch excelled in that kind of accounting work. Notably, his successor Jeff Immelt pared back a lot of those special-purpose entities/off-balance sheet vehicles and GE's former amazingly miraculous profitability began to decline.

Enron also employed similar tactics although not on the scale of GE. For Enron, the main off-balance sheet vehicles were the Raptor I through IV entities designed to sequester the heavy losses from Enron Broadband Services, which had "taken strategic positions" in a variety of tech IPOs like Global Crossing, Avici, and others right at the end of the tech boom and just prior to the collapse of tech prices and dissolution of many startups. The Raptor vehicles "hedged" the losses against Enron's own stock price under the assumption that Enron's stock price would continue to rise. As Enron's stock price instead fell, the Raptor vehicles went underwater and losses should have been declared in late 2000, a full year before the collapse. Instead at year-end, Enron did a credit wrap to prop up the underwater Raptors against the 2 that were pegged against a lower Enron stock price that had not yet been breached. The overall decline in the stock market exacerbated by 9/11 triggered all the Raptors and a $1 Billion loss had to be declared - which wasn't actually the only billion dollar loss (Enron Energy Services and Enron International were both also carrying around $1 Billion losses each).

fujiJuice wrote on Dec 8, 2022, 09:41:
Looks like my kind of style.

Why is Edgar Allan Poe a character though? I feel like I am missing something, seems like an unnecessary distraction. I guess I have to watch it

Poe will always be Chris Conner from "Altered Carbon" in my book...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkmDMuaU5zs

RedEye9 wrote on Dec 6, 2022, 13:09:

cappy wrote on Dec 6, 2022, 13:01:

jdreyer wrote on Dec 5, 2022, 21:40:
Bernie Madoff's Lawyer to FTX's Bankman-Fried: "Shut Up!"

It's literally the worst thing you can do when under investigation: speak publicly about the case. IIRC, SBF's parents are both law professors, which makes it even more shocking. I do wonder if being part of that altruism movement played some motivation in the fraud, like he thought it might be justified if he used the money for good.

Sam Bankman-Fried has already said in multiple interviews that he was virtue signaling on all that and never believed in any of it.

Here he is collapsing the faith that Vox's altruism correspondent had once had in him\

There is no such thing as a good billionaire https://youtu.be/0Cu6EbELZ6I Adam Conover

I would concur with that. The CEOs proudly claiming they've donated their entire share of their companies to "charity" (Patagonia on the left and Hobby Lobby on the right) are simply utilizing tax-advantaged vehicles that their families will control. Ditto for the overwhelming majority of "charitable foundations" and other similar fake-charity tax-schemes that only trickle out actual charitable giving.

There's been pretty much one billionaire who actually gave it all away - Chuck Feeney. He donated his entire $8 Billion and retained only $2 million for himself and his wife. His foundation finalized all of its donations a couple of years ago (as compared to the tax-avoidance fake-charity vehicles done by virtually all the other billionaires that make only legally minimal donations each year and preserve the vast majority of their wealth in place).

jdreyer wrote on Dec 5, 2022, 21:40:
Bernie Madoff's Lawyer to FTX's Bankman-Fried: "Shut Up!"

It's literally the worst thing you can do when under investigation: speak publicly about the case. IIRC, SBF's parents are both law professors, which makes it even more shocking. I do wonder if being part of that altruism movement played some motivation in the fraud, like he thought it might be justified if he used the money for good.

Sam Bankman-Fried has already said in multiple interviews that he was virtue signaling on all that and never believed in any of it.

Here he is collapsing the faith that Vox's altruism correspondent had once had in him\

RedEye9 wrote on Dec 5, 2022, 19:17:
SBF is SBFucked, to put it lightly.

Did you notice he's doing the same "bad businessman" strategy that worked *so well for Elizabeth Holmes with Theranos?

"For years, he cast himself in the likeness of a young boy genius turned business titan, capable of miraculously growing his crypto empire as other players got wiped out...But during Bankman-Fried’s press junket of the last few weeks, the onetime wunderkind has spun a new narrative – one in which he was simply an inexperienced and novice businessman who was out of his depth, didn’t know what he was doing, and crucially, didn’t know what was happening at the businesses he founded."

"Dude! You can't like send me to jail! I'm like an idiot. Also my ex-gf did all that stuff. I didn't know what was going on most of the time!"

I bet his ex-girlfriend is lawyering up to make sure she doesn't end up thrown under the bus...And I just saw this article:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/12/could-caroline-ellison-be-cutting-a-deal-with-the-feds.html

Beamer wrote on Dec 3, 2022, 16:54:
Taibbi listed 5 deleted tweets. If you search them on the way back machine, they're almost exclusively Chinese language tweets showing revenge porn images of Hunter's junk.

So, as per usual, Republicans are obsessed with other people's genitals.

Jim Wright / Stonekettle Station has a nice post about all of this...

https://www.stonekettle.com/2022/12/a-republic-if-you-can-tweet-it.html