221031 13:29 – Happy Halloween
Here’s a giggle:
Have a Happy Saturday, stellarkin.
Thank you for reading today's post. Have an InterStellar Day! ~PrP
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JOKE:
Late one afternoon, the Air Force folks out at Area 51 were very surprised to see a Cessna landing at their “secret” base.
They immediately impounded the aircraft and hauled the pilot into an interrogation room.
The pilot’s story was that he took off from Vegas, got lost, and spotted the Base just as he was about to run out of fuel.
The Air Force started a full FBI background check on the pilot and held him overnight during the investigation. By the next day, they were finally convinced that the pilot really was lost and wasn’t a spy. They gassed up his airplane, gave him a terrifying “you-did-not-see-a-base” briefing, complete with threats of spending the rest of his life in prison, told him Vegas was that-a-way on such-and-such a heading and sent him on his way.
The day after that though, to the total disbelief of the Air Force, the same Cessna showed up again.
Once again, the MP’s surrounded the plane…
Only this time there were two people on the plane.
The same pilot jumped out and said,
“Do anything you want to me, but my wife is on the plane and you have to tell her where I was last night!”
ahahah! That was good.
PrP, you seem to be a fair minded person. All of my kids have cut me off just because I used to hit them whenever I got angry or drunk. How do I get back into their lives because I need money and my wife has left me?
I’m not PrP, but my advice is get a second job, if you have a first which I doubt.
I have children who are making a whole lot of money. I gave the cheap bastards life they owe me something.
You sound like a real piece of work: oblivious to your own actions and how they affect others. Respect your kids’ boundaries. Leave them alone. Sounds like you had a smart wife, anyway. You need to get a job and move on. Nobody owes you anything, except a cold shoulder.
The bitch was a tramp. So I smacked her around a few times, not any more than she deserved. That bitch turned all 4 of my kids against me.
Humans will be given so much additional life span they may lose the ability to fall in love. Plus if we don’t tamper down their concept of free will, we may be stuck with a lot of human evil.
The notion of living forever or practically for ever since 2500 years of life will be an unimaginable time for humans. They will lose the need for religion and most likely the need to give their fellow humans any social considerations morally or otherwise. Hence the need to insure they take the mind controlling elixir. If we mix it with their health brew, we will know if they aren’t taking it since their bodies will begin to deteriorate.
mind controlling elixer? That sounds an awful lot like interference. I will add that free will is what many ABs find attractive about HBs.
We respect your advice. But look at your earth now. Humans only live 75 years and they are as mean as savage pit bulls to each other. Imagine if they knew they had 2,500 years of life how despicable they would be to beings around them. No way can we trust the violent prone creatures to control their emotional state.
The chances of winning a Powerball jackpot are less than a millionth of a percent.
Is that better than the odds of getting some alien trim or dick?
Nailed it.
Like some say about the GODS. A paraphrase for humans “how can they really live if they know that they will never die?
Why are your shortchanging the GODS’ experiences? Some still know how to have a good time.
We are not “shortchanging” anything. We based our analysis upon the fact that beings up here who live for 4,200 years on average only begin to experience life when they are down to about 700 years. It is when their mortality begins to hit them that they truly begin to appreciate the years before and strive to make life better for their progeny.
Should we allow humans to decide when they have reached their peaked perfection or should we decide for them?
Decide for the defected species. They don’t deserve to have a say as to when they have become suitable to be preserved for an extension at that point for 2,500 years. We should monitor every aspect of their lives and when we think an individual has reached perfection in her/his social interactions and ability to intellectually excel, then we declare that to be the age at which they will remain for 2,500 years. I would like to take this time to add that I am one of those that will advocate that humans be frozen at 2,500 years. There is no logical reason to extend their life spans beyond that.
The elixir that elimates the elements in their emotional state that allows them to harm others will also eliminate suffering from injury and illness. Some will need stronger dozes that others because of their tendencies to be “evil.”
I too am certain that once humans are given a life span of 2,500 years, they won’t need religion because they won’t be afraid to dying and having to answer to the god they believed made them.
Why even tell them they have 2500 years? Keeping quiet might solve some of these problems you are imagining.
We doubt that considering they will never get ill or experience emotional trauma once they reach their state of peak perfection and we freeze the aging process from that point on.
Curious…How did you arrive at a life span of 2,500 years?
It was based upon the turn around time to the two major hubs most interested in fresh human meat.
Humans who are religious believe they are alive for a god given purpose. They believe that their time on earth is designed by their god to be intentionally difficult, and that each given soul is mortal.
Humans who are religious have no problem killing, raping, maiming and doing all kinds of evil things to others in the name of their god. It is this stuff done by the religious that make life difficult.
Many humans like many aliens believe that science and technology are the real gods.
Those who believe that science and technology are the true gods, usually believe that it those two disciplines will be the answer to human suffering.
The only true answer to human suffering is the concerned effort by humans to end it.
You primitive creatures can’t live together in peace with the technology you have presently. Your “concerned effort” is predicated on how much money you will earn while easing their suffering.
Hence, we are not requesting your input on the subject. This discussion is among those that will decide your destiny. Keep in mind before you spout off again that this would not be necessary if you weren’t about to blow your planet in to a nuclear waste land. That indeed would be your most “concerned effort by humans to end” human suffering. – By killing them all –
Why stop at 2,500 years? The human body is just another machine that can be perfected to go on forever.
Unless they are being preserved for their food potential. Intellectualizing the cattle could prove very dangerous.
What’s the point. Humans will still feel emotions, they will just be limited.
It is in the limiting that their racism, bigotry, greed, depravity, and deceitfulness will be stopped.
Sure we say “Ours is not to reason why, Ours is but to do or die.” We believe not because we are afraid of death, but because we are afraid of being afraid of death.
Who gives a fuck why you blindly obey your masters, you are still slaves to those masters.
Don’t confuse delineation with slavery. Having a defined purpose ends the need to conspire to take what shouldn’t be yours. Just because you think that you are not blindly obeying your earth masters doesn’t mean you aren’t. The carrots they dangle before you allow you to believe that attaining them is possible. But thousands of years later, the same suffering continues. If we hadn’t decided to save you from yourselves you would kill off most of you in the coming months.
What need is there to be free to not obey your masters if you are lead to the brink of destruction by your leaders? Logically to us the fact that you have leaders mean that many are blindly following and obeying their masters. At least as masters we will not lead you towards self destruction.
What will you say when the nuclear radiation begins to peel off your skin and exposes the second layer to the elements. Who will answer your screams of pain. Aliens didn’t do that. Your leaders did.
Four and a half months after the Battle of Gettysburg, President Abraham Lincoln joined a large crowd to dedicate the Soldiers’ National Cemetery on the afternoon of November 19, 1863. After the delivering of prayers and the playing of songs, the crowd listened intently to a nearly two-hour speech by the orator, Edward Everett. Then, following a hymn, “The Consecration Chant,” President Lincoln stepped forward to deliver the Dedicatory Remarks. In just a matter of 271 words, Lincoln said everything that a broken nation needed to hear. He began by invoking the historical memory of the United States, addressed the conflict, then turned his focus to the present, and in many ways to us. For a speech that Lincoln predicted few would “long remember,” the Gettysburg Address should speak to us all today.
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
I can see how this is relevant to today. The republicans are attempting to take by violence what they can’t achieve by the vote.
The US has decided it can no longer look the other way while China attempts to take control of the Pacific in preparation for its invasion of Taiwan. Xi is solidifying his hold on control of China because he knows that there will be some push back from its leadership when the world embargo comes.
Amid growing fears of a confrontation with China over Taiwan, the U.S. has drawn up a detailed plan to deploy up to six nuclear-capable B-52 bombers to northern Australia — a move that is expected to provoke Beijing.
The U.S. has drawn up a plan to build a “squadron operations facility” for six B-52s along with an adjoining maintenance center and a parking area for the giant aircraft at Tindal air base, about 300 km (190 miles) south of Darwin, the capital of Australia’s Northern Territory.
The B-52s are long-range heavy bombers, considered to be the backbone of the U.S. Air Force. They are capable of performing a variety of missions, including nuclear and conventional bombing alongside maritime surveillance. The U.S. had also earlier this year deployed four B-52s to its Andersen Air Force base in Guam.
Tech stocks got curb-stomped, as most of the big players reported awful earnings.
Undeterred, the rest of the market was up.
The Fed meets on Wednesday, and is expected to hike rates another 75bps.
Bullish News 📈
The Bank of Japan kept ultra-low interest rates on Friday and maintained its dovish guidance, cementing its status as an outlier among global central banks.
The US economy rebounded strongly, with 2.6% GDP growth in the third quarter, amid a shrinking trade deficit.
Bearish News 📉
US jobless claims rose slightly last week.
Domestic demand in the US was the weakest in two years.
Germany dodged a recession, but inflation jumped to 11.6% in the third quarter.
The ECB hiked rates by 75 bps on Thursday and promised more hikes to come.
The Bank of Canada announced a further 50 bps hike, its sixth in a row.
Crypto
Here’s what you need to know:
It was a huge week for ETH — up 16.6%.
Bullish News 📈
Digital banking firm Revolut is adding a crypto spending feature that will enable customers to use their crypto balance to pay for everyday purchases.
According to a Fidelity survey, 74% of institutions plan to buy crypto.
BNY Mellon reported that 70% of institutional investors surveyed would be interested in crypto if they had services from firms they trust.
Crypto exchange operator FTX could launch its own stablecoin through a partnership.
Dogecoin had a strong weekend, at one point on Saturday surging nearly 90% since the Tesla CEO became the Twitter CEO on Thursday.
Bearish News 📉
Core Scientific Inc., one of the world’s largest miners of Bitcoin, warned that it might run out of cash by the end of the year and could seek relief through bankruptcy protection.
Hong Kong is planning to regulate retail crypto trading in 2023.
In India, drug smuggling through the darknet and cryptocurrencies has increased, as has terrorism financing.
What to do with that info:
We’re waiting to see if BTC can smash through around $22,500.
Real Estate
Here’s what you need to know:
Most of the major global cities are at risk of the real estate bubble popping (h/t briefcase).
Canada, central Europe, and east Asia look the most vulnerable —
Bullish News 📈
The median home price in Long Island was actually up in Q3.
Bearish News 📉
One economist is predicting a 20% decline in home prices in 2023 (sounds about right).
Home flippers are getting rekt.
In September, home sales declined 11% MoM and 18% YoY. Pending sales are down 30.4% from a year ago.
Mortgage demand has dropped to its lowest in 25 years.
What to do with that info:
Housing (and commercial) prices will continue to fall, and there are going to be opportunities to pick up great assets at a discount early next year.
NFTs
Here’s what you need to know:
NFTs popped last week, led by art pieces like The Currency and Chromie Squiggles —
Trading volume continues its lethargy — October was the lowest month since June 2021.
Bullish News 📈
Twitter announced that it will let users buy, sell, and display NFTs directly through tweets.
Metaverse landcaps were up 14% last week on the back of ETH’s climb, and many projects saw a 25% to 50% boost in trading volume.
A Singaporean High Court declared that NFTs are considered property.
The first-ever NFT vending machine is going live next week.
Bearish News 📉
Following a successful first collection, the Baby Shark franchise has announced the second NFT drop of its second collection, with the assets going on sale on November 09, 2022.
What to do with that info:
We’re in the middle of a midterm rally, which tends to show positive returns in October and November of off-cycle election years during bear markets. Typically, momentum doesn’t hold through December, though…
Startups
Here’s what you need to know:
Napkin math published a thought-provoking piece on how broken venture capital is. We recommend reading the entire piece, but here are the highlights.
There are too many funds chasing too few grand-slam deals.
Founders are forced to take insane risks to achieve VC-approved results.
It is likely that many of the funds deployed over recent years will be some of the worst-performing of all time.
Just 0.12% of the venture dollars deployed in Q3 this year went to Black entrepreneurs.
But Evan proposes a solution, and it’s one we happen to agree with:
This is a market ripe for disruption. As venture funds continue to target larger and larger outcomes, there is a ton of opportunity left on the table that no one is seizing. You could invest in businesses that have an 80% chance of being worth $300M, rather than a 1% chance of being worth $80B. This strategy is an obvious opportunity to make a ton of money. Start by serving the underfunded, slowly move upmarket, and then, suddenly, you’ve disrupted the entire industry.
Sorry left this out of R4
Sorry left this out of R4
Bullish News 📈
Crowdfunding platform StartEngine is acquiring a rival platform — SeedInvest from Circle, best known for the USDC stablecoin, pending approval from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).
Bearish News 📉
Crypto exchange Blockchain.com is raising a 70% down round bringing its valuation from $13B to $3B.
Only $5.5 billion was invested in crypto startups from July through September, marking the lowest quarter for investments this year.
What to do with that info:
Start a fund specializing in doubles and triples. Or invest in one.
Quick Hits
Wine, whiskey & spirits
Last year was the 12th consecutive year in which spirits have taken away market share from beer in the total US alcoholic beverage market.
The top five spirits by revenue growth in 2021 were vodka (4.9%), tequila/mezcal (30.1%), American whiskey (6.7%), Brandy & Cognac (13.1%), and cordials (15.2%).
If you like this I’ll up grade it weekly
Yes please.
Love me some Vitamin V!
What Internet Speeds Do You Really Need?
The English language has many nuances, and the phrase “up to” is potent yet often overlooked. Put it before something like 1 GB/s, and the person reading it might ignore the phrase “up to” all together and get it in their heads that they’ll be getting the speed they believe has been advertised. However, the sentence “broadband speeds of up to 1 GB/s” just means your internet speed shouldn’t exceed that figure; it’s a cap, not a baseline. While many companies do hit their targets, others hit the mark they are advertising in a couple of areas and use that to justify the fact they’re essentially lying to their customers everywhere else. So make sure your internet provider is delivering what you expect from them.
Even if you’re getting the speeds that you were promised through your modem, that doesn’t mean your devices will be connected at those speeds. Your internet’s bandwidth is split between the devices that are connected to it. While every device you have connected won’t demand the same amount of bandwidth, they will all take a slice. So if your router is pumping out 100 MB/s, and you have a TV, a laptop, and a couple of cellphones connected simultaneously, none of those devices will show 100 MB/s on a speed test.
Did You Know?
French dip sandwiches did not, as the name might imply, originate in France, but were instead first created in Los Angeles and called French dip sandwiches because of the style of bread used.
Did You Know?
The popular candy bar Snickers was created by Frank and Ethel Mars, of the Mars candy family, and named after their favorite horse.
Did You Know?
For the scene in The Shining where Jack Nicholson types out “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” over and over, director Stanley Kubrick recorded an actual typist typing the words to ensure the sound effect in the movie was perfectly accurate.
In the fifth decade of life, our brains start to undergo a radical “rewiring” that results in diverse networks becoming more integrated and connected over the ensuing decades, with accompanying effects on cognition. The networking changes likely result from the brain reorganizing itself to function as well as it can with dwindling resources and aging “hardware.” Proper diet, regular exercise, and a healthy lifestyle can keep the mind in good working order and put networking changes on hold, sometimes well into old age.
We can supply the brain with the simple sugar glucose that it needs to function at its peak. We can also provide the support human brains need to insure that the brain operates as efficiently as it had prior to a drop in that efficiently at age 40. In addition we can reverse most human brain lost of functionality that has occurred during their brain decline in their 5th decade of life.
Some human brains have demonstrated the ability to increase functionality when provided a constant supply of simple glucose sugar with tweaks of our designed complex sugar molecules. All human brains have shown the ability to maintain their standard efficiency and functionality when exposed to our regimen of 21% of simple glucose sugar input and brain stimulation based upon their intelligence quota sequences.
If humans don’t have a sufficient amount of that simple glucose stored while under suspended animation they could awaken in a violent state or in one that is hangry(hunger activated anger). Those in charge of bringing them out of SA need to be well versed in why hanger happens and what to do about it.
Hunger and digestion are complicated internal human processes, and every human’s body is different. Hanger, though, can happen to any one of them, and it basically comes down to the link between their brain and their blood sugar levels.
When they feel hangry, it’s basically the low-fuel light going off in the engine of their brain. Their brain relies on glucose to perform all of its functions, and if they’re hungry, those blood sugar levels start to plummet, which can cause brain fog and a loss of self-control. The combination of these factors can create a situation where their patience wears very thin, very quickly, and mild annoyances turn into all-out rage triggers. Other symptoms of low blood sugar include headaches, sweating, and fatigue. If any of these signs start to crop up when they are brought out of SA, hanger might be on its way.
Humans don’t necessarily have to be ravenous to feel hangry, either. A small study on a few humans over several decades found that the higher that participants’ self-reported hunger scores ticked up, the more likely they were to feel angry and irritable. These studies prove that run-of-the-mill, everyday levels of hunger in humans can be associated with negative emotions like anger and irritability.
Considering there will be many different motherships with varying means of administering suspended animation to humans being brought up, is there some basic course that we can input to our teams handling their export from the planet earth and subsequent transplantation to other planets.
A good stock to look at.
NYSE: RVLV
Revolve Group: Disrupting fashion e-commerce
Almost forgot this one.
MercadoLibre: Leading Latin American e-commerce
MercadoLibre is similar to Amazon at an earlier stage of its evolution. E-commerce is its main business, but it’s using that as a springboard to enter other business areas as well in its Latin American market.
It has emerged as a dominant player in the 18 countries in which it operates, and while it’s refining its e-commerce model and generating strong sales growth, its fintech segment is becoming important as it supports both the e-commerce operation and the region’s underbanked population in general.
NASDAQ: MELI
MercadoLibre
Today’s Change
(2.25%) $19.87
Current Price
$901.62
YTD
1W
1M
3M
6M
1Y
5Y
PRICE
VS S&P
MELI
KEY DATA POINTS
Market Cap
$44B
Day’s Range
$860.00 – $905.65
52wk Range
$600.68 – $1,711.02
Volume
931,838
Avg Vol
642,979
Gross Margin
51.09%
Dividend Yield
N/A
Sales are no longer surging by triple-digit percentages — as they did for five consecutive quarters at the height of the pandemic — but they’re still growing at high double-digit percentage rates, which is impressive. Its earlier growth allowed it to expand and recruit more customers, and they’re sticking around.
Management has switched its focus to maintaining profitability at this scale and improving its model with more delivery options (and faster ones). MercadoLibre stock is down 46% over the past year, and it’s an excellent stock to own with tons of growth potential.
Making gobs of money off oil and gas while American households adjust to record energy price inflation will put you in political and social crosshairs.
Leaders including President Biden have called on energy companies to spend some of that money on increasing production and to help keep prices down.
State of play: Exxon’s $19.7 billion third-quarter profit was so huge, it was within striking distance of Apple’s $20.7 billion in profits.
For perspective: Apple has a market cap of $2.5 trillion, to Exxon’s mere $461 billion.
Flashback: Once upon a time Exxon was the world’s largest company — a position that Apple snatched from it over a decade ago.
💭 Our thought bubble: Exxon’s stock is up a ton this year, but it’s not even in Apple’s league. Despite the oil company’s recent profit surge, investors still remember 2020 when oil prices were negative — and years of sub-$50 levels. They also see renewables on the horizon.
In other words, the environment can change quickly — and new investments take years to start paying off. That’s one reason that, while producers like Exxon are increasing their output, they’re not tearing up their previously drawn plans.
What they’re saying: Exxon CEO Darren Woods told investors on the earnings call that the company would remain “disciplined” and stick to production goals from the beginning of the year before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent prices skyrocketing.
The bottom line: The company plans to shell out $30 billion for dividends and stock buybacks this year, so don’t be surprised to see more exchanges like this one — between Woods and Biden on Friday.
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4. October wasn’t so scary after all
Data: FactSet; Chart: Axios Visuals
The start of earnings season seemed to give the markets a lift in October, Matt writes.
The S&P 500 is up 8.8%, clawing back some of the 9.3% loss it suffered in September.
State of play: Energy stocks led. The S&P 500’s energy sector climbed 24.1% through Friday, with just one session of the month left.
Some massive stocks, like Amazon, Meta and Tesla, tumbled — they’re down 8%, 27% and 14%, respectively this month.
That’s weighed on the consumer discretionary and communication sectors of the S&P.
Now for that traitor, who plans to be dictator of the US – Elon Musk
It’s possible — unlikely, but possible — that Elon Musk paid for a very large chunk of Twitter with billions of dollars he made investing in dogecoin, a joke cryptocurrency that Musk pumped aggressively in 2021 as it rose sharply in value,
Why it matters: We don’t know — and might never know — who Musk’s co-investors in Twitter are, and therefore who he’s beholden to. We also don’t know — and will never know — just how much Musk is worth.
The estimates of his net worth are just that — estimates — and could be wildly off, especially if he made a lot of money in crypto.
The intrigue: A dogecoin “whale” started buying millions of dollars of the cryptocurrency in February 2019. We know this because, on the blockchain, all transactions are public. We just don’t know the identity of that whale.
By the numbers: The owner of this wallet ended up spending a net total of $382 million on dogecoin by February 2021.
Then the sales started — $9.876 billion in total.
The final profit: $9,469,897,692.
Be smart: We have no idea whether Musk is the owner of this wallet, although he has said that dogecoin is one of only three cryptocurrencies that he’s ever invested in.
We similarly don’t have any kind of cap table for Twitter — a list of its new shareholders. We know that Musk is at the top of the list, that crypto exchange Binance is in for $500 million, and that Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia has invested $1.9 billion. But most details of the ownership of Twitter are extremely murky.
The bottom line: As a private company, Twitter has very few reporting obligations. Eventually, if it issues bonds, some financials will become public. But for the time being, it’s pretty much a black box.
Robert, Congress is asking for an investigation into Musk’s Twitter purchase and Prince Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed bin Talal role, as he allegedly “helped Musk finance the $44 billion acquisition of Twitter by rolling over his existing $1.9 billion stake in the social media company. The move makes Saudi entities the second-largest shareholder in Twitter – behind only Musk himself.”
https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/31/tech/murphy-saudi-musk-twitter-cfius
Musk only invested 13 billion in the Twittter purchase. The Saudis put up 22 billion via different investment vehicles. They own Twitter. The other players are right wing billionaires who have a specific agenda depending upon the outcome of your our November election. If they are successful, they will use Twitter and two other means of mass communication that Musk will bring forward though Twitter to shape the opinions of the masses.
Which one is the most disgusting movie in the
There’s only one movie that makes me feel sick to even think about, and that is 1978’s ‘Pretty Baby’ starring Brooke Shields.
In this (based on a true story) movie, Brooke, who was 11 years old at the time, played a 12-year-old girl who lives in a New Orleans bordello with her prostitute mother, played by Susan Sarandon. Throughout the movie, she falls in love with a man who took nude pictures of her mother and moves in with him and they start a romantic relationship after she was sold to prostitution and lost her innocence.
The plot alone gives me the creeps but, for me, the execution is much worse. Throughout the movie we see men flirt with her, caress her and we even see her lose her innocence when she is sold. And to add insult to injury the nudity wasn’t implied and Brooke had to show her whole body in front of the cameras.
I understand that this was made in the 70s and that back then things were different. I also understand that this movie helped create laws that protect children from having this happen again, but it baffles me how this was even possible.
Hundreds of people worked in this film and no one noticed how wrong this was or how Brooke’s mother was obviously exploiting her even before accepting this role? The adult actors that had to get intimate with her didn’t say anything about what they were doing? Nor did the rest of the cast or the hundreds of people involved in the project that were present as those scenes were being filmed?
It truly disgusts me that this film is still in circulation today, but I’m glad that no other movie like it will ever be made.
I beg to differ. A little young trim is nice.
Fentanyl wasn’t developed by “Big Pharma”.
Morphine is a good drug, but with some pharmaco-chemical tinkering, we thought we could come up with a better one.
Morphine is an agonist at the three main opioid receptors. Despite some squabbling in the literature about their names, they are still most commonly called after their Greek names: mu, delta and kappa.
The money is on the mu receptor. That’s the one which is most involved in analgesia. The other two are mostly involved in unwanted side-effects (nausea, itch, sedation, etc). So a pure mu agonist would offer great efficacy with an improved side-effect profile.
When you see a drug like fentanyl, you might get the impression that it was either stumbled upon by complete accident, or deliberately designed in its finished state.
In fact, neither of these is true.
If you find, say, that phenylpiperidine derivatives have some opioid activity, then what you do is you systematically make as many similar derivatives as you can, then test them one by one.
Put a methyl group on the 1st carbon. Then an ethyl group, or an isopropyl group, or a chloride. Then keep going, testing each subtle variant as you go and noting down the good ones for further study.
In the 1960s, this process was quite hit-and-miss; nonetheless, fentanyl and its chums (alfentanil, sufentanil and carfentanil) were the ones which were found to work really well. Other very similar compounds were rejected: too toxic, not effective enough, not stable, provoked allergic responses, interacted with other medications, triggered other unwanted receptors.
Nowadays we can model receptors in the computer, and we can predict what tweaks to a molecule are likely to be helpful, and which are not.
In any case, fentanyl is a much better drug than morphine. It’s extremely versatile and can be given by every route, including patches on the skin (unlike morphine). It’s very potent, so you don’t need a lot of it. It’s a pure mu agonist, so it has an excellent side-effect profile (better than morphine). It’s quite lipid soluble, which means it works quicker than morphine.
That’s why fentanyl is probably the most commonly-used opioid in the world, and why so many other opioids have quietly gone out of practice and into the museum.
Which terrible actor has had the most successful movie career?
Damn its a long list. I started watching movies back in the early 1960’s when I was five. So hear goes.
Gregory Peck
Kirk Douglas
Michael Douglas
John Wayne
Clint Eastwood
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Bruce Willis
George Clooney
There are more I am sure, but those jump to mind.
Yes, there are four Oscar winners amongst them but seriously, none of them are good actors or even come close to a Meryl Streep.
Take any of those men, and watch two or three performances. They are all the same.
For instance, they might be playing a cowboy, or a WWII soldier, or a detective. Bottom line is it comes down to Bruce Willis, or John Wayne or Clint, or George, playing that character. the only thing that changes is the costume. The inflections the voice, nothing changes its just the actor we know playing another character.
John Wayne played John Chisolm, Davy Crocket, a Naval commander in the SW Pacific, a Flying Tiger pilot, a PT boat commander, an Army Commander on D-Day, Big Jake, but they were all John Wayne.
You can say the same about Clint Eastwood. What makes him such a good director is he “knows his limitations” as an actor. The character of John Mundy that won him an academy award was no different than Dirty Harry, or The Man With No Name, or Kelly in Kelly’s Heroes.
Bruce, Arnold, George and even Kirk and Michael all played themselves in different situations wearing different costumes. Clint came from the Kirk Douglas school of grit teeth acting as did Michael.
I love every one of them, and have watched nearly all their movies and still enjoy watching them. I watched the B&W classic with Kirk in Seven Days in May only last month. But it was still Spartacus wearing a USMC uniform just as when he played the wayward US Navy Commander opposite the Duke in “In Harm’s Way”.
They were all at one time or another named as the Top International Box Office Star, or the US Male Box Office star, but none of them could act like a Daniel Day Louis, or Anthony Hopkins.
Notice they are all men. Women are judged too harshly to be given this opportunity in Hollywood. One bad movie can ruin their careers forever.
Which actors saved their careers with one performance?
Al Pacino saved his career with one scene, and possibly the career of Francis Ford Coppola too (but Francis probably deserves some of the credit for the scene). Coppola had gone out on a limb to get the cast he wanted for The Godfather, despite the studio wanting him to put Robert Redford and Ryan O’Neal in the Corleone roles.
They imposed lots of belittling conditions on giving Marlon Brando the role. Coppola found ways to please the studio without alienating Marlon. “Coppola finally got Paramount execs to agree on Brando…on one (make that three) conditions: the actor work for a percentage of the film’s profits (rather than getting a salary), he promise to behave himself, and he agree to a screen test. Yeah, about that last bit… Coppola would end up meeting Brando at his home for a kind of “improvisation,” as he called it. Brando slicked back his hair, stuffed paper into his cheeks, and became the legendary Don Corleone. Coppola would call the transformation “miraculous.”[1]
Then the studio (mostly Stanley R Jaffe, CEO of Paramount) started saying Pacino wasn’t known well enough and the part was too important to risk on an untested actor. Surprisingly Pacino agreed with the studio and thought Coppola was ‘a little bit mad’ to choose him. Coppola kept putting the studio off and filming more of Pacino’s scene’s but they weren’t giving up. They wanted Pacino replaced.
Coppola refused so the studio started talking about replacing him, even going so far as to have standby directors waiting on the set. Then the scene where Michael shoots McClusky and Sollozzo was filmed. After viewing the raw footage of that scene the studio never mentioned replacing either of them again.[2]
The studio bigshots never apologised and admitted they’d been totally wrong about the casting in the film that went on to have the most critical and financial success of any film in 1972.
Imagine The Godfather with Frank Sinatra (who had already behaved like a child over rumours that he was the inspiration for Johnny Fontane – which he clearly was) Ernest Borgnine or even Laurence Olivier as Don Vito. With Michael and Sonny played by Redford and O’Neal. They even wanted Coppola to set the action in 1972 and film in Kansas City, rather than New York, to lower the production costs.
The Sollozzo shooting scene ended all of that. [3] All Coppola had to do then was to deal with Joe Colombo and his Italian-American Civil Rights League. Seriously, Coppola had to show the Mafia Don that his movie wouldn’t depict Italian-Americans in a negative light. He agreed the word ‘Mafia’ would be taken out of the script. (The word ‘Mafia’ had never been in the script).[4]
“The studio mainly pushed for Ernest Borgnine to receive the part. Other actors that were considered for the role were: George C. Scott, Richard Conte, Anthony Quinn, Carlo Ponti. Frank Sinatra showed some interest in the part of Vito Corleone, despite being angered that a character, Johnny Fontane, was rumored to be based on him.” [5]
Sinatra, his usual charming self, had threatened Mario Puzo in a restaurant, implying that he knew Mafiosi who would hurt the author, if he wished. The fact that he couldn’t see the irony of threatening someone with the Mafia, for basing a character on him who knew the Mafia, seems evidence that he wasn’t the brightest of people.[6]
Footnotes
[1] Offers They Couldn’t Refuse: Weird Alternative Casting Choices for the Godfather
[2] Godfather role was an offer Al Pacino could refuse
[3] Can you imagine Laurence Olivier in the role of Don Vito?- this is Francis Ford Coppola’s potential cast list for The Godfather!
[4] The Colombo crime family threatened the production of the cult movie The Godfather
[5] Can you imagine Laurence Olivier in the role of Don Vito?- this is Francis Ford Coppola’s potential cast list for The Godfather!
[6] Everything We Know About Scorsese’s Unmade Sinatra Biopic
Two more executives are leaving Apple
/ The company has recently seen several departures from the upper echelons of its management team.
Two more executives are reportedly on their way out from Apple. According to Bloomberg, vice president of online retail Anna Matthiasson is leaving the company, and Chief Information Officer Mary Demby is retiring.
The two women held important roles at Apple; Matthiasson was in charge of Apple’s online store, and Demby managed the tech that ran that store, as well as Apple’s services and manufacturing. Bloomberg reports that Karen Rasmussen will now be in charge of online retail, but says it’s unclear who will be replacing Demby. Apple didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment on the executives leaving.
Demby and Matthiasson are just the latest in a string of higher-ups leaving the company in recent weeks. Evans Hankey, who’s been in charge of industrial design since Jony Ive left the company in 2019, will be stepping down sometime around April, and chief privacy officer Jane Horvath reportedly announced internally that she’d be leaving the company soon as well. There’s also the case of vice president of procurement Tony Blevins, who was fired last month for crude remarks he made in a TikTok video, though that’s a different situation from the other departures.
While a few people in upper management leaving isn’t necessarily signs of a mass exodus, it’s worth keeping track of in case it becomes a trend. It’s also interesting that, except for Blevins, all the executives leaving have been women. Apple has big goals for the diversity of its leadership team, but the departures could make those harder to achieve. According to the company’s website, women made up 31.4 percent of its global leadership team at the end of 2021. Apple’s report for 2022 should be due around March.
Maybe we shouldn’t listen to every warning given about what we should not eat by the West if we are from other areas.
White rice is a staple food for more than half of the world’s population, but is white rice really healthy?
Dante Wong, trained chef with a borderline obsessive interest in food history and science.
I never knew white rice was supposed to be so dangerously unhealthy – until I moved to the States.
You see, I have been eating white rice ever since I was a mewling babe.
And there have been many days in my life where I’ve eaten white rice THREE times a day – breakfast, lunch, AND dinner.
And I prefer the short grain varieties, which I was constantly told – or was that lectured on – is the most unhealthy variety out there.
Fellow students and colleagues would act horrified when I revealed that yes, I sometimes ate white rice three times a day.
They – and much of the American media – bombarded me with just how unhealthy white rice is supposed to be.
According to them, due to the all this white rice I was eating, I should be:
(1) The walking, living, and breathing definition of someone suffering from Arsenic Poisoning.
(2) A lifelong diabetic.
(3) Obese or at least someone with a gut that threatens to touch the pavement. “It’s just like eating sugar!”
It just confused me because:
(1) I had no idea what Arsenic Poisoning was until I lived in the US. I have never had any doctor diagnose myself or anyone I know in my extended family family as suffering from Arsenic Poisoning. And people in my extended family eat a lot of white rice. Ever since I started working, I’ve been going for my annual health checkups. Clean bill of health every time – no mention of Arsenic Poisoning yet.
(2) I am not diabetic. No one in my nuclear family is diabetic.
(3) If I’m obese – the vast majority of people in this world would be walking land whales.
I mean, with the last point, my sister eats a lot more rice than I do.
I’m going to reveal one of her eating habits.
She sometimes scoops white rice – straight from the rice cooker! – and dumps it into the soup/broth – and eats the rice and broth at the SAME time. And that’s AFTER she’s done with the main meal – where she’s already eaten white rice!
And she’s an East Asian woman standing at 172 cm and her weight fluctuates between 51–53 kg.
There was a moment in my handful of years in the States that I will always remember, due in no small part to the irony present.
I was living with a white housemate.
A young girl of… very robust proportions.
Let’s just say both my sister and I could fit into her pair of jeans, at the same time.
She was tut-tutting when she saw me eating a small bowl of white rice as part of my dinner.
“Why don’t you eat brown rice? It’s so much healthier for you!”
I continued eating.
Later that night, she polished off an entire tub of Ben and Jerry’s.
While sitting on the couch, watching television.
White rice is a staple food for more than half of the world’s population, but is white rice really healthy?
Dante Wong, trained chef with a borderline obsessive interest in food history and science.
I never knew white rice was supposed to be so dangerously unhealthy – until I moved to the States.
You see, I have been eating white rice ever since I was a mewling babe.
And there have been many days in my life where I’ve eaten white rice THREE times a day – breakfast, lunch, AND dinner.
And I prefer the short grain varieties, which I was constantly told – or was that lectured on – is the most unhealthy variety out there.
Fellow students and colleagues would act horrified when I revealed that yes, I sometimes ate white rice three times a day.
They – and much of the American media – bombarded me with just how unhealthy white rice is supposed to be.
According to them, due to the all this white rice I was eating, I should be:
(1) The walking, living, and breathing definition of someone suffering from Arsenic Poisoning.
(2) A lifelong diabetic.
(3) Obese or at least someone with a gut that threatens to touch the pavement. “It’s just like eating sugar!”
It just confused me because:
(1) I had no idea what Arsenic Poisoning was until I lived in the US. I have never had any doctor diagnose myself or anyone I know in my extended family family as suffering from Arsenic Poisoning. And people in my extended family eat a lot of white rice. Ever since I started working, I’ve been going for my annual health checkups. Clean bill of health every time – no mention of Arsenic Poisoning yet.
(2) I am not diabetic. No one in my nuclear family is diabetic.
(3) If I’m obese – the vast majority of people in this world would be walking land whales.
I mean, with the last point, my sister eats a lot more rice than I do.
I’m going to reveal one of her eating habits.
She sometimes scoops white rice – straight from the rice cooker! – and dumps it into the soup/broth – and eats the rice and broth at the SAME time. And that’s AFTER she’s done with the main meal – where she’s already eaten white rice!
And she’s an East Asian woman standing at 172 cm and her weight fluctuates between 51–53 kg.
There was a moment in my handful of years in the States that I will always remember, due in no small part to the irony present.
I was living with a white housemate.
A young girl of… very robust proportions.
Let’s just say both my sister and I could fit into her pair of jeans, at the same time.
She was tut-tutting when she saw me eating a small bowl of white rice as part of my dinner.
“Why don’t you eat brown rice? It’s so much healthier for you!”
I continued eating.
Later that night, she polished off an entire tub of Ben and Jerry’s.
While sitting on the couch, watching television.
since you do hurricanes and earthquakes so well, bring on the rain! We needs lots. More than a day and a half for sure.
This has gotten too long how about a new one, You can always carry over the posts with dialogue pending.
Get ready to learn a whole lot about how much companies pay their workers. Starting today, New York City employers must disclose salary information in job ads, thanks to a new pay transparency law that will reverberate nationwide, Emily writes.
Why it matters: This isn’t just a Big Apple thing. Pay transparency is catching on around the country, as part of a push to shrink gender and racial pay gaps. It’s upending the way companies handle compensation, and how employees and job candidates negotiate for more money.
California’s pay transparency law takes effect in January — meaning two of the nation’s biggest job markets will also be the most transparent.
What’s happening: Employers have spent months getting ready for this. They’ll now have to post salary ranges for open roles — but many didn’t have any established pay bands at all, says Allan Bloom, a partner at Proskauer who’s advising companies.
Already, firms like American Express, JPMorgan Chase and Macy’s have added pay bands to their help-wanted ads, reports the Wall Street Journal.
How it works: Companies with more than four employees must post a salary range for any open role that’s performed in the city — or could be performed in the city.
Zoom out: In a world where salary information is secret, employers have the upper hand.
Reality check: It’s a pretty squishy requirement. The law requires only that salary ranges be in “good faith” — and there’s no penalty for paying someone outside of the range posted.
It will be difficult for enforcement officials to prove a salary range is in bad faith, Bloom says.
Many of the ranges posted online now are pretty wide. A senior analyst role advertised on the Macy’s jobs site is listed as paying between $85,320 and $142,080 a year. A senior podcast producer role at the WSJ advertises an “NYC pay range” of $50,000 – $180,000.
Meanwhile, there are other, more hidden ways companies can discriminate in compensation — such as the issuance of stock options or bonuses.
💭 Emily’s thought bubble: When presented with a range, job candidates often only see the top number, recruiters have long told me. Posting these bands opens the door for higher expectations from candidates and current employees, who will want to earn the max.
The bottom line: More sunlight is a good thing for workers and likely could help reduce pay inequities — especially around lower-level roles that don’t involve stock-based pay.
Employers, meanwhile, should brace for pushback and questions from current employees looking to get a raise.
🏥 Johnson & Johnson in $16.6 billion deal for Abiomed. (CNBC)
📚 Judge blocks $2.2 billion merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. (Axios)
⬇️ 2022 is looking unhappily like 2000 for the tech industry. (Axios)
📈 BP posts $8.2 billion profit and expands share buybacks by $2.5 billion. (Reuters)
“ It’s time for these companies to stop war profiteering, meet their responsibilities to this country, give the American people a break and still do very well.”
— U.S. President Joe Biden
Why it matters: The president’s description of the record profits posted by energy companies in recent weeks as “war profiteering” represents a noticeable uptick in rhetorical pressure from the White House, Matt writes.
Driving the news: At a news conference yesterday afternoon, Biden once again urged oil companies to boost production in order to lower oil prices and floated the idea of a windfall profit tax if they failed to respond.
The big picture: While U.S. companies arguably have the ability to raise oil and gas production, they’ve been relatively slow to respond to surging prices.
Instead, they’ve focused instead on “capital discipline” — that is, not overspending to boost production — and returning cash to shareholders.
This makes some sense, as the industry has suffered repeated booms and busts over the last decade — including during the early days of the pandemic — leaving investors with pretty rotten returns.
💭 Our thought bubble: The White House seems to think the threat of a tax increase could prod increased output. But carrots — in the form of some sort of government subsidy to incentivize production — may be required in addition to that potential tax-related stick.