Zorral

Tesla asks shareholders to back $56bn pay for Elon Musk rejected by judge Delaware court in nullified compensation deal based on carmaker’s market value in January, calling it ‘unfathomable sum’ https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/17/elon-musk-tesla-pay

Denis Villeneuve Answers All Your Questions About ‘Dune: Part Two’ He explains why Lady Jessica’s face is so heavily tattooed, whether Paul considers himself the Messiah and what he thinks of those Javier Bardem memes. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/17/movies/denis-villeneuve-dune-part-two.html

Is there anything to wrap up, really? It just meanders around, pretty much. Ha! Though it somehow still manages to provide a mildly dependable escapist entertainment. Maybe that was all down to Cavill though -- I did so admire his face's ability to show the same expression almost all the time!

Despite what it is, for all the should be intensity of the scenes, it all feels flat and unimpressive, to me. Also continuity -- the whys of things -- are missing, i.e. all those long expository musings and explanations by and to Blackthorne in the book had purpose. For instance

You never met guys like my dad. Him being pissed off at whatever, and I mean whatever, not having anything to do with me, or just being bored, was enough to slap me around or even out-and-out beat me. I guess ... maybe ... he could have been excused for throwing me across the room when I was 6 months old and was suffering from colic and didn't stop crying. Somehow my grandmother didn't see it that way. She said she hated him from that moment on forever. In some ways he was very smart, and in some ways -- particularly when reaching toward being old -- a good and generous person. But he was a shit father, particularly of girls. He had a hair trigger temper, and no anger management skills kids today would say. Ultimately that killed him right damned dead. He got furious waiting for traffic to thin enough to enter the main flow, gunned the car, and got hit broadside by a semi trailer truck. No laws would have stopped him, that's for sure. Particularly out on a farm 'where nobody can see and hear what we do.'

When you gonna get it? The fascists love Putin. Putin is all there meddling in the elections to get romperola and those ilks elected -- not only in the US but everywhere else. This include providing funds and funding and personnel to do it. In the meantime there's alignment of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, to make war on the 'West' by all and any and every means. And trumpisto and all his worshippers are down, down, down with them (as is Hungary's Orban, etc.). And probably bibi and the Likud party. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/17/alignment-russia-china-iran-north-korea/

He can sleep at graduation. Anyway court's not in session tomorrow. He can sleep then too.

Including Farsi is the nation's official and administrative language, not Arabic. Though other languages as well are commonly spoken, as to expected in a place that spawned empire after empire and was invaded over and over by empire after empire.

Whistleblower urges Boeing to ground all 787 Dreamliners after safety warning Engineer Sam Salehpour calls on planemaker ahead of testimony before Senate homeland security committee https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/apr/16/boeing-whistleblower-787-dreamliner

"It will not surprise you that a lot of the libertarian douchebros who run weed dealerships are horrible employers. Luckily, at least on the west coast, a lot of those workers have organized with the United Food and Commercial Workers. They need that representation and strikes may be on the horizon." https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/apr/15/cannabis-delivery-strike-california-eaze

Though he owns majority stock still, don't think Bezos bothers in the least with the day-to-day of amazon as a whole, much less Amazon Prime and decisions about the 'Originals.'

Well, Iran isn't / doesn't consider itself Arab, but Persian, which one of the reason for the conflict. Even as the Persian Mizarhi Jews are considered nearly beyond the pale, barely Jewish at all -- like all the Mizrahi groups, including the Sephardi from Spain, who are also classified as Mizrahi -- by the Ashkenazi Jews -- starting with the Zionist activists to settle Jews in the region of the British Protectorate. I first learned this from Partner's billionaire patron, Jewish in heritage though not in practice, (though I don't think he's a billionaire now -- the Houston flood, bad business decisions (he's much more talented as an arts patron than a CEO/CFO), whose banking and mercantilist family emigrated from Iran when the European powers partitioned ye olde Ottoman territories, to the UK, and now the US, and got into the Oil biz. He says his grandfather always maintained their family was in Iran since at least, if not before, the Babylonian Captivity.

Um, the War of the Rebellion (the government's official name given to war declared post Succession by the CSA on the Union) was 1861 - 1865. General and President Grant always referred to that war by that name, and so did the people around him -- not the 'Civil War.' 'Civil War' as designation is part of the "Glorious Lost Cause" revisionism of history. Though many United States historians now do think of what is called the War of Independence as our civil war, and the War of the Rebellion as the revolution. Still, the confusion of he two reminds one how little most non USians (those few who bother, that is) do understand of either one -- such as Bruce Alexander historical mystery author focusing on the era of Sir John Fielding and the Bow Street Runners, consistently refers to the upstart rebels as being run by the Adams Brothers in his Rules of Engagement. Whereas, as any school child should know here (but no longer do because we teach nothing now), John Adams and Samuel Adams were definitely not brothers, but somewhat distant relatives -- second cousins. Though in that era, this might be considered more closely related than now. But they didn't have that much to do with each other earlier, as, among other things, John was 13 years younger, and he was a hard worker and law student, while Sam was rather feckless in business, always hanging out and talking politics. John came to believing in Independence later than Sam.

I'll stick with the Judge Dee Mysteries -- also on NF! I'm enjoying these very much. Lately, the evening routine has become dinner, and announcing to Partner, "OK, I'm leaving for the Tang Dynasty for an hour or two." Additionally, currently all three of the Once Upon A Time in China films are on ... is it HBO or AP? I can't remember. I'm still in the Tang. (Which, coincidentally, is regarded as a Golden Age -- which is the same century here in the West as Justinian's Flea, which was anything but golden.)

The same in the ye olde golden age of Athenian democracy!

Just what this country needs -- Liz Truss to make us great again! Truss envisions herself as an significant addition to the fascist politician coalitions here in the USA, now that the fascists in her own country have dumped her. Imagine ... the House Crazy Ladies' reception of this loser, cuddling up to the Biggest Loser of All, who blames her loosing on President Biden being mean to her. What does Liz Truss’s book tell us about her American ambitions? Martin Pengelly in Washington https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/apr/16/liz-truss-book-republicans-us Additionally -- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/16/liz-truss-save-the-west-delusions

Tesla Will Lay Off More Than 10% of Workers Along with the departure of two senior executives, the cuts added to signs of turmoil at the electric car company. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/15/business/tesla-layoff-elon-musk.html

White House says Biden will not accept a standalone funding bill for aid to Israel https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-04-15-24/index.html

Maybe this is why he fell asleep in the court room -- those private messages from his assistant were not the Best News of the Best News! Trump Media closes down more than 18% after filing plans to issue more DJT stock https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/15/trump-media-shares-plunge-after-company-files-to-issue-additional-djt-stock.html Elsewhere someone not me suggested perhaps his defense team slipped him sleep aid to keep him from erupting in the court room and earning prison time. I, for one, haven't a clue what to consider as possible any more.

He just cannot not lie.

nvm

"I also noted yesterday that we shouldn’t understate just how skillfully the White House seemed to manage a major, major crisis over the last few days. High stakes foreign policy crises like these generally have an almost limitless number of ways they can go wrong and one or two ways they can go right. And so far the White House has managed to prevent damage in Israel and prevent further escalation." Share link -- https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/getting-into-the-details-on-what-happened-over-the-weekend/sharetoken/t5tl81zIn5G7

Except when it comes to the US War of the Rebellion. Brett is weak there too -- it's so far in time beyond his interests and researches. It's not only we 'modernists' who love the 'freeman' ideology -- 14th C Ibn Khaldun went into great detail with it, supporting his cyclic philosophy of history -- yah, Spengler didn't invent it. Nor was Ibn Khaldun the first by any means. This cyclic, wheel turning, as historical concept is embedded in many Asian religions. Whereas, in contrast, for instance, christianity embeds the idea of moving from a fixed point to the future, when history ends with the Second Coming and every person who has ever lived or is living goes to heaven or goes to hell.

For sure, and not only weak, but misinformed as to these soldiers not cognizant in Latin. That was at least as much the mission of the Roman armies in disputed and conquered lands -- it latinized not only the mercenaries or auxiliaries, but the populations as a whole, and not only terms of language. And even by the days of the dominance of the Eastern Empire, christianizing them. Which then leads to those who argue that "Rome" never "fell," since ultimately so many of those Goths who moved into what was the western empire had been so successfully Romanized in administration and taxes, the army, the language and religion. As you are aware, Theodoric and Ravenna are sort of these historians' and arguments' crucible.

In Iran's direct missile and drone attack on Israel, a seven-year-old Arab girl was the only one to be severely injured. The Bedouin girl was hit on her head by shrapnel and has undergone surgery. https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/arab-girl-lone-casualty-iran-attack-israel-hamas-gaza-missile-attack-death-negev-bedouin-tribe-2527362-2024-04-15