Zorral

The reality of being a criminal defendant on trial finally dawned on Trump. He didn’t take it well. Donald Trump will spend most of this spring in a drab county courtroom, and he’s not happy about it. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/16/trump-trial-reality-criminal-defendant-00152421

Your guess is as good, if not better, than mine! https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/trump-presses-republicans-for-kickbacks-when-using-his-likeness-1.2060490 https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-demands-cut-donations-down-ballot-republicans-1235006262/ https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/17/trump-campaign-fundraising-five-percent-00152830

.... “Beginning tomorrow, we ask that all candidates and committees who choose to use President Trump’s name, image, and likeness split a minimum of 5% of all fundraising solicitations to Trump National Committee JFC. This includes, but is not limited to, sending to the house file, prospecting vendors, and advertising,” Trump co-campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita wrote in a letter reported on by Politico. “Any split that is higher than 5% will be seen favorably by the RNC and President Trump’s campaign and is routinely reported to the highest levels of leadership within both organizations," the letter added. ....

See how conditioned we are as to how entertainment/fiction is supposed to work? My very young self reading the novel was quite -- bewildered.

Also all Killing Eve's seasons are available on both Acorn (with which the feckless AMC made a deal last year) and NF! I dumped AMC this year. I'm thisclose to dumping MAX right now. More places to watch some shows, but ultimately fewer shows to watch -- or at least want to. I enjoyed the first seasons of Killing Eve a lot -- and a lot more than the last ones, but not enough to want to rewatch them. Not that great a fan of S&TC back then, and by now it's really out of date -- not that it was very real to start with -- and have no interest in that show -- it's irrelevant to even NYC life as we know it -- though never very relevant. Billions is far closer, actually very close, to the criminal and political and capitalist levels of things here. But it's like ... well, somebody/ies wants to built a new preposterously high building in midtown -- where most of the real estate is empty buildings and dark. Most particularly the new buildings completed right before or during the pandemic. Perhaps most notably the Hudson Yards Development, which is a total bomb -- and it's not even in Midtown. But business skyscrapers were already in a downturn before 2019. Nobody ever learns anything. Even while in the throes of it. https://pix11.com/news/local-news/manhattan/new-skyscraper-planned-for-midtown-manhattan-mayor-says/ Regarding Hudson Yards -- which bombed, crashed, burned, guess who is connected to it . . . . https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/27/business/stephen-ross-related-corner-office-trump.html

Amazon Prime Video is hiring currently for more than 250 new positions. The best description of all this on Business Insider. But here's the listings: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/prime-video-%26-amazon-studios-jobs-worldwide?

‘Big journalism fail’: Mainstream media blasted over coverage of historic Trump trial David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement https://www.rawstory.com/big-journalism-fail-mainstream-media-blasted-over-coverage-of-historic-trump-trial/ Cable ratings are in for the first day of the historic Trump trial: MSNBC led CNN, averaging 2.2 million total viewers in prime time, compared to CNN's 711,000. In the advertiser-coveted 25-54 demo, MSNBC averaged 223,000 viewers in prime and CNN averaged 148,000 viewers. Over in right-wing talk television, Fox News averaged 2.4 million total viewers in prime and 272,000 in the demo https://www.rawstory.com/big-journalism-fail-mainstream-media-blasted-over-coverage-of-historic-trump-trial/

Does anyone know, if back in the day, when Clavell's novel was published, were there pieces like this written comparing and contrasting the fiction with the history? FACT VS. FICTION 11:44 A.M. The Real History Behind Shōgun’s Final Sacrifice By Nicholas Liu https://www.vulture.com/article/shogun-mariko-death-true-story-gracia-history-explained.html .

Even Charles III was dreadfully bullied and hurt his public school. People who actually attend these schools on whose playing grounds was won the late lamented empire say despite lip service things haven't changed that much in many if not most.

If I must know this beforehand from books, this means the show's a failure.

Huh. Black Sails, all seasons, is up and available on NF. How did that happen? But then HBO's Sex and the City is on NF now.

Look at the ingrained, embedded, cherish traditions of cruelty in the UK public schools.

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.