Weekend Vibes [DOT 13/4/24]

13/4/24 MegMegMcGee 24
image of neon letters spelling out "HAPPY SATURDAY"

Happy Weekend! Hope you had a good week. I’m glad mine’s over. Probably still a fire drill or two waiting for me on Monday but the bulk of it is over.

OMG

One killed and 184 stranded midair after cable car collapses in Turkey
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/12/one-killed-and-seven-injured-after-cable-car-support-collapses-in-turkey

Stonks!
Dow tumbles 475 points, S&P 500 suffers worst day since January as inflation woes erupt: Live updates
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/11/stock-market-today-live-updates.html

This was a wild couple of days

David Chang and Momofuku say they won’t enforce ‘chile crunch’ trademark|
https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2024/04/12/momofuku-david-chang-chile-crunch-chili-crisp-turnaround

Whoa, that’s amazing!

Frescoes buried by volcano uncovered in ancient dining room in Pompeii
https://wapo.st/43XOcnB (Gift Article)

LULZ

Have an awesome weekend!

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24 Comments

  1. ahahahahahahahahaha

    *dead*

  2. …oh, lawdy…I know it’s kind of a frightful shit show all over the place…so I may be trying to squeeze more solace out of this that it really has to give…but…remember how part of what was hinky about the half-billion-ish bond getting dropped to a more manageable couple hundred million was this part?

    His lawyers had told the appellate court it was a “practical impossibility” to get a bond for the full amount of the lower court’s judgment, $464 million. All of the 30 or so firms Trump had approached balked, either refusing to take the risk or not wanting to accept real estate as collateral, they said. That made raising the full amount “an impossible bond requirement.”

    But before the judges ruled, the impossible became possible: A billionaire lender approached Trump about providing a bond for the full amount.

    The lawyers never filed paperwork alerting the appeals court. That failure may have violated ethics rules, legal experts say.
    […]
    As negotiations between Hankey and Trump’s representatives were underway, the appellate court ruled in Trump’s favor, lowering the bond to $175 million. The court did not give an explanation for its ruling.

    Hankey ended up giving Trump a bond for the lowered amount.
    […]
    After ProPublica reached out to Trump’s representatives, Hankey called back and revised his account. He said he had heard “indirectly” about ProPublica’s subsequent inquiries to Trump’s lawyers. In the second conversation, he said that accepting the real estate as collateral would have been complicated and that he wouldn’t have been able to “commit” to providing a bond in the full amount “until I evaluate the assets.”

    Legal ethics experts said it would be troubling if Trump’s lawyers knew about Hankey’s approach and failed to notify the court.

    New York state’s rules of professional conduct for lawyers forbid attorneys from knowingly making false statements to a court. At the time Trump’s lawyers told the court that meeting the bond would be impossible, Hankey said he had not yet reached out to the Trump team.

    But the rules of conduct also dictate that lawyers must “correct a false statement of material fact or law previously made” to the court.

    “If that deal was on the table for the taking, the representation from the earlier time would be untrue, and the lawyer would have an obligation to correct,” said Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics professor at New York University Law School.

    In the rules of conduct for lawyers, the failure to update an important piece of evidence would fall under what’s referred to as the “duty of candor to a tribunal,” said Ellen Yaroshefsky, a professor of legal ethics at Hofstra Law.

    “Any judge is going to be furious that this wasn’t corrected,” she said.

    Scott Cummings, a legal ethics professor at UCLA’s law school, agreed that there was a potential ethical failure but said Trump’s lawyers could argue that they were not obligated to alert the court.

    “A very narrow reading of this rule would be there is no obligation to report because it wasn’t a false statement at the time,” Cummings said.

    [https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-bond-disclosure-appeals-court-hankey]

    …but it’s on thinner ice than that

    The bond was then rejected by the court’s filing system shortly after it was posted due to missing paperwork, including a “current financial statement.” James, whose office led the fraud case against Trump, later raised questions about the “sufficiency” of the bond and noted that the surety backing it, Knight Specialty Insurance Company (KSIC), is not admitted in New York, meaning it’s ineligible to obtain a certificate of qualification from the Department of Financial Services. KSIC has refiled its paperwork as a result in an effort to get the process moving again.

    Gabrielsen said that Trump’s companies would not be financially solvent if the “float” required by all companies for daily expenses is seized by James.

    “If his bank balances are of an amount that would cover the $175 million I doubt [James] cares about the impact of her seizing them upon his company. And seizing cash is quick and easy compared to seizing properties, finding a buyer and doing all the procedures involved,” he said.

    Gabrielsen said that the reduction in the bond amount could make it harder for Trump to negotiate if he cannot post the $175 million.

    “The judge can just say: ‘look, I already cut your bond in half, what more do you want from me?'” Gabrielsen said.

    [https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-bond-new-york-civil-fraud-case-manhattan-letitia-james-arthur-engoron]

    …not only is it “not admitted”…it may not have enough on the books to be able to float a bond in that amount…&…there’s another problem…at least one, anyway…who can keep count

    The financial backer covering Donald Trump’s $175 million bank fraud bond has already been revealed as a “king of subprime car loans” with sketchy business practices. But the financial situation behind the dubiously leveraged suretor, Knight Specialty Insurance Company, has gotten even more complicated: apparently, its parent company is located in the Cayman Islands, a popular tax haven for corporations and the ultra-rich.

    …there’s some other issues…like the language of the thing seems to suggest that if he’s unsuccessful at appeal the bond company doesn’t explicitly admit it would be them on the hook…which…kinda invalidates the whole pro forma aspect of it being a bond & not the guilty party parting with some of the gobs of money he constantly brays about having…anyway

    “Taken in its totality, this dog does not hunt. Along every step of the way, this purported bond is problematic. It’s just one issue after another that calls into question whether this bond could ever possibly satisfy the judgment,” said Jones.

    At the center of the fiasco is one key predicament: can the suretor actually pay up? Previous analyses of Knight indicate that the answer might be no.

    In a court filing last week, Knight revealed that its liquid assets don’t meet the needs of Trump’s already minimized bond. According to a financial assessment, the company, owned by , had just $138 million in “surplus.” Knight would therefore need to spend 127 percent of its reserves in order to cover Trump’s bond—far more than the 10 percent of a state-regulated suretor’s surplus that’s allowed by New York law.

    [https://newrepublic.com/post/180670/trump-shady-bond-backer-caymans-don-hankey]

    …oh, & while am at it

    Marjorie Taylor Greene held Trump stock. Now that it’s tanking, she won’t say what happened to it. [NBC]

    …any guesses?

    Shares of Trump Media, which owns the Truth Social app, have dropped by 47.4% so far in April wiping out billions of dollars in the company’s market capitalization.
    […]
    As of this week, so-called short interest in DJT was $208.7 million, with 5.44 million shares shorted, according to Ihor Dusaniwsky, managing director of predictive analytics at S3 Partners, a leading financial data marketplace platform.

    There were fewer than 100,000 shares of Trump Media available to borrow to sell short. Traders who want to sell stock short must borrow shares to sell, with the expectation that they will later buy back the same number of shares at a lower price to return them to the lender, pocketing the price difference between the trades.

    Trump Media has 136.7 million outstanding shares.

    A week ago, traders who wanted short Trump Media shares had to pay up to 900% in annual financing costs, meaning they would need a then-$30-per-share drop within a month to break even on their trade, Dusaniwsky said.

    Since then, however, financing costs for short trades in Trump Media had sharply fallen, to 200%.

    [Trump Media shares end week down nearly 20%, losing billions in market cap]

    …do you think he’s sick of all the “winning” yet?

    • Taken together, the whole mess smacks of Trump flailing around desperately trying to come up with a way to salvage anything. The pathetic shoes and Bible sales, grabbing money from a loan shark, even taking Truth Social public are all blundering attempts at quick cash grabs. I just get the sense that there’s a group (probably including Dumb and Dumber) who are frantically “brainstorming” ways to raise large amounts of money quickly.

      It would be pitiful if these weren’t horrible human beings. And anybody that was stupid enough to participate in any of this deserves what they get. It’s not like Trump doesn’t have a clearly established record of utter failure at business ventures.

      • The crux of the problem the Dumbass Crew has is that the majority of Cheeto Mussolini’s ardent followers are not the ones who operate in situations where they buy stocks, etc. It’s people who watch tv all day and don’t have the sort of resources to shake down for what he needs.

        The best thing he had going for him was the dumbass mypillow clown, because you could get people to buy a lot of American-made shitty pillows apparently. Unfortunately that clown was too unstable to manage basic grifting.

  3. …do you think he’s sick of all the “winning” yet?

    donnie?….im not convinced he even knows whats going on beyond the grand reality tv show in his head….

    marge might be tho

    finding it a little bit hard to give a fuck about that tho

  4. I’ve been saying for years that the media is complicit by not calling liars “liars.”

    • …still think it’s nuts that in parliament if you call a lie a lie you’re the one who’s in trouble

      …people make no sense to begin with but politics is beyond parody?

    • A really troubling example has been in reporting after E. Jean Carroll went to court and won. It stopped fitting a “he said / she said” format once the ruling came in, but a lot of outlets kept using it all the same.

      Before a case goes to trial and evidence is available, the format of a lot of articles reasonably follows the standard method of reporting:

      Defense claim, followed by accusation, with careful framing to avoid a preference for either side.

      However, after a case has been tried, evidence presented, and a verdict rendered, in order to be fair to the accuser, the framing has to shift against the defendant.

      The only exception would be if there was an obvious miscarriage of justice. But that wasn’t true for this case. The evidence shown in court that Trump had lied was abundant, and it needed to be a part of the basic framing of the story from the beginning.

      Unfortunately, we have gotten a lot of post-trial reporting which went with the format of pre-trial coverage, such as:

      https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/05/nyregion/trump-e-jean-carroll-defamation-case.html

      That Times article (and there were a number of others) acted as if nothing had happened and went back to leading with Trump’s statements and only putting the evidence and the verdict at the tail end of the story.  And instead of being framed as something validated by a jury and judge, it was only presented in the context of a claim by Carroll’s attorney.

  5. Building materials were stored under arches underneath the staircase, where charcoal drawings of “two pairs of gladiators and what appears to be an enormous stylized phallus” were found.

    …and this is the image they publish instead? 🍆 🧐

    I wonder if the charcoal drawing is the oldest form of graffiti made by servants or kids of the residents.

     

      • big ones too

        and then getting insecure about our own little ones

        we might be stupid

  6. jeez….someone in straya took feeling a bit stabby quite literally

    even stabbed a baby?

    wtf?

  7. The Chile Crunch™ saga was a wild ride on Asian social media. Consensus being that David Chang is a jerk IRL. He seemed it on Mind of a Chef. Not Gordon Ramsay level of overtly abusive. I never gave it more thought because I figured that all head chefs/restauranteurs are under constant pressure and don’t lead their kitchen like a Montessori teacher would. Anyway, they dragged him for the past couple of days and I knew he would cave because it was a shameful move. He could have gone the sriracha route and come off as a humble and shrewd business man. Instead he looks like a greedy bully who got put in his place.

  9. oh holy shit….in my quest to get my permit of residence renewed……i discovered my passport only has a couple months left too……

    i really should pay more attention to this shit…

    now….do i ask for a new one…in the hopes of good ole blightey seeing the lightey and rejoining europe

    or do i say….fuck yous wankers im applying for a dutch passport

    i mean…im kinda fond of being british……but i also like traveling hassle free and not having to worry about becoming unemployed coz my permit of residence ran out….

    decisions,decisions

    • …don’t envy you that dilemma…but I can see a case for either option?

      • the choice would be easier if i didnt think the british stiff upper lip would leave me hanging for quite a whiles before deciding to rejoin the fold…..stubborn bastards….

        stupid fucking politics fucking everything up….fuuuuuuuck

        whilst im at it…..fuck tories….fucking scum….fuck the sun too….the newspaper…not the sun…

        and superfuck eastenders!

    • I think I’ve linked here to a beer blog by a British expat who lives in Amsterdam, married to a German with a couple of kids born in the Netherlands. A couple of years ago he went ahead and got the Dutch passport. He left in part because of Thatcher and Brexit sealed the deal.

  10. …well, shit…haven’t found a decent source for it but… don’t think the express would call it being just what the white house said if it hadn’t happened

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1888133/iran-launches-attack-israel-drones

    …& I saw somewhere else that iran apparently shuttered its airspace

    …so…hold onto your hats?

    • …not sure how this stuff works but it seems like the drones or whatever are on their way…but they’ll be a while getting there…not sure how long but it does sound like the launch part is confirmed…who the hell knows if anyone or anything is in a position to knock the whole thing on the head before they achieve their objective…or if iran & bibi are basically on the same page about needing the threat of the other to keep the show on the road

      …but I’m having a drink…don’t know about you?

      • Washington Post reported that Iran is claiming to have sent dozens of drones and missiles.

        And confirming what you said – takes hours for all of it to arrive. I guess Israel’s Iron Dome is going to be really busy.

        Jordan has apparently closed all airspace activity. Which is smart since anything will be shot down by Israel even if it’s not anything related to Iran. 

    • I leave my phone for two hours and WW3 all but starts. Israel projected mixed GPS signal to prevent the drones from reaching their targets.

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