#well I went through a massive depression era a year and a half ago

[neon-danger]

Starcrossed is like my favorite fic. Like when I first came across it I was like I’m gonna read it but I don’t think I’m gonna like i bc I thought it might be to weird with aliens but boy was I wrong. It’s definitely different but you write it so well it keeps the reader hooked and how you describe Alex and Jacks relationship keeps you wanting more. I absolutely can’t wait for the new chapter

I’m sorry but I totally read that last part as the coffee shop soundtrack lyrics

[press-x-tojason]

Giant Bomb is dead, and I care way less than I thought I would. Probably because 83% of the people who I ever cared about had already left or died, or were already relegated to reduced content roles. 

Honestly, though, the writing’s been on the wall for a bit. They haven’t had anything worthy of paying for premium in several years, and, even though they’ve had well over a year to figure out a plan for the COVID era, they maybe made it a month with their plans to have a series of streams daily. I actually managed to forget I followed them on Twitch at all, for about 4 months, because they only streamed the podcasts and the occasional former Harmonix employee (who was literally paid to make content with their games while employed at Giant Bomb, which was funny because he blocked me on Twitter for making a post, addressing no one, back in 2014, which was asking about the legitimacy of the leaked list of “games “””””journalists”””””” who had taken money from publishers for positive reviews, a list which included him and multiple then-coworkers. I didn’t follow him, he didn’t follow me. He was manually searching the keywords, because he was, and is, a prick.) solo Rock Band stream in the last 8 months or so. Even when Jeff would manage to do one of his 20 streams from home a year, it would be on his own channel. There was just no content. And they’re surprised their “pay for our unique premium content!” model failed. They always “feigned” anger at Dan for “making” them do the Mario Party Parties, and literally never promoted his and Drew’s Metal Gear series after the first game... but I bet that, when only those, UPF, and the ad-free versions of the podcasts were premium features, those two series were keeping them afloat. Well, that and the remaining goodwill they miraculously managed to hold onto for a few years after Ryan died.  Shit, I follow several people who are GB staff-adjacent, and... I can’t think of the last time they mentioned anything that happened on-site. Even the people who’ve been directly supporting them for over 10 years were out. 

But yeah, the site is super dead. They pretended in the announcements like they’re going to make a go of it still, but... you’ve got like 4 content people left, and the only one people give a shit about is Jeff. You just saw 3/4 of the side of the site that was still trying these past several months jump ship in a 3 month span. One of those was, by nearly any definition, a founding member. Of which you had already lost one, and are losing another from the main side. Jeff’s been way less active until the last week or two, probably because he heard they were leaving and was like “oops, should probably check on the ship that’s been sinking for years!” Then you have Jason “The Human Mumble” Oestricher, the charisma vacuum, whose legitimate public-facing reaction to first hearing that all but one of his GB predecessors were going to be gone. was, and I quote, “Hoo Boy.” Ben and Jan are the definition of “fine”. They would have been great, as they are today, as secondary members 8-10 years ago. But carry the site, they cannot. They’re down to, what, 5 named members now? It hasn’t been that dire since the beginning of 2009, before they hired Drew, when they hadn’t even started the P4 endurance run. You know, that surprise massive, internet-changing thing that essentially popularized the Let’s Play concept, loosening its definition and making it something that could be as personality-driven as game-driven, made simply to give them something to put on the website, beyond the rare review and, slightly later, quick look. This kinda illustrates the problem with modern Giant Bomb. When they were figuring shit out, flying by the seats of their pants, they came up with great shit, and they gave enough of a shit to make it happen. 0.000% chance they do a 10 hour Thanksgiving Kinect stream if the Kinect was new today. 0.000% chance the core members would have done an endurance run in the last 10 years if CT and Shenmue (which I haven’t watched) weren’t driven by the younger members. And you could see it in the fact that they never made a real, true mobile app. The number one thing that would have made them indispensable this past decade, an app to integrate premium features, the podcast, their video player, etc. all in one place in a mobile-friendly package, that could sync with the website... and they never even raised the idea publicly. I wonder how much of the innovation was the group think-tank of the first 5 years. Beyond Dan’s couple major contributions, I don’t think they added a single new type of content after 2012, which... still means the last 6.5 years lacked any semblance of innovation. I guess that’s a big part of why I fell off tremendously quickly after late 2014. There was just nothing new, and believe me, I was looking. I wanted reasons to stay watching. I supported them with my dollar. I believed in those brave early days. And I went back yesterday to watch the DP endurance run from VJ again. I still miss that rapport. And really, that hurt, too. Vinny moving back east, less than a year after Ryan passed... short term, it was fine. You had more people than ever to cover the gaps. But the spark was gone. The chemistry made the site. When I think of Giant Bomb, I still think of Jeff, Vinny, and Ryan, first and foremost. Those early podcasts, the NintenDownloads, the crazy tangents that everyone could seamlessly follow up on(well, except Brad, because he essentially slept through most of the podcasts, unless he was talking about the thing he did that week), the weird high-concept GOTY stuff... it wasn’t perfect, but you were entertained. You laughed. You were engaged. It never felt like you were watching them working, even though you could see the work they put in. It felt like, when they released something, you were experiencing a group of legitimate friends doing what they wanted to do anyways.(And boy have I seen enough groups do everything they can to NOT be enjoying doing that, and break up as a result due to hating the jobs that they chose to do). 

Part of me would love to make it as simple as “Ryan died, and so did the original spirit”, and... to a degree, it’s true. If you go back to any retrospective they’ve done about the founding of the site, or the podcast they recorded after Ryan passed, you can’t help but recognize that Giant Bomb never happens if these core members don’t all quit their jobs, led by Ryan,  because they respect their boss/manager, Jeff, and know he’s doing the right things(for them, for the reader/viewer, etc.) ahead of what GameSpot management wants him to do. Jeff could have been left in the wilderness, trying find a spot elsewhere, with the rumor going around between executives that Jeff wasn’t going to help them promote anything, essentially killing their revenue. He would have been done in terms of getting employed by a major site. But Ryan first, and soon after, Vinny and Brad, gave up their jobs to make this fledgling little project go. As much as the ERs brought me in and gave the impression that Jeff and Vinny were the long-standing duo, no, it was Ryan who was Jeff’s partner in crime. And, 8 years later, I can comfortably say... Giant Bomb never recovered from losing him. 

But it was so much more. Everything that set them apart slowly went away,  in time. I don’t think they’ve posted reviews for games in consecutive MONTHS since 2017; 2018 at the latest. They have done one Endurance Run in 9 years. They have not had a meaningful live event in 6 years. Unprofessional Fridays were more formulaic and lesser in volume and frequency after the major players started moving east. The lack of coordination between coasts killed the camaraderie, to the point that I think one of the last 5 true gameplay crossovers was their series of 2016-2017 PUBG shitfests. I remember when Vinny starting GBEast was supposed to be the start of a new era of content, and... it was, but not in a positive way, like it sounded. When half of each side seemed to constantly have no interest in making anything, nothing got made. But I guess that’s what happens when your second in command in one of your headquarters is just a former marketing grunt with an attitude problem, and the guy with the biggest ego on the team is the one who refuses to move to join either side, and just pushes out the most self-important drivel as a header to what were literally just copy-pasted articles from other sites every week while sitting at his desk, dreaming of the days Gawker would pay him to plagiarize political drivel instead, because that’s what really gets the soulless clicks. One of your founding members becomes depressed due to losing his two closest work friends, one for real, one to a 3000 mile separation, within a year, while the other one who is left virtually stopped playing anything but DOTA 2 for 2 years. Suddenly your most prominent personalities are the 2 new guys(one the aforementioned charisma vacuum, the other a walking mark) and your previously-mostly-off-camera producer who is best known to the wider Internet for... blinking. So, yeah, lifeless. And NOW, all you’ve got is old melancholy dad, charisma vacuum dad, and the two ADHD kids whose defining trait is that they choose to exclusively refer to their partners as “my partner” in voices that make it sound like they are embarrassed to have partners, while also talking more about what their partners are doing than what they do.  It’s confounding.

But yeah, TL:DR: RIP zombie Giant Bomb. Glad you’re finally getting taken behind the shed. It took 3 years too long, minimum.

[politicalprof]

2019 in books:

David McCullough, 1776: A highly accessible, if somewhat naive, depiction of the year that defined the prospects for American independence. I wouldn’t go there for deep, critical analysis. But for a story of a year, it is well done.

Michael Palin, Erebus: HMS Erebus was a British naval vessel that spent much of its career in Arctic and Antarctic exploration. If you are interested in Victorian era explorations of hard places, a fascinating read.

Emilio Corsetti III, 35 Miles from Shore: The story of an airline crash in the early 1970s in the Caribbean. What happened, why, how, who survived and what we learned. Interesting if not brilliant.

Raymond Thorp, Crow Killer: Old-fashioned tale of the inspiration behind the Robert Redford movie Jeremiah Johnson. As much fantasy as history. But it offers a flavor of a time and a subgroup few Americans would know.

James Corey, Caliban’s War: The second book of “The Expanse” series. The protomolecule is working its mojo, and Earth, Mars and the Belters are none too happy with one another. A fun read of a massive space opera.

Walter Kempowski, All for Nothing: Set in the context of the collapsing Eastern Front during WWII, this story proceeds from the fractured point of view of the Germans who are about to be turned into refugees fleeing oncoming Soviet forces. The book, notably, does not make these Germans sources of sympathy: the mood is dissonant and disordered. A real piece of literature.

Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall: Because who doesn’t want a point-of-view account of a key counselor to Henry VIII, one who rose to extraordinary wealth and power despite his humble birth and then managed the, how shall we say, removal of Kathrine as Queen? Replaced by Anne Boleyn? Who wouldn’t want to read it? It’s excellent, by the way.

James Corey, Abaddon’s Gate: Book three of The Expanse, and the protomolecule has remade humanity’s relationship to the universe. But we’ll probably screw that up, too. Another good story, filled with actual thought about the problems of space travel and space living.

MIchael Krondl, The Taste of Conquest: The Rise and Fall of the Three Great Cities of Spice: Venice, Lisbon and Amsterdam each in their turn dominated the global spice trade -- a trade that was one of the main stimuli for early colonialism and imperial conquest, and which strongly influenced the rise of the modern corporation as a linch-pin of global capitalism. The book is not as good as it should be, but the story is one that few people know, but should.

Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies: Hey, it’s time to get rid of Anne Boleyn everyone! Or, at least, to separate her head from her body. And let’s manage the English Reformation, too ... all just a few years before losing our own head. Welcome to the early/middle 1500s in England everyone!

Leigh Perry, A Skeleton in the Family: Who doesn’t have a skeleton living in their house who helps solve mysteries. I mean, who doesn’t?

JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: So my son has started reading Harry Potter. So I have started reading Harry Potter. I liked this book: it’s tight, it’s focused, it’s a fun read. I see the appeal.

Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The answer to the questions: “What if the angels and demons charged with over-seeing Earth as humans go from the Garden of Eden to Armageddon decide that they like Earth and don’t want Armageddon to happen (even if their allies do)? And what if the Anti-Christ were raised in a perfectly mundane family in a perfectly mundane English village? How might it all turn out?” To delightful and funny effect.

JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: Meh. Okay. Not as good as book one. But still a good story.

Gilbert King, Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America: A broad pastiche of events surrounding one of the many civil rights cases of the 1940s and 50s: the abuses and murders of several African American men accused of raping a white woman in Lakeland, FL, in 1949. With a whole lot of associated discussions of other cases, the NAACP, corrupt and criminal law enforcement, race riots, and the like. A good read. And how can it be that the bastard George HW Bush, put Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court to fill a seat once held by the staggering legal figure that was Thurgood Marshall. Shameful is the only word.

JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: Certainly better than the Chamber of Secrets. A darker turn. But beginning to get padded as readers demanded “more” if not “better.”

James Corey, Cibola Burn: Book 4 of The Expanse ... and I didn’t like it. It seemed like filler, a book written to a contract deadline. Maybe it will pay off in the end. But another one like that and I’m not going to care.

Tom Phillips, Humans: A Brief History of How We Fucked It All Up: Did you know our oldest known ancestor, Lucy, probably died by falling out of a tree? If stories about how people have messed things up, have suffered both intentional and unintentional consequences, turn you on, do I ever have the book for you. Schadenfreude much?

JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Dear lord is this book long. Why? No doubt because the fans wanted it to be. But it is as gratuitously padded as any book I have ever read. It’s okay. But I wasn’t particularly impressed. Perhaps another six Quidditch matches would have helped ....

Adam Higginbotham, Midnight in Chernobyl: Thought the HBO miniseries was scary? It was tame. I mean: the Soviets, with their level of “technical prowess” and their industrial “quality control checks” ran the facility. Heck, Chernobyl wasn’t even their first disaster. Let’s just put it this way: the actual fuel piles in each of the FOUR Chernobyl reactors were so big that: 1) different sections had different characteristics, and didn’t all operate at the same rates or temperatures; and 2) the monitoring equipment couldn’t record how all of the pile was operating at any time. Happy now? Russia still has 10 Chernobyl-style reactors in operation. Enjoy your good night’s sleep everyone!

JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Yes, yes: I know. This isn’t Order of the Phoenix. Well, I read Order of the Phoenix many years ago, and thought it was deeply annoying. A pile of words with little point. A way to keep the audience happy with long passages about very little.

Meanwhile, I, like my son, roared through Half-Blood Prince. A ripping good tale. Much tighter than the last several of the series.

JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: A fine read. A bit slow getting going: let’s go here! Let’s go there! Let’s recap the plot! But after the first 1/3 or so, the story got moving and I enjoyed it. Didn’t expect great literature; didn’t get great literature. But then again, I deeply appreciate how much pleasure my son got from this, and how excited my daughter is to engage with it. If it hadn’t been conceived and written, it seems like there’d be a Harry Potter sized hole in the universe.

Neil Gaiman, American Gods: In all honesty, I didn’t really like the first 2/3 of this book: too many tangents; too many sub-stories for the sake of sub-stories. And I’m still not sure I think it was a great book. But I really enjoyed the last third of it, and there were moments, vignettes, and sentences that truly blew me away. So I am glad I stayed with it.

Kameron Hurley, The Light Brigade: A sci fi story of soldiers apparently engaged in a war with Mars who are transported to the battlefield as beams of light. One gets unhinged from time. I am not sure it was worth the work, and I came to understand it was based on a short story and so, at times, it seemed a bit one-trick pony-ish. But it had its share of moments.

Daniel James Brown, The Boys in the Boat: A bit slow going at first, but it grows more compelling as it moved forward. This is the story of the 1936 crew (rowing) team at the University of Washington that went to Berlin and won the gold medal as Adolf Hitler watched. An interesting story about crew as a sport (about which I knew basically nothing), and life in Depression-era Washington state -- with a little, somewhat gratuitous, commentary about life in Nazi Germany layered in. One takeaway? The actor Hugh Laurie’s father was the lead oarsman on the British crew at Berlin in 1936. Hugh Laurie rowed crew at Cambridge as well.

James Corey, Nemesis Games: The next in the Expanse series. Much more enjoyable than the last one, but still a bit strained. One heck of a plot “twist.” A perfectly lovely way to relax; didn’t change my life. Some interesting character twists. But also a lot of “here are some giant developments (a lot of giant stuff) that give us lots of things to write about going forward!”

Alan Stern and David Grinspoon, Chasing New Horizons: the story of the New Horizons mission to Pluto. Interesting behind the scenes look at how the mission got funded, planned and implemented. Accessible in terms of the explanations; thick with bureaucratic story-telling and summary. It turns out this stuff is really, really hard. Interesting, but it didn’t blow me away.

And to end the year, I am reading: Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal: What if 13 year old Jesus had a buddy who, 2000 years later, wrote a gospel that filled in those missing years of Joshua’s (as Biff calls Jesus) life? Well, here’s your answer.

[tempestshakes01]

3/24/19

Here’s another entry in this embarrassing public online diary (I love it.):

Health: 4/10 

The weird cough is still lingering, but now it’s gotten a bit worse in the daytime. I’m still hacking up mucus until I vomit (or moan and cry to NOT vomit because I just ate and I’d rather NOT throw up a bacon burger, thanks) and it’s fuckin miserable. I’m worried that if this lasts, I’ll have to fly like this and my flight is an overnighter--prime cough/nausea/vomit hours. UGH. 

Other than the cough and my persistent jaw acne, I’m the perfect picture of health. I feel great. 

Well, no. My ass has a massive bruise because yesterday I slipped down Leah’s stairs (wood laminate is slippery as hell in socks!) running to the bathroom to...ugh...puke up a glob of mucus and bits of burger. 

But other than that! 

Work: 7/10

I still feel like I did something wrong and no one is telling me. I’m friendlier and peppier now that the winter blues (read: depression) are slipping away with the sunny skies and warmer weather (all that snow--16 inches on the ground at the start of the month--melting), but I think the damage is done. 

Except, other than not being super chatty, I’m not sure what the damage is. The only admin that’s normal is the principal. We’re getting along great! A few colleagues are still the same including Mr. Married Lumberjack whom I had a crush on.  

I’m probably paranoid though. I’m also bored out of my mind. Things are smooth for 85% of the time and that’s...great, but also...it’s too smooth and I feel judged doing more because Veronica is gone. 

Okay, so that most likely makes no sense, but it’s how I feel. 

Home: 9.5/10

Things are superb with my parents. I’m headed to D.C. with my mom next week (along with every 8th grader in America...I’m so stupid...) and we’re going to try to keep it as civil as possible when it comes to politics. My dad is texting, but not smothering me with attention. In fact, I should call him more.

My sister seems to be doing...the same. Lots of astrology posts on the gram, but no mention of Paris (her potentially mentally-ill ex) so that’s a relief. The kids are doing great as well. Nick and I are texting more often. He even asked my advice about our parents which was new. I want to ask him about Alyssa because I’m still utterly curious about that situation, but I know he’s still hurting over it and the fact that he had a “quarter-life” crisis when he was working 50+ hours, going to school full time, and interning at the church. He’s decided to graduate as quickly as possible, quit the preacher path, and stay in the coffee game. 

Apparently, he got a promotion and a raise, so he’s making really great money. Plus, he’s like...super passionate about coffee. More passionate than he ever seemed about Jesus or school. 

We’re currently fighting about NCAA brackets and our current favorite music, and it’s great. 

Friends: 6/10

Reconnecting with Jack and Nicol is super nice. I just don’t know how to proceed and how quickly and if I’m an annoyance. I also want Nicol without Jack as well, but I don’t want to offend either of them (not that I think it would! but the chance makes me hesitate...) and they’re such a partnership that I wonder if it IS a big request to separate them. 

We went to see Us today and I didn’t like it very much. We’re going to see Back to the Future on Tuesday at the old theater. They invited me to the former; I invited them to the latter. I trust this will all work out.

Gosh, and I don’t trust Leah at ALL which is wild because I probably hang out with her the most out of anyone, but yeah. There’s something about that girl that I don’t trust. 

Went on Facebook and saw a photo of my childhood best friends (we were a trio: Valerie, Kristina, and I). They were on a backpacking trip together in Alaska. They live entirely different lives, but they still maintained a great friendship over the years. God, and they went into chemical engineering so they’re both making BANK, but they’re the most down-to-earth women. 

I don’t know...I guess it makes me think...for the billionth time...how different my life would be if we’d never moved from El Paso. 

El Paso was idyllic. My childhood consisted of bike rides out into the desert, street games with a plethora of neighborhood boys, summer secrets and stars, theme parks and athletics, best friends who were boys that I knew I could fall in love with, best friends who were girls and I knew I could trust with my whole heart. I lived a good life there. 

When I left, things started to peel apart, but it sort of seemed--for the most part--most of the El Paso crew grew up in the same way they had been...in that easy, perfect sunset sort of way. Most everyone I grew up with went Homecoming and Prom and did senior sunrise and went to good schools where they did the greek life and then got jobs in the sciences or medicine or moved out to Hollywood. They’re utterly normal and successful now in a very...the way they tell you things will go in life. 

Anyway, that childhood best friend I thought I could fall in love with? Went through a long-haired rave phase circa 2012/13, but is currently dating a white girl who wears cowboy boots, no makeup, and studies sports medicine in the same grad program as him. It’s the way things were supposed to be and it’s just weird to see their lives (through the filter and lens of social media) go so simply. Also, his hairline is going and he looks bloated, so the white-half is coming for him in the aging process, ha. His Mexican mom still looks BOMB, so poor guy for inheriting his dad’s hair follicles. 

And anyway, that childhood best friend I could trust with my whole heart? Dating a republican future politician named John Smith and traveling South American for the next couple weeks working in various hospital and women’s health care. She’s a nurse and probably a damn good one. She got her boobs done a couple years ago and I sometimes wonder if we’d still get along. 

Media: 5/10

This is a bullshit category just to give a VM hot-takes, but I’ll play into my own bullshit. 

I’m not watching any TV except B99. I watch about 3 movies a week and I try to make 1 a classic or a “difficult” title. I watch mostly youtube, to be honest. I like Hot Ones, Bon Appetit, Jenna Marbles, theTryGuys, Tasty, Brave Wilderness, Millenium Dance Complex ‘n’ adjacent choreographers’ channels, and various media video essays. 

I’m reading a lot of books...but they’re all YA. Which isn’t bad! I’m just laughing that it took me reading Airborn by Kenneth Oppel (my favorite adventure YA book) out loud to the students to remind my dumb reading brain how fun books could be. Apparently, I’m a fantastic reader and I do wonderful voice and I make the story seem like a movie. We’re on the sequel and I’m about to start the His Dark Materials series.  

That Worlds podium? TRASH. Justice for S/B. 

Yeah, so I’m on a VM cleanse, right? Cause with the winter and all the crazy, it was just an unhealthy piece of media in my life. I miss the GC though, but that’s about it, lol. Oh, and with the new content (I tried to resist!) it’s clear that I did miss them doing their thing and I need to unload some of the thoughts whirling in my head. 

Ugh, I have thoughts about the whole timeline of events because I see people questioning or backtracking, and I’m like? We seriously went through an awful series of events that made all the previous weirdness make sense (but left lingering brand-new weirdness). Except that’ll just bring back old feelings that I’m trying to move on from. 

Geez, I can’t believe I’m about to talk about them in a gossip-y way again, but uh, I’m glad that they seem to be repairing their friendship and that Scott legit looked happy. The vibes are definitely friendship so far, or like, 2015-vibes. Which who knows where that will lead in the future? Will they do things messy like last Fall/Winter? Do they think they can try again or are they now afraid of fucking this up so badly they can’t come back from it? Are they going to accept each other as only friends and maintain those boundaries? You love me, real or not real? WHO KNOWS. I hate this ride.

Also, I’m aware of some of the gossip because I’m fool who caves from time to time for a few minutes and I remember (god, again, I hate that I’m still invested even with this time off) that J was selling her Coachella tickets, and now it’s been announced that VM are doing that show in Korea which takes place the same days as a Coachella weekend. So. Yeah. I’m putting my money on J being in Korea because why sell the tickets (just take a friend), but I’m also still wondering if this is all going to end up like Klawes-era. 

Literally, I wake up believing 100% that J’s gonna be the one Scott’s going to marry because it’s just that time. Then, I go to sleep 98% believing that no matter what, somehow, someway, Tessa and Scott are going to end up together. 

inTERSTIngLY, I have neglected to message Tinder matches the past couple weeks and I believe 50% of the time that I’m going to end up alone because I’m not even trying. (Cut me some slack though. I haven’t had an acne flare-up this bad in years and it’s wrecking my confidence.) 

Music: 10/10

I take hour drives out of town and find obscure trails and I hike for an hour...and let me tell you my Spotify is killing it. 

Current favorite songs:

How Do You Know - CALIPH (you know what I’m thinking) 

Stone Street - MS. WHITE (fun)

anything from Oliver Tree (his music speaks to me as does his fucking stupid meme humor)

Wow. - POST MALONE (sue me)

anything from Duckrth (so much fun) 

Charms - ABEL KORZENIOWSKI (don’t imagine VM dancing to this)

The Cheek of Night - ABEL KORZENIOWSKI

Sucks - ANGELO MOTA (dark and atmospheric hip hop that makes me wish I could dance cause it’s calling to me to choreograph something to it)

bury a friend - BILLIE EILISH (lol I can’t dance, but I’m learning Kodish choreo for this as a workout) 

Beverly Blues - OPIA (a summer jam)

[superprofitz]

Weekly Market Recap Jun 25, 2017

Relatively large moves Monday (up) and Tuesday (down) were followed by the small volatility the rest of the week that has marked almost all of 2017.  The NASDAQ jumped 1.4% Monday, the largest gain since Nov 7th as the relatively moderate selling the prior week was offset.

“Tech got beat up unfavorably over the past week or two, but as the group’s earnings remain strong, we expect buyers are coming in to take advantage of the depressed prices,” said Peter Lewis, a managing partner at Murphy Capital Management. “Tech valuations are probably nearly the high end of the band, but if earnings and merger activity keep going, that could bode well for the sector.”

Oil has quietly had a few rough weeks here; this is one steep decline since late May…

“Oil is not in short supply with U.S. producers drilling and pumping as soon as oil prices rise over $50. Meanwhile demand for oil and gas continues to decline as we get more efficient with our fuel consumption,” said Maris Ogg, principal at Tower Bridge Advisors.

“It looks like oil prices decoupled from the U.S. equity market as investors realize that lower oil prices are not a sign of weakening global demand and therefore economic slowdown, but rather it’s due to excessive supply from the U.S., Iran and Russia,” said Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist, at Prudential Financial.

But is no longer a big part of the market….

“The energy sector is now one of the smallest sectors comprising 6% of the S&P 500, and as such its impact on overall earnings is rather limited,” Ogg said.

Very interesting action in healthcare considering the uncertainty about legislation in Congress…. you’d almost think lobbyists writing advising on the bill are going to get a lot of goodies.  A “discussion draft” of the health-care bill aims to cut Medicaid and eliminate penalties for people who don’t buy insurance.

Biotech too… helped by hopes of “less regulation”…

A New York Times report said President Donald Trump has drafted an executive order that would ease industry regulations. Several proposals in the draft come from industry or simply seem to benefit drug companies, the Times reported, including a study of how drug prices vary by country and reconsidering trade agreements using that information. The move would be a change in tone for the president, who has previously said drug companies are “getting away with murder” and vowed to bring prices down. Still, several of Trump’s previous drug price proposals would likely only be possible through legislative action and not an executive order, the Times article noted.

Economic data this past week was sparse, and not market moving so not worth mentioning.

Here is the 5 day weekly “intraday” chart of the S&P 500 …not per Jill Mislinski.

Good read:  Real world effects of the shrinking brick & mortar industry.

Jeff Bezos is now the 3rd richest human on earth and his empire is massive…

The week ahead…

Once again no major economic news reports in the week ahead – those come the following week.   Personal income (+0.3%) and spending (0.1%) come out Friday and are probably the more interesting items of the economic week.  Nike reports, and Yellen speaks in London Tuesday; considering she just spoke a week and a half ago I wouldn’t expect much in terms of new revelations.

“We expect Yellen to reiterate the message that the global economy is improving but that ‘gradual’ removal of policy accommodation (at least in US) remains appropriate,” writes Deutsche Bank economist Brett Ryan.

Index charts:

Short term: That outside reversal day in the NASDAQ the week prior on a Friday did lead to some choppiness but unlike in other eras nothing sustained at this point.  Both the S&P 500 and NASDAQ are just riding the 20 day moving averages now and consolidating some gains.

The Russell 2000 remains stuck in this lengthy range in yellow.

The NYSE McClellan Oscillator is a bit choppy but went red most of last week; so a bit of caution here until it gets back to black and stays there.

Long term: Here are 5 year charts on the major indexes; we are a broken record here but it would take a very severe selloff to change prospects here.

Charts of interest / Big Movers:

Tuesday, Chipotle (CMG) dived 7.3% after the burrito chain said Monday that it is spending more on marketing as it looks to recover from its E.coli crisis.

Wednesday, Red Hat (RHT) jumped nearly 10% after the open-source software company late Tuesday posted earnings ahead of forecasts.

Good news in retail as La-Z-Boy (LZB) surged 22% Wednesday following better-than-expected earnings on Tuesday after market close.

But this *IS* the retail sector so it couldn’t be possible that some stock in the sector didn’t implode – Friday Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY) dropped 12% after the home-furnishings and accessories retailer late Thursday posted fiscal first-quarter earnings and sales that missed expectations.

Also Wednesday, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) rallied 11% after the chip maker on Tuesday launched a new generation of chips for the servers that drive computing in data centers.

Thursday, Oracle (ORCL) leapt 8.6%, posting its best daily gain since December 2014 after its earnings report late Wednesday easily beat analyst expectations.

I continue to be amazed this company exists but it does… Blackberry (BBRY) sank 12.3% after the software-and-services company swung to an unexpected quarterly profit but its sales fell short of expectations.

Never heard of it but congrats to the biotech lottery pick Portola Pharma (PTLA) which jumped 47% Friday on reports the company received approval for a anticoagulant drug.

Have a great week and we’ll see you back here Sunday!

Original article: Weekly Market Recap Jun 25, 2017.

from Blog – StockTrader.com http://ift.tt/2sbWqEX via IFTTT

[geekade]

The End of an Era (Until Next Season)

HELLO! Welcome back to the greatest sports article ever written, unless you come across something better. My name is and continues to be Matt, and today I want to talk about something that affects hundreds of thousands (or possibly just hundreds) of people across the country and the world...sports moratorium. Now I'm not even sure if I'm using that in the right context, or even know the definition, but I am going to continue anyway. In the US, there is a big 3 for sports...Football, Baseball, and Basketball. Hockey is extremely relevant and soccer is still trying to become something in the US, but there's really only room for 3 in the big 3 for sports. That's just math right there. So anyway, football season, which includes the NFL and NCAA, runs from around September until February, with the bulk of the games being played in September through December. During that time, we see basketball hit the hardcourt, which includes the NBA and NCAA. That runs from about late October until May. Somewhere during those shenanigans, we see baseball start, which MAINLY includes the MLB (seeing as college baseball doesn’t have a huge viewership). Now that that's out of the way, we can get to the hard part...what happens when we run out of season?!

Now if you like one of the big 3 sports, chances are you're at least interested in all of them. But naturally, you're going to be the BIGGEST FAN of just ONE of them. Let's take football for example. Let's also pretend you're an Atlanta Falcons fan. As a Falcons fan, you proudly watched your team make history with one of the greatest offensive seasons that the league has ever seen! They ROLLED through the playoffs before succumbing to (arguably?) the WORST loss in Super Bowl history as the Patriots roared back in the second half, from down by 25 freakin' points, to win it in the greatest comeback of all time. WHAT A GAME! But OH NO! You're a HUGE Falcons fan and just watched your favorite team of all time lose terribly. In the biggest game on Earth.(NOOOOOOO!!!!!!! EFFING BRADY! I HATE THE PATRIOTS AND ROGER GOODELL AND THE ENTIRE NEW ENGLAND AREA!)

So what sets in that evening for you? Hmmmm...probably some depression. Maybe some anger. Probably a good bit of gas. Either way, you're not going to be happy or in any form of positive state. IF you fall asleep that night, the next day you will wake up with, most likely, more depression. (EFFING PATRIOTS! I don't believe the Falcons BLEW IT SO BAD!) So sadness and anger and depression continue, until you snap yourself out of it sometime within the week (hopefully) and get back to attempting to live life. Then...Sunday rolls around again. All right! Let's see what the Falcons will do this week! Oh wait...duh...they just lost the Super Bowl and football is over. Well that sucks...wait, there's no football today!? IT'S SUNDAY AND THERE'S NO FOOTBALL?! WHAT AM I GOING TO DO!? ::dramatic music rolls in:: YOU HAVE ENTERED THE LAND OF THE FOOTBALL MORATORIUM!

You KNOW basketball is on, and that's cool and all, but it’s not football. You don’t want to watch the Hawks, you want to see the Falcons. But alas...you won't be seeing them until September (in regular season games...you know, the ones that matter). Strangely enough, I know a lot of people who actually are greatly affected by sports moratorium. I feel like they kind of just disappear for a good while. Well, I should clarify...if their team didn't win the championship, they vanish. I kind of do the same with my Denver Broncos! Well, I didn't this year because we just looked pretty terrible. Sometimes, and I mean sometimes, you just want a season to be OVER for your team. I wasn't really like that with the Broncos this year because we weren't the WORST team out there, but I knew we wouldn't be winning the Lombardi Trophy this year for sure. So, to be honest, as much as I love my Broncos, I got over their lack of a playoff appearance relatively quickly. 

But things were MUCH different for me when it came to last year's baseball season. When it comes to matters on the baseball diamond, I HARDCORE bleed blue for the Dodgers. Now my boys in blue haven't won a championship since 1988 (which is at least 182 years ago),  but ever since ownership left the hands of that a-hole Frank McCourt and went over to the Guggenheim Group, things have started looking up! Suddenly, we have a huge payroll and good players and other things that make you go HOORAY OMG YES! The "problem" with that is, well, the team isn't QUITE there yet. It's been 5 years now since the new owners took over, and we're still waiting to see that one cohesive team really gel and be the hot team in October. With that being said, they've made the playoffs several times since, and last year?! Oh last year. My Boys in Blue made the National League Championship Series, only to lose the series 4-2 to the freakin Cubs, who (possibly) deserved to win the World Series as they hadn't won it literally in over 100 years. So as AMAZING as it was to see my team make it as far as they did, it was even HARDER to see them exit so abruptly. I found myself in Baseball Moratorium. I felt a pit in my stomach for several days or possibly weeks. Always in the back of my head I had a little bit of...I don't know, might have been anxiety. You know when you get that little bad feeling in your head that you can't shake? Yeah...I had that. It sucked. All I wanted was for baseball season to restart again right away so my Dodgers could redeem themselves and win the freakin’ title. But no...that's not possible. Luckily for me, I love all the big 3 sports, so I was able to get into a football mentality within a few weeks and stop dreaming of baseball and my Dodgers winning the series in my head. Too bad the Broncos looked mostly like ass.

So, do YOU suffer from Sports Moratorium?! Are you NOT a fan of the big 3, and go into a massive depression when the one sport you love more than anything ends and your team sucked worse than the Cleveland Browns do every year? Here's one thing I do pretty often (no, silly, don't drink your life away): pick up a sports video game! Start a franchise season mode! Take your team to the championship and win it all virtually! What's that? Your team is so bad, you can't even win a game in NOT-REAL-LIFE?! Well that's an easy fix! LOWER THE DIFFICULTY! Heck, put the game on rookie mode and win a Super Bowl with Tim Tebow if you want! RAD! That's just one way I cope...how about you?! Let me know on Twitter by hitting up my...twitter.

Until next time everyone, I love you and try to avoid Sports Moratorium! BE SAFE OUT THERE!

[newstfionline]

Obama’s extraordinary, aimless presidency

Damon Linker, The Week, January 10, 2017

Attempting to render summary judgment of a presidency without the benefit of hindsight and historical distance is a fool’s game. Though sometimes it’s easier than others.

Bill Clinton presided over eight years of prosperity, relative peace, and fiscal restraint, which seemed to mark him as a better-than-average president as he left office (sex scandal notwithstanding). George W. Bush, meanwhile, bequeathed to his successor a barely contained fiasco in Iraq and a full-fledged economic crisis at home, demonstrating that his years in the Oval Office had been ... somewhat less successful than one might have wished.

What about Barack Obama? Well, with him things are more muddled. He has triumphed. And he has failed.

Obama swept into office on a wave of tautological idealism (“Change we can believe in!” “Yes, we can!”) and immediately confronted the worst financial downturn in 80 years. Eight years later, the economy has created 11.3 million net jobs and is growing at a modest but respectable rate. Unemployment has fallen from a high of 10 percent during Obama’s first year in office to 4.7 percent today. Millions more are covered by health insurance than before the Obama administration began, thanks to his signature legislative achievement. And despite facing a brutally hostile Congress for most of his tenure, the Obama White House has avoided the kind of scandals that engulfed the administrations of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, let alone the one that brought down Richard Nixon’s presidency.

That makes it sound like Obama has been an enormous success. And yet...

Obama leaves the country far more deeply divided than it was eight years ago, with his party a “smoking pile of rubble,” having suffered significant losses at every level of government, and the country having just elected a man who ran for office on a wave of populist anger.

Donald Trump is the diametric opposite of Barack Obama in nearly every way. Where Obama comes off as the proverbial Cool Cat floating dispassionately above the partisan fray, Trump is a one-man polarization machine. Where Obama is forever acting as a Man of Reason, the Great Conciliator, who aims to bring opposing sides together in mutual understanding--a both/and president in an either/or era--Trump dismisses everyone but the most loyal sycophants as “haters and losers.” Where Obama is a thoroughgoing progressive who sees his own (and the government’s) role as helping to bend the arc of history toward justice, Trump promises to return the nation to a vaguely defined vanished moment of past greatness. Where Obama ultimately sees himself as a citizen of the world working to build a cosmopolitan community of nations working in concert for the benefit of all, Trump is a nationalist who believes in closed borders and zero-sum negotiation and deal-making among mutually antagonistic nations and leaders.

What unites all of Obama’s qualities is a tendency toward high-minded superiority, a knowing aloofness and self-regard. These are traits more common in a world-class professor at an elite university than in a president. And it is this characteristic that has caused him his greatest problems as head of the executive branch--and inadvertently contributed to the rise and implausible triumph of his political bête noire.

As a neoliberal and a political moderate, it pains me to admit that Obama’s most fateful mistake may well have been his cautious, level-headed response to the financial crisis. Though countless millions of Americans lost their homes, jobs, savings, and investments due to the astonishingly reckless behavior of bankers, hedge fund managers, and others in the financial sector, no one was punished. Most of the perpetrators came through the crash with barely a scratch. Hardly anyone went to jail. And none of the big banks were allowed to fail or were broken up after the fact. On the contrary, they were bailed out by taxpayers.

I understand why. I supported those policies at the time. Had I been in charge, I almost certainly would have done exactly what Obama did. It was the prudent thing to do. Allowing banks and massive companies like AIG, General Motors, and Chrysler to collapse risked far worse damage to the global economy. It could have plunged the world into something as bad as or worse than the Great Depression. But the result was a massive injustice. Americans learned the lesson that if you’re a middle-class homeowner and things go wrong, you’re screwed, while if you’re wealthy (and even if your actions created the problem in the first place), Uncle Sam will come riding to the rescue. Trump and Bernie Sanders each tapped into this resentment in his own way, expressing, channeling, and purging the anger that the president never adequately acknowledged or legitimized. In that respect, Obama’s professorially cerebral and even-tempered response to the crisis helped to prepare the way for the anti-establishment, populist wave that has now capsized his party and the legacy of his own presidency.

If Obama’s mistake in responding to the financial crisis was understandable, his decision to provoke a backlash in the culture war was an unforced error. Obama ran for president as an opponent of gay marriage, showing that he understood the need to act with restraint when it came to hot-button social issues. Four years later he famously “evolved” on the issue while running for re-election, surprising no one. But what was surprising was how quickly and severely he (and Hillary Clinton, who underwent the same transformation) flipped not just to support gay marriage but to treating with contempt those whose sensibilities were merely a little slower to evolve.

And not just when it came to gay rights. From micromanaging sexual behavior on college campuses to policing public bathrooms in the name of transgender civil liberties, moral busy-bodies in the Obama administration, from the professor-in-chief on down, have been eager to expand the scope of federal regulations into broad new areas of American life--an agenda that plenty of voters have found bossy, intrusive, condescending, and contemptuous of ways of life that diverge from the secular progressivism that is so often the default presumption among the country’s intellectual elite.

In foreign policy, Obama has had a very different problem. Far from being too straightforwardly aggressive, the president has combined extreme rhetorical restraint (that has often made him sound weak or passive when discussing national threats, including terrorism) with over-extension. As my colleague Michael Brendan Dougherty recently pointed out, the Pentagon has reported that in 2016 the U.S. military dropped more than 26,000 bombs on seven Muslim countries. That’s an awful lot of (undeclared) wars to be waging simultaneously.

And half-heartedly. Compared with George W. Bush’s invasions and long-term occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, Obama can look like someone skeptical about the use of military force. But he’s really only skittish about deploying large numbers of ground troops. Using air power to overthrow the government of Libya is perfectly fine. As is unleashing special operations forces, drones, and other covert forms of violence to intervene in theaters across the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.

This is what Obama notoriously described as “leading from behind”--the U.S. acting boldly in the world but behind the scenes and with modesty, keeping our heads and voices down to avoid inflaming perfectly understandable anti-American sentiments. But is leadership that is never defended, explained, justified, or even acknowledged really leadership at all? Or is it simply ... drift?

The result has been a sense of foreign policy aimlessness, as the eminent professor executes his great, elaborate plan without ever quite getting around to explaining how it advances our interests or fits together with the multitude of other seemingly contrary policies he simultaneously pursues.

The virtues of a top-notch professor are different than those required of a president. I would eagerly sign up to take a course with Barack Obama, emeritus professor of American studies. But I’m not at all sure how much the country has benefited from having been enrolled in his seminar for the past eight years.