Fox News Facts Vs Fiction

A montage was done showing the reporting done by Fox News hosts Shep Smith and Sean Hannity. The information they provide looks like it came from two different planets, much less the same network.

The difference is Shep is reporting the actual FACTS while Sean pushes debunked conspiracies, lies, and hyperbole.

 

The fact that Fox allows such dishonest/biased hosts as Hannity under its network umbrella is a clear indication of how unbalanced Fox is towards responsible reporting.

 

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Man Leisurely Robs Bucket of Gold from Armored Truck in NYC Using Precise Timing

In the movie “Groundhog Day”, Bill Murray finds himself in a loop where he relives the same day over and over. As a result, he starts exploiting his predicament by memorizing and taking advantage of the days events….one of them being an armored truck money delivery:

 

 

In a case of life imitating art, an enterprising thief pulled a similar stunt on an armored truck in NYC. The silent surveillance video shows the guy noticing the brief window that the truck was unguarded and making his move:

 

Bill Murray has nothing on this guy! He had to make several stops along the way since a bucket of gold weights around 85 pounds.

 

For more information on this out of the ordinary heist:

Narrated video of the theft:

 

Article of the guys entire story- yes he was interviewed after the fact- but don’t assume he was caught or that the gold was recovered. It’s an interesting story:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5354067/Man-shares-stole-1-6million-gold-escaped.html

 

What if the TV Show “Full House” Opening Used REAL Inflation Pricing?

In 2016, ABC decided to do a reboot of Full House.

Comparing the changes in San Francisco from the time of the original series of Full House (1987 – 1995) to today’s prices makes for a less lighthearted opening:

 

The Secret Side of Inflation: Size Reduction

When I was shopping the other day, I got this “coupon/receipt” notice:

 

I find it odd that a company would give advance notice of their intent to reduce the amount of product offered rather than trying to slip it past the radar. Perhaps they worry in this social media sensitive society that any attempts to make changes without notice would be uncovered and put the company in a bad light of looking like it was trying to cheat the public.

It’s a good guess that other main juice companies will likely be following suit in reducing their product size size. Tropicana stands to lose lots of market share if the other companies offer more product for the same price.

This is a good example of spotting clear signs of inflation. Most people assume inflation means seeing prices go up, but the other side is reducing the size of the product while selling at the same or nearly the same price.

Be on the lookout for “secret inflation” when shopping for competitive prices. I don’t plan on “rewarding” any companies trying to shortchange me and offering it as a “feature”. 💸

Update:

I did some research and found out that that Tropicana was involved in a “shrinking product” scandal in the UK last year:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-4218994/Tropicana-hit-shrinking-scandal.html

So my guess about them fearing social media/news outing of attempts to pass off reduced product at the same price was correct and they are playing it more carefully in the States after getting burned in the UK.

 

Baby Born With Super Luxurious Locks Becomes Internet Sensation

Thanks to that the random mix of hormones in a mothers womb, sometimes a child is born with a full head of hair. In Japan, such a locks-lucky child was born in Japan to parents who were savvy enough to post the child’s pics online:

 

 

What a cute bushy head baby!

Here’s her instagram: https://www.instagram.com/babychanco/

Someone made a nice soulful music slide show of her:

I defy anyone to watch this and not have your mood lightened/brightened. 🤗👶

 

They say that baby hair will typically fall out within 3 years to be replaced with their standard hair going forward. How ironic that this child has hair to die for, and is completely oblivious to how valued that is in our society. The true joy of innocence. 😇

She has all that hair and she just don’t care! 😁😎👶

Here’s a snapshot of a day in the life of Ms Adorable:

 

Eco Nightmare: Ocean Garbage Coming Ashore

Garbage Waves

Seeing something like this makes me ashamed of being part of the human race that we allow pollution to reach this level of disgusting.

 

 

The other part of that video mentions the increasing amount of micro plastic water contamination. More clear signs we need to change our ways unless we want this to be the norm rather than the gross exception.

What Does it Mean to be “Self-Made”?

Forbes released their August Magazine cover featuring women billionaires:

It features Kylie Jenner, who is being described/showcased as at 21yo, set to being the youngest ever “self-made” billionaire.

This caused a commotion/backlash among many who called into question Forbes use of the term “self-made”, followed by supporters who defended the title.

By definition, “self-made” is defined as achieving one’s success unaided. In other words, no outside help or assistance was needed or given to that person to enable them to achieve their goals.

So the notion that Kylie Jenner, who was born into a family line worth $100’s of millions, who have clearly mastered leveraging their fame/notoriety into profit making ventures, where Kylie has all that knowledge and built in contacts at her disposal, is to be compared to a person who had none of those benefits who nonetheless achieved great success, really distorts the meaning of the word “self-made”. Furthermore, highlighting her young age in achieving this completely ignores the shoulders she was able to stand on from day one.

There are some who think all the backlash is largely an anti-feminist, anti-capitalist, or anti-Kardashian family issue, but the issue is really about the stretching of the term “self-made” as a one size fits all no matter their built in family background or advantages. If Forbes had highlighted ANYONE from a wealthy family as “self-made”, they would be getting the same level of scrutiny from the general public.

Forbes has decided that they have a “sliding scale” of the term self-made, from a level 10, where a person starts out in poverty facing many obstacles, to a level 1, where the person is born with silver spoons.

Why have a scale like that? Why not acknowledge the achievements of a person without abusing the term “self-made”?

Kylie deserves her fair share of credit of creating a new business line that’s closing in on a billion dollars. Call her highly successful, call her ambitious, one of the youngest soon to be billionaire business owners, etc…, but Forbes needs to get rid rid of their “sliding-scale” and reserve the “self-made” title for those who truly started with minimal help to achieve their success.

 

 

Court Case:Trader Tries Trading Millions on Demo Acct, Does it on REAL Account Instead. Can he Keep $$$ Gains?

Here’s a situation that’s hard to believe- a trader opens up a trading account in France with $23,000 and wants to practice using the brokerages demo account that he had been using to learn on.

So he engages in trading, but due to some crazy errors, he winds up trading on a live account and by the time he realizes he is NOT in the demo account, he is $1 million dollars in the hole. 😬

Now this is pretty crazy stuff, since I have NEVER heard of ANY brokerage that would allow a person with just $23,000 in their account to be allowed to trade in the BILLIONS and incur so much debt- likely because they would soon be out of business with those type of lax safeguards.

Now once he finds out, you’d think he’d immediately call the brokerage and tell them the situation and that he wants no part of this…..and you’d be wrong.

Instead, he decides to continue trading and we get to some more crazy stuff happening: he actually does extremely well and winds up making $11.6 million in profit! 💰💰💰

Once the brokerage learns about what happened, they decided to keep the money since the trader was supposed to be on a demo account. 💸 The trader is now taking the brokerage to court claiming that the money he made should be rightfully his to keep.

So the question to consider is- who has the best claim to the money, the brokerage or the trader? What do you think?

I would reason it out as follows:

While on the surface it one could make a case that since he was trading, he should be able to keep it. But further analysis finds problems with this.

If he had lost millions, would he also claim the responsibility to pay it back, or would he claim he was free of liability because he believed he was on the demo account? The knife cuts both ways.

The key though is his account size. At only $23,000, it would be clear to all that he does not have the equity to be allowed to trade in the millions for a real account and therefore the brokerage should be on the hook for those losses. This also means they get to keep the gains as well.

Now having said that, I have these conclusions:

1. Clearly this guy was either very lucky or knows what he’s doing and should be offered a trading job.
2. Since it was the fault of the brokerage for allowing him to trade such large amounts on a real account, and he did earn them a nice amount, it would be nice if they gave him some type of payout since he could have also bankrupted them.

Here’s the article:

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/21/trader-builds-5-billion-position-after-realizing-it-wasnt-a-demo.html

 

 

 

Heat Wave Bullseye Hits Southern California

I’ve been watching heat waves make their way across the US- from the Midwest, then northeast/east coast areas.  I feared it was only a matter of time before the flame lottery lot went to the Southwest/west coast. The news folks forecast confirmed the impending heatwave for the west to arrive after the 4th of July into the weekend.

Despite that forecast, it was hard to believe since the weather in San Diego earlier this week was near perfect, as it usually is with warm days and cool nights. The weather folks get rain forecasts wrong often, perhaps they were erring here as well?

Unfortunately, they were in the correct zone as we hit later in the week, literally just a day after the nice temps on the 4th, the temp starting jumping rapidly from the 70’s to the mid/upper 80’s. Then on Friday this happened:

 

Heat Miser and his Scorch Troops before the Southwest heat wave Invasion:

 

Friday unleashed the fire zone bullseye:

 

 

Cast your eyes to the lower left, showing So Cal and Az in the heat zone epicenter. 🔥 🔥 🔥  Solid triple digits in many areas, temp records getting broken for this time of year.  The cool nights of the mid 60’s got swapped with sultry nights of upper 80’s.  Heat Miser got us with precision targeting. As they say in Star Trek vernacular: “Direct hit Scotty!” 🎯

Yup, this is what we have for the weekend and beyond for the next several days. 🌡️🔥☀️

It feels like a blast furnace outside- way too hot, even for the beach. Fortunately the weather in this area is typically decent and aberrations like this don’t last long.

 

 

The Dark Side of Humanity

All of us are aware that a whole spectrum of people exist on Earth – from the absolutely saintly selfless to the most diabolically cruel. It’s amazing how people can vary so much to such extremes.

Two cases of people on the dark part of the spectrum caught my attention this week. I usually just bring up the bad actors on Wall Street that fleece their customers but these two stood out to me.

Case 1:

A very talented student who excels in playing the clarinet applied for a prestigious scholarship at a conservatory for training under one of the very best clarinet teachers. The scholarship is valued at $50,000, which was a full ride including tuition, housing, meals, and miscellaneous living expenses.  The clarinet teacher also only accepts 2 people a year to train- which shows you how difficult it is to get approved for acceptance.

Despite those long odds, the student manages to convince the instructor and conservatory to accept him and approve him for the special scholarship.

However, he never finds out he is accepted….

…because his girlfriend at the time whom he had been dating for 5 months, saw the email of acceptance that was sent to him, and deleted it. 😲 After that, she forged an email from the conservatory telling him that he was NOT accepted, and then forged another email to mail to the conservatory telling them he refused the scholarship. 😠 The poor guy went on with his life never realizing his girlfriend duped him out of his dream until years later when he had a chance to talk with that famous instructor.

Now before I provide the story link, the reason being given for this action is that the girlfriend was afraid of losing him, thinking he would break up with her. I don’t believe this to be the case. I think it has more to do with the actions of someone psychotically jealous of his abilities.

But can you imagine how angry he must be feeling when he found out? She sabotaged his entire career! 😠 What a betrayal, by someone he would never have expected it from…..so disturbing!

McGill music student awarded $350,000 after girlfriend stalls career

https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/15/us/dream-school-false-rejection-letter-trnd/index.html

 

Case 2:

Divorced man marries woman, then after a while, starts cheating on her with other women, one of them being his ex-wife. 😲  Man runs into debt problem and looks for a way out. His solution? Arrange for his wife, the MOTHER of his two kids, to have an “accident” so he can collect on her life insurance which will also free him up to pay off his debt and chase other women. 😠 Fortunately for the wife, her guardian angel was looking out for her. He tries once, fails, tries again, and this time his misdeeds are exposed.

https://www.npr.org/2018/06/16/620531854/former-british-army-sergeant-sentenced-after-parachute-murder-attempt-of-wife?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=news

 

Sure, some people are evil, but for people to betray someone they supposedly pledged their heart to is especially depraved. At least these two cases had positive outcomes for the victims.