“Bonne Chance”
Tag: dull
Business Lunch
Thanks to THENEWYORKER
Fake President doesn’t even pretend to care about ideals of the U.N.
“To the devotion [to him] of patriots”
❝ President Donald Trump delivered an utterly spiritless speech to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, a speech aimed entirely at a domestic audience, touting nationalism and thick borders as the solutions to all problems, lacking even the pretense of fealty to the principles or worth of international organizations such as the one he was addressing.
❝ “The future does not belong to globalists. The future belongs to patriots,” he said early on…He said nothing about the role that alliances, coalitions, or the United Nations itself might play in laying or protecting that path. He mentioned America’s traditional allies only once, to complain—as he has on many occasions—that they aren’t paying “their fare share of the tremendous defense burden.”
❝ In return, the speech drew no applause from the gathering of world leaders, except for a tepid round at its conclusion. Trump didn’t seem to mind.
Who would expect him to care? Perhaps, a few of the ignoranus voters who hope that somehow they will profit from his policies. No doubt, those with 7-figure incomes may get to 8 or 9. The rest get silence. His flunkies in Congress probably have a built-in mute button by now.
Trump’s quote of the evening
Click to enlarge
❝I know Trump has said this before, so technically it’s hardly new. Still, I mean, it’s…it’s…oh hell:
❝I am going to be the greatest jobs president that God ever created. Remember that. Don’t believe those phony numbers when you hear 4.9 percent and 5 percent unemployment. The number’s probably 28, 29, as high as 35. In fact, I even heard recently 42 percent. Do you think if we had 5 percent unemployment, do you really think we’d have these gatherings?
❝Yeah, Trump “heard” 42 percent recently. You betcha. Trump hears a lot of things, sort of like Joan of Arc. In any case, I assume Trump keeps saying this because it goes over well with his audiences. Why might this be?
Trump fans are really bad at arithmetic.
Trump fans know an ungodly number of unemployed people in their immediate circle of friends.
Trump fans are really eager to believe the government is lying to them.
Trump fans don’t actually know what unemployment is.
Trump fans don’t really have a clue what he’s saying. It’s just mumbo jumbo delivered with authority, and they love it.
❝I dunno. Could be all of the above, I suppose.
Seems reasonably inclusive.
Bland Aussies want to link up with Dull and Boring
An Australian county called Bland hopes to link up with Dull in Perthshire and the tiny Scottish village’s official US twin, Boring in Oregon – in an attempt to create a triumvirate of tedium called Dull, Boring and Bland.
Even though residents of Bland in New South Wales are fed up with people ridiculing them, they want to cash in on humorous publicity by joining with the pair…
It was named after William Bland, whose life was anything but. The London-born son of an obstetrician was transported as a convict to Van Diemen’s Land in 1814 after killing a sailor in a duel in Bombay.
He was later pardoned, became a pillar of colonial life and founded the Australian Medical Association.
There must be a few extra jots of humor in a doctor’s association founded by someone convicted of manslaughter.
Murdoch is a one-trick pony and MySpace ain’t his arena!
Myspace was once the Internet’s equivalent of the hottest nightclub in town. In its heyday, the world’s dominant social network attracted some 3 million bands, 8,000 comedians and countless filmmakers and wannabes who came to see and be seen.
Now, Myspace is seemingly no place — a digital castoff that corporate parent News Corp. sold for $35 million in cash and equity to an Orange County digital media firm specializing in online advertising. That’s a fraction of the $580 million that the media giant controlled by Rupert Murdoch paid to acquire the site a scant six years ago, and well shy of its one-time $65-billion valuation.
Its dramatic fall is both a consequence of the fickle nature of today’s Internet generation as it is a tale of mismanagement, missed opportunities and miscalculations. Myspace’s decline — hastened by its failure to match the innovations of its chief rival, Facebook, speaks to what can happen when a mainstream media company seeks to capture technological lightning in a bottle…
The decision to acquire the hot social networking site landed Murdoch on the cover of Wired magazine, where he was lauded for embracing the Internet ahead of his old-media rivals, although critics ridiculed him for overpaying…
But Myspace’s red-hot success was short-lived.
The number of monthly visitors in the United States peaked in October 2008 at 76.3 million, according to measurement firm ComScore Digital Analytix. Over the last two years, the social network has shed an average of 1 million users a month, and its monthly traffic had dwindled to about 35 million users by May.
As Myspace’s users headed for the exits, so did the advertisers. Researcher EMarketer projects Myspace’s ad revenue at $184 million this year, down from $470 million in 2009. Myspace proved a drag on News Corp.’s earnings, with the division that includes the social network posting a profit only once in the last six years…
Murdoch knows how to leverage sports coverage in depth into profit in print media. He did the same with business news with the Financial Times. Dicking around with content, policy and politics at the Wall Street Journal may yet put that venerable paper into irreversible decline. All of his print acquisitions were worth siphoning capital from – while adding in deeper coverage of shallower topics when needed.
None of that had [or has] much to do with the media and information processes driving the Web. But, good old Rupert has never been someone to listen to or seek advice. Even from more knowledgeable family members.
The folks who bought MySpace for 6% of what Murdoch paid have a sensible chance to turn it into a moneymaker, again. That’s good enough. Whether they wish to go farther than that – and can – is another tale, a different opportunity.
Dell smartphone too dull for cellular carriers
Dell’s anticipated effort to release a mobile phone has stalled after suffering from “a lack of interest” among cellular carriers. Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu wrote that Dell’s prototype devices, designed to run software from both Microsoft and Google have so far failed to distinguish themselves from a growing field of competitors.
“From our conversations with supply chain and industry sources, it appears that it ultimately came down to lack of carrier interest,” Wu wrote.
Rumors of a branded Dell mobile phone have been swirling since January, when speculation surfaced that the company might unveil a device at a high-profile event such as last month’s Mobile World Congress.
A representative for Dell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Back to the drawing board is putting it mildly. Why design a spec and standard that’s behind the times?
Eideard 