Odds and Ends — 14 November 2021
My wife and I went to a 7-screen multiplex yesterday for an afternoon showing of the new James Bond film No Time to Die: Daniel Craig Goes Out With a Boom and when we came out from it the lobby was . . . empty. A bit after 7pm on a Saturday night. Crickets.
Then went out for dinner at a restaurant that was nearly full. Neither venue had so much as a Masks Suggested sign, let alone were checking vaccination status.
At another movie I went to a week ago, same thing. You could fire a cannon and not hit anyone. Are movie theaters now a dying breed? I see lots of foot traffic in all kinds of businesses, but not for movies.
Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, and Debt:
Big Money Apes Into Blockchain Gaming With $725M Fundraising for Forte
Macleod is a goldbug with a goldbug’s misunderstanding of crypto-economics, but this article in nonetheless well worth a read: Money, Funny-Money, & Crypto
That the post-industrial era of fiat currencies is coming to an end is becoming a real possibility. Major economies are now stalling while price inflation is just beginning to take off, following the excessive currency debasement in all major jurisdictions since the Lehman crisis and accelerated even further by covid.
The dilemma now faced by central banks is whether to raise interest rates sufficiently to tackle price inflation and lend support to their currencies, or to take one last gamble on yet more stimulus in the hope that recessions can be avoided.
Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:
Austria brings back COVID-19 lockdown, this time for the unvaccinated
The Gilded Age Bone Wars have their echoes in today’s vaccine patent waiver fight
Politics:
When Chris Christie Was Sick with Covid-19
Former Gov. Chris Christie (R) reveals in his new book how worried he and others were for his survival when he became infected with the coronavirus after being at the White House around the same time that Mr. Trump and several other aides contracted Covid-19. Mr. Christie writes that his priest arrived in the hospital and rubbed oils on his forehead in the sign of the cross, praying over him.
He got a call from a hospitalized Mr. Trump, who had one main concern: ‘Are you gonna say you got it from me?’
U.S. Hid an Airstrike That Killed Dozens of Civilians
In the last days of the battle against the Islamic State in Syria, when members of the once-fierce caliphate were cornered in a dirt field next to a town called Baghuz, a U.S. military drone circled high overhead, hunting for military targets. But it saw only a large crowd of women and children huddled against a river bank.
Without warning, an American F-15E attack jet streaked across the drone’s high-definition field of vision and dropped a 500-pound bomb on the crowd, swallowing it in a shuddering blast. As the smoke cleared, a few people stumbled away in search of cover. Then a jet tracking them dropped one 2,000-pound bomb, then another, killing most of the survivors.
Here’s Why All The Inflation Fearmongering Over The Reconciliation Bill Is Nonsense
Michael Flynn Says U.S. Should Have One Religion
Yellen says COVID-19 pandemic is 'responsible' for inflation increases
What, trillions in Quantitative Easing couldn’t possibly be a factor?
Serendipity:
Iqaluit: A month without clean water in Canada’s north
The eccentric dog breeds that vanished
007 image credit: (source)
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