1) THE WOLF OF WALL STREET Avoids NC-17 Rating with Edits; Nearly 3-Hour Runtime Confirmed (Collider) - Officially Scorsese's longest film, The Wolf of Wall Street had to cut some of the sex and nudity to even get an "R" rating. I have to admit I'm really looking forward to this one, despite what a douche I think Jordan is. There's no way this thing isn't a huge hit.
2) JP Morgan's long road to clean-up: time for bank to show what it's really made of (The Guardian) - Heidi Moore lays out the case for why JP Morgan Chase isn't out of the woods yet, and how other litigants are chomping at the bit now that first blood has been drawn. Through it all, Jamie Dimon still appears bulletproof if for no other reason than the pool of possible replacements for him is virtually non-existent.
3) Actually, there may be no such thing as being too beautiful for a job in banking (eFinancial Careers) - I never understood the appeal of finance for women, but I've always accepted that it exists on some level. What I don't get is how, in this day and age in 2013, a fund client still thinks it's okay to call a female analyst he doesn't even know and harass her over the phone. WTF?
4) Wolff: At 'Business Insider,' it's time to sell (USA Today) - There's just something about Henry Blodget that makes me root for him and his whole BI crew. And Patrick and I have wondered about what BI is worth. The closest he and I came based on public info is north of $50 million. But in this article Wolff says Henry should sell out for $100 million, and I don't have any trouble thinking he'd get it. Then Henry responded he wouldn't sell for a mere $100 million. Baller. Pretty cool to think that they just started this brand 6 years ago, it's a tangible brand name, and that the founder (who is famously banned for life from Wall Street) is in a position to turn down $100 million.
5) Bitcoin Is the Segway of Currency (The Atlantic) - This is basically a hater piece about Bitcoin, written by somebody who doesn't "get it", but it's worth reading. I get the feeling that Bitcoin is at a make-or-break stage of its evolution, and it'll be interesting to see how it comes out on the other side.
6) Double Robotics - Because you just can't bring yourself to go into the office anymore (Double Robotics) - Check this shit out. Imagine rolling up to your staffer in one of these while you're at home on your couch playing Call of Duty. Want.
7) Bill Nye: Debate Over Evolution In Texas Schools Is Jeopardizing Our Future (Huffington Post) - You don't often hear about it, but there is a definable economic impact caused by religious ignorance. Texas was on the verge of writing off an entire generation of public school kids from any STEM disciplines because superstitious idiots have somehow attained a position of power and insisted science texts eschew evolution in favor of the theory that the universe is 10,000 years old. If you truly believe the universe is 10,000 years old, you should be kicked off the planet for humanity's sake.
8) The internet mystery that has the world baffled (The Telegraph) - Whoa...Mind. BLOWN.
9) Thou shalt not commit logical fallacies (Your Logical Fallacy.is) - There should be some kind of test to be able to post to Internet forums, and this should be required reading. You should probably pin this to your wall, so you can look at it the next time you're about to make a Straw Man argument.
10) 'Road House' is being remade by the director of 'The Fast and the Furious' (The Verge) - I'm horrified by this. Road House is already a perfect movie, and it should never be remade. Who would you get to play Dalton? Paul Walker??? GMAFB. Don't mess with perfection.
Video of the Week:
I'm not going to describe this week's video because I don't want to ruin the cringe-worthy surprise but, yeah, this happened.
That's it for this week, guys. Hope you had a great Thanksgiving, hope you're gonna have a great weekend, and let me know what you think about this week's Bananas in the comments!
Hey Eddie, I made your Killer Hot Buttered Rum for a dessert drink for yesterday's Thanksgiving dinner. It was a hit, thanks for posting the recipe!
Glad Patrick didnt give you the Friday off, good stuff.
I want that poster in #9, I found at least two fallacies both the Texas yokels AND Bill Nye are guilty of in #7.
And indeed, Roadhouse is perfect, why screw with it? I'll riot if Sam Elliott doesn't get a cameo of some kind.
.
Now, I would like to start a little discussion about BusinessInsider. Not about the valuation, not about how Blodget thought of Amazon 400 - about what BI articles are.
In my opinion, 90% of the articles are crap, and the other ones come from Associated Press or the likes. I think BI is the parossism of everything there is wrong about most of the "Internet newspapers", or blogs on steroids. The way they phrase the headlines (it comes to my mind one that was like 'SHOCKER: Apple is deliberately keeping the supply of gold iPhone 5S low', and in the article the author wrote such gems as 'the iPhone is not made of true gold, and gold isn't that expensive by now, so there is no reason for its supply to be scarce'), the articles are mostly "empty", if not factually wrong; finally, sometimes I feel as if Blodget is making a personal use of the media he created (think about all the articles about Apple, like the one where he complained that Icahn has all the attention of Cook while he doesn't, but he's a shareholder, too).
Am I the only one that feels like this?
@nda - agree. It's an article aggregator like huffpo, and I have no idea how the valuations work on that business. Only thing I can think of is that the concentration of eyeballs has commercial value. Look at almost every article (and I do like a lot of them) and it's from some other source. How much is culling the best of the web worth? Blodgett should learn from his past: take the money and run, you'll never get the timing right. I'd also find it funny if he were writing/saying to friends this exact assessment: "man, what a load of crap"
8 - NSA recruiting op? 5 Bitcoin. The technology is extremely cool and is likely a the 'lucy' between cash and pure digitalization of the economy. But like the fossil straddling humanity and more primitive beings, it will go extinct. After talking/arguing through several posts on WSO about this, what I see is simple: it's in a bubble and everyone's trying to cash in before the crash. After the crash, it will have no value and will die.It's not gold. It's not a commodity. It has no use except to be traded, like a baseball card or fiat currency. Like fiat currency it has basically no intrinsic value. Unlike currency, no major institution is going to back in in lieu of their own currency. Nations are having a hard time keeping their actual currency on an even keel, why would they adopt something that's trading at such wide price swings? There is no way to stabilize the price. And they're just price swings....bitcoin has no actual value. I'm confused how so many smart people WANT to believe in it and are trying to convince themselves. I read the article in point #5 and it's not like segway, it's more like blueray: cool but ultimately irrelevant. Actually, it's like the game console from five years ago....the value can only go down.
Look, I made a small fortune on the gold bubble and now I'm raping it on the way down too. I only regret not having the ability to take advantage of the housing bubble. The student loan bubble and US debt bubble are looming and I can't wait to figure out how to cash in on those. I like bubbles, I'm a huge fan, mostly because it's like playing a roulette table with only one number and an unknown time limit: put your money on the table and watch it grow until it croaks. And bitcoin is a bubble, pure and simple. What I'm getting at is: SEE THIS FOR WHAT IT IS. The strange part, or funny if you're an observer of human nature, is that when a zero price point is reached, there's no physical asset to liquidate. It's just a serious of numbers floating around on computer drives, and their sequence has no use elsewhere. So go ahead, bid it up to $1,500 or even $100K, there's not telling how far this will go. This is one bubble where I already missed the ship and I'm staying out, but if you have more stomach for this particular risk, I say cash in on it!
But just make sure you're not left holding the hot potato.
Great post this week, really thinking of ordering the logical fallacies poster, immediately thought of a few people i know that use a few of those strategies.
Cant wait for the new wolf of wall street either, looks to be phenomenal, hopefully Leo finally wins an award for this one, and with the cast and Scorsese there's a chance it'll win some
8 is pretty crazy, probably the Illuminati...Pariatur deleniti illum eum consequuntur iste molestiae. Nihil voluptatem repellat laborum quas repudiandae quam saepe cum. Neque labore velit impedit qui explicabo nam et dicta.
Labore et officiis ratione ipsum nihil at sint. Molestiae voluptas et voluptas et maiores.
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