Elon Musk got a call from his portfolio manager and the manager said "I have some good news and some bad news, which do you want first?"

Musk said "Let's get the bad news over with first"

So the manager sends him a link.

 

Musk is quiet for a long time. Then he takes a deep breath and asks, "What's the good news?"

The manager sends him another link...

 ... and says "You could have invested in DJT."

For those who insist on having jokes explained. From Reuters (who have absolutely owned this story) and from CNBC.

Twelve years ago at the blog -- "Comics are weird" (with apologies to Bob Chipman)

Friday, April 15, 2011

Weekend pop culture blogging -- comic strip edition

The birth of a medium invariably consists overwhelmingly of crap (think Sturgeon's Law raised to the next level), but new media also has a way of producing the occasional work on stunning originality.

An obvious example here is the work of Winsor McCay (arguably the first acknowledged genius of both comics and animation, though fans of Herriman and Feininger might dispute the comics part), but even McCay's astoundingly innovative work can't match the originality of the Upside-Downs by Gustave Verbeek.

Verbeek's weekly strip told a twelve panel story in a six panel space. He did this by... Oh, hell, you really need to see this for yourself.





How's that to start your weekend?

For more Verbeek weirdness check here.

 

Viewing Recommendation

 

I don't want to extend the analogy to the outcome...

... or try to draw too many inferences from the similarities, but there are some notable parallels between this election and 1964. In the years that followed the election there was (perhaps still is) a tendency to get all warm and fuzzy about Goldwater. It's easy to forget what a dangerous extremist the man was. This LBJ ad does a good job reminding us just how crazy and frightening the candidate looked at the time, and (without leaning too heavily on the analogy) does have some moments that sound familiar such as the "is he serious" section that starts a little after 1:35.

Before watching, I recommend reading Marshall's "Big Normie Energy."

Confessions of a Republican (LBJ 1964 Presidential campaign commercial)

I finally got around to looking up the details of this ad.

In 1964, Bogert starred in the "Confessions of a Republican" ad for Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1964 U.S. presidential election. Bogert was a lifelong Republican, which was a requirement for the casting. He appeared on Don Lemon's CNN news show on March 17, 2016, and also on Rachel Maddow Show on May 2, 2016, to comment on the relevance of the ad to the 2016 election.

In July 2016, during the convention that nominated Donald Trump as the Republican presidential candidate, Bogert appeared in a reprise of the ad. "He scares me," Bogert said in the ad, echoing his comments about Goldwater 52 years before.

A bit more background here. One surprising revelation is that the team behind the ad cut a line that  Bogert said did not represent his views. 

 

Six years ago at the blog -- old tech April (stentor edition, 1907)

It's a shame "stentor" didn't catch on

 
One of the conclusions I've come to after digging though the history of 19th and 20th century technology is that when there's a real demand for specific functionality, it will express itself as soon as (and sometimes even before) the technology is viable.

Today's example: the news broadcast.

From Scientific American 1907/06/22