Five days before the deadliest attack in Israel’s history, a warning may have appeared on stock exchanges.
A study by researchers from Columbia University and NYU called “Trading on Terror?” suggests that a trader may have been aware of the coming attack, bet against the Israeli economy and walked away with a profit by short selling on the U.S. and Israeli stock exchanges.
Short selling is a trading strategy aimed at making a profit off an asset that is expected to drop in price; the seller “borrows” a security and sells it on the open market with the goal of buying it back later at a lower price and pocketing the difference.
The study looked at the Israel Exchange-Traded Fund, a common way for people to make investments in Israel, which on any given day has around 2,000 shares shorted. On Oct. 2, that number shot up to over 227,000 shares.
According to Columbia Law School Professor Joshua Mitts, one of the authors of the study, “that’s extremely unusual.” It was also profitable: the shares sold short for one Israeli company alone yielded a profit of nearly $900,000.
Imagine, 1400 were killed, hundreds were kidnapped and women were assaulted and raped and babies beheaded and burned. That’s horrific enough even if you consider that you have a group of people who were since childhood taught that Jews were not due any consideration as human beings.
But the idea that there were people who KNEW this was coming and rather than doing something to prevent it decided it was an excellent chance to make a large profit. That brings obscenity to a whole new level.
Now in fairness the people who did this might well be the same as the folks who did the attacking, as Stephen Green put it:
Underground rocket factories don’t pay for themselves, you know.
So to them it might be the same ideology but for me this is so beyond the scope that it becomes very hard to see Christ in such people rather than recommend a generous use of hemp.
Closing thought: If I’m Israel from now on I’m monitoring stock markets for this type of activity in the future.
As college football fans look forward to bowl season, it’s time to realize that the sport has become an absolute mess.
I’ll put aside the flap over Florida State being excluded from the playoffs because I can see both sides of the argument. I also never liked FSU, so I admit my bias against the Seminoles. I also don’t understand why FSU has eluded the PC police for its mascot and name.
But I digress.
The collegiate model is changing, and revenue streams might need to be improved to fill the growing money pit. It should be noted that the average operating deficit among the 100 major programs stood at $18.8 million in 2019.
“Almost nobody is in good shape, and the few schools in decent shape are experiencing a world that’s much more unstable and uncertain,” Andrew Zimbalist, a sports economist professor at Smith College, told 247Sports. “Even if they’re in decent shape now, they still have to worry about it.
For example, the Big 10 started as a Midwestern conference that has grown into 18 universities spanning the country from east to west. That’s primarily because the league has the most lucrative TV contracts worth more than $1 billion annually. As the realignment of various leagues started, the Pac-12 took the biggest hit, falling to a mere two schools—Oregon State and Washington State—as Oregon, UCLA, USC, and Washington moved to the Big 10. Arizona, Arizona State, Utah, and Colorado joined the Big 12. Two West Coast teams, UC Berkeley and Stanford, are joining the Atlantic Coast Conference. The Big 12 lost Oklahoma and Texas to the Southeast Conference.
The impetus for conference realignment is rooted in money. That’s why Oklahoma and Texas secretly pursued the SEC in the summer of 2021 and opted to surrender $100 million to leave the Big 12 one year earlier than expected in 2024. UCLA and USC bolted the Pac-12 for the Big 10 in the summer of 2022 and will begin competing in the wealthiest conference in college athletics in 2024.
The salaries for coaches are out of control. According to an ESPN analysis, well-known programs spent more than $533 million in dead money owed to coaches who were fired without cause with time left on their contracts from 2010 to 2021. Now add the buyout of $76 million to Jimbo Fisher of Texas A&M!
The Wall Street Journal’s Jason Gay reminisced recently about the time Alabama coach Bear Bryant stipulated in his contract that he had to make a dollar less than the university’s president.
Two other changes—the transfer portal and the Name, Image, and Likeness plan—have created even more havoc in college football. According to Higher-ed Ethics Watch, the transfer portal has created “a lack of loyalty to the schools from which they transfer, a lack of loyalty to their teammates, many of whom cannot take advantage of the transfer portal because of their anonymity as a student-athlete, commercialization of college athletics, which once was a fully amateur sport, and outsiders buying the allegiance of student-athletes through promises of being able to financially benefit from their NIL after they transfer.”
Moreover, the NIL program has benefited only a few players and makes little sense when one looks at the top earners. For example, Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter of Colorado earned $4.1 million and $1.8 million, respectively, even though they played on a team that won only four games this year. Arch Manning has an excellent pedigree but has yet to start a game for Texas. Still, he’s estimated to earn nearly $3 million this year.
Simply put, college football is about making more and more money, but only a few colleges and players benefit from the current system.
Plot: The Doctor and Donna are lost at a spaceship at the end of the universe. The Tardis has skedaddled and they are only left with each other a robot and each other and each other but who is who?
Writing: It’s a tough call because it’s such a different type of episode. It’s both deep and loose with various clues all over the place. Also given the nature of the episode we don’t know how much is necessary to set up the final special, how much is just for the sake of now and how much is just for fun. I think it’s the type of episode you need to watch 2 or 3 times to really judge and thanks to the nature of the specials you might not be able to judge it standing alone till you see number three but one thing is certain, it’s head and shoulders above the last one and more in keeping with the hopes of fans. Too bad they couldn’t have led with this one but I guess you needed Donna on board and functional to do so.
Acting: With the exception of the very start and the very end it’s pretty much Tate and Tennant and they carry it very well. I’m likely biased because I’m fond of him but Bernard Cribbins appearance at the end is the icing on the cake.
Best Moment: The penultimate appearance of Wilfred Mott (like it could be anything else)
Worst Moment: The whole “War Song” Debate and why would British Choir students be singing the US Airforce Hymn anyways?
Oh Brother Moment: The “why is Mrs. Bean funny?” business. The answer should be obvious to a brit: “because it reminds you of Mr. Bean which is hilarious.” How do you not get that?
The What’s going on? Moment(s): Why is Tennant 2.0 constantly crashing the TARDIS into things. Is that basically what the revised Tennant does when flying the TARDIS these days, just crash?
The Ah HA moment: The HADS. You see a lot of it in Big Finish Doctor Who but not so much of it on TV.
The “I Don’t Give a Fig about Newton” moment: Again the Newton stuff might all be a one off gag although the “Mavity” stuff suggests otherwise. Newton is mentioned a bit in the original series and a bit in Big Finish. (For the best of the batch see David Warner as Sir Isaac in the 30 min 5th Doctor and Nyssa story “Summer” in the Circular Time CD. You can buy it here for under $4 )
The Elephant in the Room Part 2: Is it just me or was there a solid attempt to cement the new canon during one of those exchanges?
Bottom Line: Again this isn’t the type of story I’m generally into and to some degree is was CGI driven, possibly to make the writing easier but it generally works as straight Sci-fi, as a psychological thriller and as a deep dive into the characters. It has an unfair advantage as it not only so much better than the one before it and by default so much better than anything of the last few years and it’s slightly hurt by references to said episode but that’s just talking about established events and thus not something that should effect this as it’s own story which it is. But even if The Star Beast and the Jodi Whitaker era didn’t exist this story would stand as a solid if not spectacular Tennant Era story.
4 1/2 stars, but I reserve the right to go as high as 4 3/4 or down to 4 1/4 after watching it a few more times and that’s the thing that gives this a real advantage. Jacqueline King‘s performance not withstand I have absolutely no interest in watching The Star Beast a 2nd time. This story however is very re-watchable in fact it almost demands it.
Ranking in the current season (counting the children in need special)
Destination Skaro
The Wild Blue Yonder
The Star Beast
I wasn’t ranking my top 10 of an era during the Tennant Years as quite a few of them predated the blog but if you take my top 10 of the Capaldi era which is the last list I made from 2017 (via the wayback machine)
And consider the bottom episode on the list: (reviewed via wayback here) it doesn’t make this list, although in fairness it’s again not the type of episode I usually go for.
Update: It just hit me after I published that The other than corrupting the English language the Doctor doesn’t actually save anyone or have any real effect on events except to almost screw things up. If he never lands there the ship explodes and the bad guys are defeated, it just happens without Donna & he almost dying in the process.
In an op-ed from last month that was credited to the Washington Post editorial board–ominously, it was published to mark Thanksgiving Day–readers are warned about the continuous ideological divide among young people.
Ideological polarization is now a mainstay of American politics. Millions of young Americans went home this Thanksgiving and potentially found themselves in uncomfortable situations with relatives — especially uncles, apparently — who love former president Donald Trump, hate vaccination or think the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection had very fine people on both sides.
Of course, the Washington Post doesn’t mention in that op-ed the many failed and unpopular leftist policies of the Joe Biden administration, such as reckless spending and an attack on fossil fuels that have caused the worst inflation rates in decades, open borders that have migrants sleeping in police stations and worse, an American-weakness approach to foreign affairs that has led to wars in Ukraine and Israel, and ramming anti-nature transgenderism down our throats.
Locally, our major cities are becoming unlivable because of rampant lawlessness caused by full-time criminals who are emboldened by catch-and-release Democratic so-called prosecutors.
When, you are a liberal, you are never wrong. Never. Just ask a liberal about that.
More from that editorial:
The problem with polarization, though, is that it has effects well beyond the political realm, and these can be difficult to anticipate. One example is the collapse of American marriage. A growing number of young women are discovering that they can’t find suitable male partners. As a whole, men are increasingly struggling with, or suffering from, higher unemployment, lower rates of educational attainment, more drug addiction and deaths of despair, and generally less purpose and direction in their lives. But it’s not just that. There’s a growing ideological divide, too. Since Mr. Trump’s election in 2016, the percentage of single women ages 18-30 who identify as liberal has shot up from slightly over 20 percent to 32 percent. Young men have not followed suit. If anything, they have grown more conservative.
However, that polarization is the fault of libs. Yes, I said it.
Look at what Axios, in a biased piece, said in 2021. The stats come from a Generation Lab/Axios poll:
Between the lines: Democrats argue that modern GOP positions, spearheaded by former President Trump — are far outside of the mainstream and polite conversation [bold print emphasis mine].
Some have expressed unyielding [again, my emphasis] positions on matters of identity — including abortion, LGBTQ rights and immigration — where they argue human rights, and not just policy differences, are at stake.
Women are more likely than men to take a strong partisan stance in their personal choices.
41% of women would go on a date with someone who voted for the opposing candidate, compared to 67% of men.
A woman named Lyz, who has a Substack titled Men Yell at Me, doesn’t think the Post op-ed goes far-leftist enough. Her post has the headline “Liberal women should not marry Republican men.” Lyz used to be married to a conservative man. And her idea of “compromise” is that liberals–by now a theme will be apparent here–are always right.
The use of the word “someone” here is particularly nefarious, because it’s not just “someone” being asked to compromise. It’s women. It’s women being chided for not partnering with men who do not agree that they should have the right to an abortion, equal pay, a living wage, and childcare for those inevitable children they ought to have. (Because, in case you missed it, there is a moral panic about women not having babies as well.) It’s women being asked to martyr themselves on the cross of heterosexual marriage in order to prop up the status quo.
I’m a conservative and many of my friends are. Not one of us doesn’t believe in “equal pay.” Some conservatives are pro-abortion–but almost no liberals are. I could go on, but for the sake of brevity I won’t.
Returning to marriage: Successful relationships involve compromise. And that does not mean changing your political stances. What happened to, “We agree to disagree?”
Some liberals–maybe most–don’t get it.
“It’s my way or the highway,” leads to traffic jams filled with cars with no passengers.
Dan Bongino often says, “The problem is we as conservatives think liberals are people with bad ideas. Liberals think conservatives are bad people with ideas. There’s a big difference there.”
Indeed, there is.
John Ruberry, who has been happily married for nearly three decades, regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.
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