lostrune2 comments

Latest news: China economy going bad to worse

"How much worse can China's economic slowdown get?"

https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/how-much-worse-can-chinas-economic-slowdown-get-2023-08-15/

"China's economic growth is collapsing amid deflation, debt, housing woes"

https://www.ft.com/content/03f028d6-3b6d-456c-a57b-b08590f1828f

"China's Fading Recovery Reveals Deeper Economic Struggles"

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/china-s-fading-recovery-reveals-deeper-economic-struggles-commodities-roundup-1dd97f1c

"China made the deepest cut since 2020 to a key interest rate before posting a disappointing July report card"

https://www.businessinsider.com/china-economy-key-interest-rate-deepest-cut-since-2020-july-2023-8

"China Slashes Rates, Suspends Youth Jobless Data as Economy Signals Sharper Downturn - Retail sales, factory output miss expectations as overall urban unemployment rises"

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-slashes-rates-suspends-youth-jobless-data-as-economy-signals-sharper-downturn-418301d6

The youth making their mark

They have to live on this Earth longer than the old farts

The country will be almost at a standstill when the semifinal is staged.

The Australian men's basketball team, preparing for the FIBA World Cup starting later this month, is just one of the many teams adjusting match or practice times to ensure they can watch the national women's soccer team.

Led by Atlanta Hawks guard Patty Mills, the Boomers moved up their warmup game against Brazil by a few hours on Wednesday so they and their supporters could see the broadcast of the Women's World Cup semifinal.

That's why the Aussies punch above their weight and have winning sports tradition despite a relatively small population - because they support all their sports athletes

Good for them

Those who don't support their women have losing traditions for a nation

Twitter fired a lot of its workers

Ad companies need Twitter support staff. They don't want to put their money in, then find out they can't get help from a non-existent support staff

Would ya buy a product where if ya need support ya may not get it?

That's why a lot of ad companies are hesitant to put their money into Twitter now

Nice gesture but...the average number of birdies by a PGA golfer is only around 4 per round and there are 4 rounds in the US PGA Tour's FedEx Cup.

There are 3 tournaments in the FedEx Cup playoffs

The FedEx Cup playoffs comprise three events. Seventy players qualified for this week's tournament, 50 will advance to next week's BMW Championship and 30 will advance to the season-ending Tour Championship.

China tried it

It didn't work

Both director Greta Gerwig and actress Margot Robbie consider "Barbie" a feminist movie with a strong main lead who addresses the good and the bad issues with Barbie, and having multiple Barbies to be each as valid as the original blonde Barbie. They wouldn't have done it otherwise

In fact, Margot encouraged Mattel to become involved with the movie and be part of the polarizing Barbie conversation. “In that very first meeting, we impressed upon Ynon [Kreiz, Mattel CEO] we are going to honor the legacy of your brand, but if we don’t acknowledge certain things — if we don’t say it, someone else is going to say it,” she said. “So you might as well be a part of that conversation.”

Part of the vision was ensuring that Robbie was not the only Barbie in the movie. Robbie has the stereotypical Barbie look, but the movie had to drive home the point that there’s no one way to be Barbie.

“If [Mattel] hadn’t made that change to have a multiplicity of Barbies, I don’t think I would have wanted to attempt to make a Barbie film,” Robbie said. “I don’t think you should say, ‘This is the one version of what Barbie is, and that’s what women should aspire to be and look like and act like.’”

Her gymnastics may be the least of her concerns. Her all-around score of 59.100 was the highest in the world since the Code of Points was updated in 2022, and that's with her taking a half-point deduction on vault so that coach Laurent Landi could stand on the podium to spot her just in case.

And she just came back

If that doesn't spell GOAT, dunno what is

The US is just too young for this tournament (half the team are making World Cup debuts). They didn't understand how to start raring to go from the very first game, then ramp up it as the tournament goes along. Instead, they putz around in the group stage, and didn't develop the killer instinct to score goals despite having the 2nd highest most shots. Should be a learning lesson for the youngsters to take it seriously from the start

Good on Sweden. It was a great game. And this loss is great for the US, with all the condemnation coming the teams way, them injecting social politics into the sport, not singing the national anthem, Rapinoe demoralized and poisoned what was once a great team.

How do ya explain them winning the World Cup 2 straight times when Rapinoe was in it - the last one when she was team captain? Can't be greater than a World Cup-winning team

(The team of the 1990s was the US, but the team of the 2000s was Germany, then the team of the 2010s was the US again. Do ya wanna go back more than 2 decades ago to the 90s team?)

US lost because Sweden played better. That’s it.

No, the US played better but didn't score. PKs are a crapshoot. That's football

(Incidentally, PKs are also considered a draw in the stats sheet, so technically they're still unbeaten since 2011)

Remember when petrol stations were staffed by skilled people who knew about car maintenance? Thing of the past.

Cars are so complicated nowadays that it's not advisable to trust petrol station pumpers to service it. Leave it to the mechanics

Once Rapinoe is gone and their abysmal coach is also out of the picture and replaced, I think the US women's Soccer team can come back as strong as they were back in the day before these women ruined the team and demoralized it,

Rapinoe was there the last 2 times the US won the World Cup. She was there "back in the day," as you say it. In fact, for the last World Cup title, she was the team captain!

Here is the history of matches between these two national teams.

Actually, Norway and Japan had met just once before at a World Cup - in 1999, when Norway won 4-0

Oppenheimer doesn't even have a release date in Japan, so the Barbenheimer meme won't work here

Barbenheimer only works when both films are launched at the same time - the dichotomy gets to play off each other, and the whole thing becomes a cultural event that brings people to the theater

This is a game where stats lie

If looking at the stats, you'd think Spain dominated the game - shots, corners, possession, etc.

All except in the only stat that matters - the score, where Japan dominated Spain

A slap on the wrist. Porn of any kind is bad enough but this kind of cements his true colors.

It was a slap on the wrist because it was a no-nothing case

He bulk-bought boxes and boxes of vintage and kitsch pornography. The authorities went through it all with a fine-tooth comb until they came up with a handful of pictures that they said were "child porn." The case was so weak that the DA wasn't even going to go forward with charges, but the city attorney decided to file a case on the very last day they could. That's why child porn charges were dropped later because they had no case, and only given probation

Learning a language teaches your brain how to learn languages

Japan is doing great carrying Asia

China is garbage now, getting trashed 1-6

Mighty Brazil is out too - how are they gonna be without Marta

Soccer is usually not featured much in US TV sports coverage

It's always on ESPN SportsCenter and Fox, which broadcasts the games

Both movies are vastly outperforming expectations - Barbie and Oppenheimer are getting good critic and audience scores:

88% & 84% - https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/barbie

93% & 91% - https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/oppenheimer_2023

CinemaScores - both A's!

https://www.cinemascore.com/

Showing the world as dominated by good looking blonde persons is the opposite of woke.. If it was a woke movie, Barbie would be a transgender woman and Ken would be gay.

The director and actress consider it a feminist movie with a strong main lead who addresses the issues with Barbie, and having multiple Barbies to be each as valid as the original blonde Barbie

I haven’t seen it, but I’m guessing it must not be even a little woke, for we have been well informed that when a movie goes woke, the only possible result is that they will also go broke.

So the Barbie movie must be the opposite with these kind of profits. The MAGA of toy movies.

Well, the movie production even argued with the Mattel CEO about addressing the good and bad issues regarding Barbie

"Mattel President Flew to London to Argue With Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig Over an Off-Brand ‘Barbie’ Scene: ‘The Nuance Isn’t There’ on the Page"

https://variety.com/2023/film/news/mattel-ceo-argued-margot-robbie-barbie-scene-off-brand-1235655398/

Margot (Barbie) has previously said that she originally didn't believe the movie would ever get made because of the "unexpectedly deep" plot. She even told Fandango, "[Director] Greta kinda pushes [the movie] in directions that I didn't think [Mattel] would let us go in. I think a big part of that was kind of acknowledging the things that people find problematic about Barbie, as well as the things that people love about Barbie."

In fact, Margot encouraged Mattel to become involved with the movie and be part of the polarizing Barbie conversation. “In that very first meeting, we impressed upon Ynon [Kreiz, Mattel CEO] we are going to honor the legacy of your brand, but if we don’t acknowledge certain things — if we don’t say it, someone else is going to say it,” she said. “So you might as well be a part of that conversation.”

Part of the vision was ensuring that Robbie was not the only Barbie in the movie. Robbie has the stereotypical Barbie look, but the movie had to drive home the point that there’s no one way to be Barbie.

“If [Mattel] hadn’t made that change to have a multiplicity of Barbies, I don’t think I would have wanted to attempt to make a Barbie film,” Robbie said. “I don’t think you should say, ‘This is the one version of what Barbie is, and that’s what women should aspire to be and look like and act like.’”

During an interview with Vogue last month in May, Margot explained that the movie aimed to cater to both fans of the Mattel dolls, but also those that don't like or even 'hate' the dolls.

'We of course would want to honor the 60-year legacy that this brand has,' she explained to the outlet. 'But we have to acknowledge that there are a lot of people who aren't fans of Barbie.'

'And in fact, aren’t just indifferent to Barbie. They actively hate Barbie. And have a real issue with Barbie. We need to find a way to acknowledge that,' the star added.

“They take Barbie and they address both the positives and the not-so-positives about what she’s meant in culture – how she started as a revolution, but as time went on, not so much – like, how do we bring Barbie into the 21st century…how do we make that relevant to girls today, who did not grow up seeing themselves represented in that story?”

there is no way you can do a live action adaptation of this program just on Netflix. Maybe a big budget film using a hell of a ton of cgi then maybe and that’s a big maybe

Netflix live-action One Piece has a budget of US$18 million per episode! Do ya want even more money?!

https://collider.com/one-piece-netflix-live-action-budget/

Netflix's live-action One Piece adaptation reportedly boasts a budget of $18 million per episode, making it one of the most expensive shows ever made. To put into context how much that is compared to other massive shows, One Piece has a bigger per-episode budget than The Sandman, See, Game of Thrones, and The Mandalorian, all of which cost $15 million per episode.

“Barbie” has rapidly accumulated $351.4 million in U.S. and Canadian theaters, a rate that will soon make it the biggest box-office hit of the summer. Every day it’s played, “Barbie" has made at least $20 million.

And the “Barbie” effect isn't just in North America. The film made $122.2 million internationally over the weekend. Its global tally has reached $775 million. It's the kind of business that astounds even veteran studio executives.

Dayuuuuuummmm!!! And people wondered who's gonna see these movies, lol

So make good movies, and people will go see it, right

No doom-sayers

Go Japan!

The 26-year-old American won the 800-meter freestyle on Saturday at the world championships to become the first swimmer to win six golds in the same event at worlds. It was also her 16th individual world title, breaking a tie with Michael Phelps for the most golds at worlds.

GOAT

A lot of people went to the Barbenheimer movies

Ya guys don't watch streaming shows?

In a separate case, Chelsea will also pay a settlement of 10 million euros to UEFA for incorrect financial information submitted between 2012 and 2019 when the club was owned by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich.

Chelsea’s current American-led ownership group reported “potentially incomplete financial reporting under the club’s previous ownership” in May last year, UEFA said.

The old Russian ownership exposed for cheating, color us surprised /s

buy MIG next time...

Lol, MIG has some of the worst safety records that it has a nickname - "Flying Coffin"

"Why despite a dismal safety record, MIG aircrafts are still in service?"

http://tehelka.com/why-despite-a-dismal-safety-record-mig-aircrafts-are-still-in-service/

Rules are rules

Same as when the Russian sports institution cheated by doping their athletes, they're rightly banned for breaking the rules

Both saw revenues jump as they delivered more aircraft to clients. Boeing boosted revenue by 18 percent during the quarter to $19.8 billion, while Airbus posted a 24 percent increase to $17.6 billion.

That's good business for airline manufacturers