Liberty

The pattern that I'm seeing is the "oh, they're just looking for attention" which has been said of women talking about these kinds of things forever. We've recently seen just how frequent what they were talking about was with Trump/Weinstein/Cosby/that doctor for the US gymnastics olympics team/etc. I'm NOT saying that people should be afraid of kidnappings as something statistically likely (probably more likely if you're a pretty 20yo drunk woman rather than a 40yo man, though), but it's likely that someone traumatized by an attempt would end her post with "be careful out there about people pretending to be uber drivers". Your objections of no date and police records for an anonymous post don't make sense. It wouldn't be anonymous otherwise. And if you post anonymously with a throwaway reddit account, what attention are you getting exactly? I know we have intuition about how likely these things should be and when we hear about them frequently it sounds fake, but the internet is a big place and if millions of people converge on reddit, there's going to be a ton of unlikely stories that are true. And how do you share something that happened to you like that WITHOUT looking like you want attention? It's a catch 22 and people can always shoot you down and disregard you with no reason... So these objections are not good enough for me. Doesn't mean you have to believe everything you read, it's a judgement call, but if I think "assume this story happened for sure, how would it be written differently than it is now by a traumatized person trying to stay anonymous" and I don't see too much. I don't know what happened or not, or if it's fake, but I don't agree with what you call red flags. If she really was attacked by guys speaking another language, is she supposed to not mention it because people will say she's just trying to incite against foreigners? If they really said they were an uber, should she not say it because... But then you'd probably say it wasn't detailed enough to sound credible. With that kind of thinking you can try to tear down any story, real or not, and end up never believing anything that isn't convenient to you, just like people didn't believe women being sexually harassed for so long. So I just posted it as something that I think probably happened, and if anyone can point to a red flag more specific than yours, I'm totally willing to change my mind. I'm just explaining why I disagree with you on these. Here's a current story of disappearance, and I don't know what happened there either, but it does happen (or maybe she just ran away or had an accident or whatever): https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/26/us/missing-university-of-iowa-student-mollie-tibbetts/index.html

That it does not sound credible, obviously. If there were multiple women randomly nabbed outside of night clubs in order to be trafficked, there would be a media frenzy. But there's no such thing. There's a story posted to a subreddit heavily dedicated towards outrage content. You're saying something different. I'm not saying it's common, or that we can know it was trafficking and not just rape or something else (she's saying what she thinks it was, doesn't mean it's right). But I know that people disappear and it doesn't always make the media, often because we don't know what happened, especially if it's not blondes... No. The person who posted this, who's also a member of this forum, wrote: https://twitter.com/YoloCapMgmt/status/1023055681815900161 "Scary stuff for women to be mindful of. Seems like a low probability event but I know a couple people (including myself) who were snatched as young kids. https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/92hu6m/i_was_almost_takentrafficked_in_austin_tx/" Do you want to see their police report too?

Yeah, it could be fake. It's a story shared on the internet. What's your point? I'm not saying pass a law based on it. I'm sharing it for exactly what it is, just like when someone on this forum shares a story about their lives and I might no ask for police records of it. Human trafficking is real. Gang rapes are real. If someone is sharing an experience under an anonymous account, do you think they're going to give an exact date and police record so they are immediately identified and doxxed and harassed by the hordes of 4chan trolls on the internet? I didn't take it as a generalized thing against eastern europeans or taxi/uber drivers, just as someone recounting their own specific experience. Would it have been better for you if it was the fabled white van full of dudes with NYC accents?

Something a bit different, but I thought this first hand-account was worth sharing: Via @YoloCapMgmt

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/08/06/les-moonves-and-cbs-face-allegations-of-sexual-misconduct

Liberty, If you read the tweet by Mr. Browder, that you linked to earlier in this topic, it contains: [My emphasis here.] Mr. Browder uses the Russian website press release as source, and by logic, you don't see any basis in that press release as basis for Mr. Browder's tweet, for the part that I've emphasized. So, my question here is: What is this? 1. Mr. Browder takes the public Russian statement for more than what it is, by quoting it incorrectly in his tweet, thereby elaborating on it, with no real basis?, or 2. Mr. Browder takes the public Russian statement as par, but is in possesion of further information, which he includes in his tweet, without adressing source? In short: Who are those public US officials, that are involved in this new [<-?] case, mentioned in the aforementioned tweet by Mr. Browder, not mentioned in the Russian Press Release? John, it seems like I had misread your earlier post. The way I read it, it sounded a bit like: "But also look at what the Russians are saying about Browder, please go read their side of the story" and "how can he make his tweet with the linked article" as in "he has no reason to complain, he's a criminal", which elicited my reaction of "they have zero credibility" (they could accuse him of killing Archduke Ferdinand, it wouldn't change anything to me...). Now I understand what you meant, thanks for adding further explanation. The twitter link that I sent is a thread. If you look down it, you'll see that Browder links to other articles including this one: https://rg.ru/2018/07/17/rf-napravit-v-ssha-zapros-o-neobhodimosti-doprosa-eks-posla-makfola.html Translated: Putin is basically trying to go after those who put sanctions on his cronies, and he knows that even if he doesn't get them, he's creating a huge chilling effect by trying to scare other officials who might think about going after the Russian Mafia by making it known that he's going to try to reach them even outside of Russia (as he has done repeatedly to Browder). Russia is not a normal state, yet the international community kinds of pretends that it is. So it's a bit like if the local crime boss was also a police officer, and when you displease him, he can put a warrant in your name and try to make your life hell through official-looking channels and charges, picking you up in a police car while wearing a uniform, etc... But I'm also assuming that Browder as the main target, mentioned by name by Putin in Helsinki, has more information than just what is public. He might not always have a convenient article to link to with everything in it. If you've read Browder's book, you know that Kyle Parker was instrumental in getting the sanctions against Russia turned into law, and now Putin is also going after him: More background here; https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/meet-the-capitol-hill-staffer-whos-in-putins-craw/ There's a podcast with Parker here: https://ricochet.com/podcast/q-and-a/one-of-putins-wanted-the-excellent-kyle-parker/ And with Browder here: https://ricochet.com/podcast/q-and-a/wanted-by-putin-whats-it-like-to-be-bill-browder/ In which he says that Russia has tried to pin multiple murders on him! Yes, they pretend he's a serial killer...

Go ahead, what would you like to add?

Twitter thread explaining what I was talking about on margin hit after a big M&A spike (like we saw in Q1):

Browder's lawyer was tortured and killed because he helped uncover corruption (it was actually a $200m+ tax-refund scam that the Russian taxpayers paid for), Browder had to flee the country and abandon all he had built there. He successfully pushed for sanctions against the criminals responsible for the situation and many countries, after looking deeply at the facts, followed suit. Ever since, Russia has been going after Browder and trying to discredit him and get the sanctions removed. In that context, and the context of Russia being a severely corrupt mafia-like state that kills journalists, jails political opponents and controls tightly the media and judicial system, I'm sorry, but official Kremlin statements about Browder or the Magnitsky act don't have any credibility, and the fact that Russia is trying to use Interpol and other judicial means to reach a foreigner that stood up to it is scary af (including trying to make a deal with Trump to get Browder to Russia, a deal that Trump called 'incredible"). He'd never get a fair trial there. He's lucky he's a UK citizen now. I don't care that the BBC compressed their long statement into a short one, the BBC is not a propaganda mouthpiece. Read Browder's book and see how the charges against him in russia and his trials came about, you'll see what kind of Godfather/Kafka crossover they're dealing with over there... I don't remember the exact details, but basically the police raided his offices, and later he learned that with some corporate documents they were able to do some stuff in the name of some of his companies in some remote part of russia, then they hired a lawyer in his name who went to court and pleaded guilty for him. Every time he's tried to show Russian authorities proof of what he discovered or his paper trail, they basically ignored him and in a country without a free judiciary, nobody's going to go after Putin and the oligarch. Crazy banana republic stuff.

That sounds right. I was looking over the past handful of years and to me this seemed like a decent amount. It's about the average run-rate of 2016. So if a slow Q now was an average Q two years ago, we're moving in the right direction. As you mention, M&A is inherently lumpy. I'm sure the market would've preferred them to have deployed 175m in Q1 and 175 in Q2, but that's not how the world works. Some day we'll likely wake up to them having bought something even bigger than Acceo and TSS, but who knows when?

They have zero credibility. Bunch of thugs and crooks know that the Magnitsky act is one of the only things that hurt them at present, because it throws sand into their game of pillaging Russia and spending and hiding the money in the West. When people like Putin or Xi or Ergodan or whoever are going after you on trumped up charges of corruption or tax evasion, you know you did something to piss them off.

New attack by the mafia-state:

Yeah, after Q1's monster M&A, it's normal to see a hit to margins like this. It takes them a bit of time to bring the margins up. Still deployed a decent amount if you keep it in historical context and don't just compare to Q1. Usually when cashflows have lagged like this they caught up later, so I'm not too worried there, prob just timing. There's also so noise from FX, with almost 9m hit to ANI.

Q2: http://www.csisoftware.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/CSI-Press-Release-Q2-2018.pdf http://www.csisoftware.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Q2-2018-Shareholder-Report.pdf

Dispute about new builds in NY: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/07/ny-threatens-to-kick-charter-out-of-the-state-after-broadband-failures/

Google already tried to compete with FB. It was called Google+.

Ben Thompson argued that data portability will tend to favor the biggest aggregators. They'll suck in data from any interesting new entrant, making them strongers, while new entrants will still have high barriers to entry (now including things like GDPR and other bureaucratic burdens), and getting a network effect started is still very hard (proof: apps have been able to use phone contacts to boostrap social networks for a long time, yet we're not seeing many flourish).

We're not talking about the same things, and you seem to be conflating environmental movements and protecting the environment, which sometimes overlap and sometimes don't. I'm also not saying that technological progress can't improve things, clearly it's something I often write about. Just that it would be much worse without regulation in situations where there is market failure, like if catalytic converters were an option on cars or whatever, I've already given examples. In cases where there is clear market forces present in favor of cleaner tech, like solar becoming cheaper than other sources, then that's not a market failure, even though solar would be even more competitive if fossil fuels couldn't externalize a lot of their costs to society's health/the environment and hadn't been so subsidized (directly and indirectly) for decades. If you're saying that environmentalists have often been misguided or ineffective, or even counter-productive, and sometimes even less necessary because there's already a societal consensus, then I totally agree. But that's a different discussion. I'm talking about improving results (consequentialism), not having good intentions or activism or whatever. And I'm pro-nuclear, have been for a long time. My fave design is the liquid-fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR), but I'd be happy with a push for smaller uranium breeders or other IV-V generation designs too.

My Q&A answers: http://www.csisoftware.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/QA-July-25-2018-Final.pdf They didn't answer my questions this time... :'(

Transcript now available for those curious: https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2018/Q2/Q218-earnings-call-transcript.pdf

Watched part of this with the translated subtitles, as I don't speak German. The i-Pace seems a bit disappointing on a few fronts.. Too bad, because it seemed like the most promising EV in a while (that is actually being produced, there's always a ton of show cars and renderings and spec sheets floating around).

I didn't mean how it'll turn out in the future, I meant when you wrote the first sentence of your previous post, what idea did you have in mind when you wrote that word. I think it changes the meaning of your post, and I'm wondering which you meant.

By "disfavoured", do you mean "out of favor/unloved", or do you mean "disadvantaged"?

I haven't seen one yet, but the book 'Becoming Facebook' was pretty good.

https://weitzinvestments.com/resources/documents/Literature_and_Publications/Commentary/2018/AnalystCorner_CharterCommunications.pdf?1532449650001?dtr Weitz on CHTR, found via @BluegrassCap