Sometimes shiny!pretty isn't enough
Over the weekend, why_me_why_not pointed out that HBO was free, so I tuned in for the premier of season 5 of True Blood. I'm actually kind of sorry I did: it was heinous. The storylines made no sense and didn't really seem consistent with the characters, even as divergent as they are in the show from the book's canon. (Which is to say, the TV series has only character and place names and vampires and shifters in common with the books -- pretty much everything else of substance has been abandoned.) ASkars naked is always a plus, but even he is not enough to make me tune back in.
On the same front: Suits. I want to like this show. It's got Gabriel Macht as the hot, brilliant Harvey Spector. But the entire time I'm watching, my brain screams phrases like, "unauthorized practice of law" and "bar sanctions", and I can't watch. :(
~~~
On Jamie Dimon's testimony yesterday: I watched it from my office and was on the speakerphone with a colleague who was watching simultaneously. The hypocrisy, greed, and hubris on display were...not shocking, given the utter disrespect I feel for my elected officials today: I was ashamed of Congress, ashamed that these buffoons are the people selected to make decisions for America and represent us and our views to the world.
Republicans on the committee basically asked Dimon how he wanted to be regulated. Because that's what legislators do, apparently, ask the subjects of laws how they want to be regulated? Well, maybe when they've accepted so much lobbying money from the financial industry and are hoping to be employed by banks or sit on their boards immediately after leaving office, that is how they behave. As I said to my colleague, they should've just come out and asked if he wanted his ass kissed or his cock sucked.
On the inability to distinguish between a hedge and prop trading: if you can't distinguish between them or classify the transaction you're about to engage in, perhaps you shouldn't be doing it. And it morphed? What a crock of shit -- the transaction didn't change, it was what it was, JPM's CIO just didn't gauge the risk properly and got caught on the wrong side. Essentially, they were gambling and lost.
On the same front: Suits. I want to like this show. It's got Gabriel Macht as the hot, brilliant Harvey Spector. But the entire time I'm watching, my brain screams phrases like, "unauthorized practice of law" and "bar sanctions", and I can't watch. :(
~~~
On Jamie Dimon's testimony yesterday: I watched it from my office and was on the speakerphone with a colleague who was watching simultaneously. The hypocrisy, greed, and hubris on display were...not shocking, given the utter disrespect I feel for my elected officials today: I was ashamed of Congress, ashamed that these buffoons are the people selected to make decisions for America and represent us and our views to the world.
Republicans on the committee basically asked Dimon how he wanted to be regulated. Because that's what legislators do, apparently, ask the subjects of laws how they want to be regulated? Well, maybe when they've accepted so much lobbying money from the financial industry and are hoping to be employed by banks or sit on their boards immediately after leaving office, that is how they behave. As I said to my colleague, they should've just come out and asked if he wanted his ass kissed or his cock sucked.
On the inability to distinguish between a hedge and prop trading: if you can't distinguish between them or classify the transaction you're about to engage in, perhaps you shouldn't be doing it. And it morphed? What a crock of shit -- the transaction didn't change, it was what it was, JPM's CIO just didn't gauge the risk properly and got caught on the wrong side. Essentially, they were gambling and lost.