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bracketsoffear · 3 months ago

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Vast Leitner Reading List

The full list of submissions for the Vast Leitner bracket. Bold titles are ones which were accepted to appear in the bracket. Synopses and propaganda can be found below the cut. Be warned, however, that these may contain spoilers!

Abedi, Isabel: Forbidden World Adams, Douglas: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Asimov, Isaac: Nightfall

Borges, Jorge Luis: El Aleph Bradbury, Ray: Kaleidoscope Bradbury, Ray: No Particular Night or Morning

Caine, Rachel: Weather Wardens Clarke, Arthur C.: Maelstrom II Clarke, Susanna: Piranesi Coates, Darcy: From Below Coleridge, Samuel Taylor: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Curtis, Wardon Allan: The Monster of Lake LaMetrie

Foster, Alan Dean: He

Gardner, Martin: Thang Godwin, Tom: The Nothing Equation Gonzalez, J.F.: Clickers Gorky, Maxim: The Song of the Stormy Petrel Grant, Mira: Into the Drowning Deep

Hawking, Lucy and Stephen: George's Secret Key to the Universe Hardinge, Frances: Deeplight

Inglis, James: Night Watch

King, Stephen: The Jaunt

Lewis, C.S.: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Liu, Cixin: The Dark Forest (Three Body Problem Book 2) Lovecraft, H.P.: Dagon

Macfarlane, Robert: Underland Marquitz, Tim and Nickolas Sharps, ed.: Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters Melville, Herman: Moby Dick Mortimore, Jim: Beltempest

North, Claire: The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

Oesterheld, Héctor Germán: El Eternauta

Poe, Edgar Allen: A Descent into the Maelström Pratchett, Terry and Steven Baxter: The Long Earth series Purser-Hallard, Philip: Of the City of the Saved...

Reed, Robert: An Exaltation of Larks Reisman, Michael: Simon Bloom: The Gravity Keeper

Sanderson, Brandon: Firefight Seuss, Dr.: Horton Hears a Who! Simmons, Dan: The Terror Swift, Jonathan: Gulliver's Travels

Tennyson, Alfred: The Kraken Tolstoy, Leo: War & Peace

Verne, Jules: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

Abedi, Isabel: Forbidden World

"Reginald has gained a dangerous power. He can shrink anything he likes. And he wants nothing less than the world's most famous buildings. The originals in miniaturized form, of course. Gradually he builds up a huge landscape in his cellar. But Reginald has overlooked something, or more precisely someone. Otis was locked in the Statue of Liberty and Olivia had fled from the police into the famous Berlin department store KaDeWe, when suddenly at night the buildings shrank. Now the children are the size of a fingernail... While they fight for their lives, chaos breaks out in the world outside: where have the monuments gone? And who has stolen them?" Vast stuff: Otis' fear of heights is a huge plot point and he was born on a plane. While Olivia wants to become a pilot. Many scenes of being in high places and terrified, and focus on being very small in a big world.

Spoilers: This book contains two Djinns one that can change the sizes of things one that can make them small and one that can make them big. But they are running out of magic fuel so staying small is the big fear of the characters.

Adams, Douglas: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The series swings wildly between cosmic dread and comedy, from the insignificance of the Earth's destruction to the chaotic results of the Infinite Improbability Drive to the very notion of the Total Perspective Vortex, the story hammers home again and again the infinitesimal nature of our existence in the vastness of the universe.

***

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy": Seconds before the Earth is demolished for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is saved by Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised Guide. Together they stick out their thumbs to the stars and begin a wild journey through time and space.

"The Restaurant at the End of the Universe": Facing annihilation at the hands of warmongers is a curious time to crave tea. It could only happen to the cosmically displaced Arthur Dent and his comrades as they hurtle across the galaxy in a desperate search for a place to eat.

"Life, the Universe and Everything": The unhappy inhabitants of planet Krikkit are sick of looking at the night sky- so they plan to destroy it. The universe, that is. Now only five individuals can avert Armageddon: mild-mannered Arthur Dent and his stalwart crew.

"So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish": Back on Earth, Arthur Dent is ready to believe that the past eight years were all just a figment of his stressed-out imagination. But a gift-wrapped fishbowl with a cryptic inscription conspires to thrust him back to reality. So to speak.

"Mostly Harmless": Just when Arthur Dent makes the terrible mistake of starting to enjoy life, all hell breaks loose. Can he save the Earth from total obliteration? Can he save the Guide from a hostile alien takeover? Can he save his daughter from herself?

The incomprehensible vastness of the universe is a theme repeated throughout the 'Trilogy". Notable examples include the guide initially describes Earth as 'harmless", after being stranded there for several years, Ford revises this to "mostly harmless". The Total Perspective Vortex, a machine that extrapolates a model of the entire universe, along with a microscopic dot labeled "you are here" this sense of perspective destroys the victim’s mind.

Asimov, Isaac: Nightfall

Lagash's six suns means an Endless Daytime, except for once every 2,049 years, when five suns set and the only sun left in the hemisphere is eclipsed by the moon. The scientists are trying to prepare civilization and themselves for the upcoming nightfall, but when it does occur, no-one is prepared for the thirty thousand stars that suddenly appear in the night sky. This leads to the far more devastating revelation how tiny and insignificant they are by comparison.

"Aton, somewhere, was crying, whimpering horribly like a terribly frightened child. 'Stars — all the Stars — we didn't know at all. We didn't know anything. We thought six stars in a universe is something the Stars didn't notice is Darkness forever and ever and ever and the walls are breaking in and we didn't know we couldn't know and anything —'"

Borges, Jorge Luis: El Aleph

In Borges' story, the Aleph is a point in space that contains all other points. Anyone who gazes into it can see everything in the universe from every angle simultaneously, without distortion, overlapping, or confusion.

Bradbury, Ray: Kaleidoscope

First published in the October 1949 edition of Thrilling Wonder Stories this describes a scene where a spaceship is hit by a meteor and torn apart – ejecting the crew into space. Each astronaut flies off on his own trajectory, hurtling to his doom. For a time they can all communicate through their helmet comms, but slowly, as the separation becomes millions of miles apart, they wind up as solitary figures, alone with his thoughts.

Bradbury, Ray: No Particular Night or Morning

This story takes place during a long interstellar journey. The destination and purpose of the journey are unclear. There are many men (it seems only men) on a large ship. Among them are friends Hitchcock and Clemens. Hitchcock begins to struggle with the idea that there is anything that exists outside of him, that none of it can be proven to exist. Clemens tries to argue with him until Hitchcock is finally treated by the ship’s psychiatrist with the captain’s knowledge, but to no avail. He finally dons a space-suit and leaves the ship. Over the radio he can be heard muttering about how even his own body does not exist.

At one point, Hitchcock is asked why he wanted to go on this journey in the first place. Was he interested in the stars? In seeing other places? In travel? He responds that “It wasn’t going places. It was being between”

Caine, Rachel: Weather Wardens

A speculative fiction series about the secretive bureaucracy that controls the weather. Consequences of this include severely pissing off Mother Earth, sentient storm fronts, and falling from great heights. Often.

Clarke, Arthur C.: Maelstrom II

This short story revolves around an astronaut named Cliff Leyland drifting in a low orbit around the moon after an accident with his capsule's launch. Much of his time is spent waiting to see if he can be rescued and reunited with his family, or is doomed to crash and die.

Clarke, Susanna: Piranesi

Piranesi lives in a place called the House, a world composed of infinite halls and vestibules lined with statues, no two of which are alike. The upper level of the House is filled with clouds, and the lower level with an ocean, which occasionally surges into the middle level following tidal patterns that Piranesi meticulously tracks. He believes he has always lived in the House, and that there are only fifteen people in the world, all but two of whom are long-dead skeletons. The status that decorate the halls and walls of the House are all gigantic and the halls themself are immense and bigger than what any human would be able to build on their own.

Coates, Darcy: From Below

"No light. No air. No escape. Hundreds of feet beneath the ocean's surface, a graveyard waits... Years ago, the SS Arcadia vanished without a trace during a routine voyage. Though a strange, garbled emergency message was broadcast, neither the ship nor any of its crew could be found. Sixty years later, its wreck has finally been discovered more than three hundred miles from its intended course...a silent graveyard deep beneath the ocean's surface, eagerly waiting for the first sign of life. Cove and her dive team have been granted permission to explore the Arcadia's rusting hull. Their purpose is straightforward: examine the wreck, film everything, and, if possible, uncover how and why the supposedly unsinkable ship vanished. But the Arcadia has not yet had its fill of death, and something dark and hungry watches from below. With limited oxygen and the ship slowly closing in around them, Cove and her team will have to fight their way free of the unspeakable horror now desperate to claim them. Because once they're trapped beneath the ocean's waves, there's no going back."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

This epic poem of a sea voyage beautifully encapsulates the horrors of the ocean, from the terrific force of horrific storms and whirlpools to the unsettling infinity of life, both beautiful and strange, that inhabits the depths below. Most of all, however, it shows the horror of being stranded at sea as the ship is becalmed in the doldrums.

"Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean. Water, water, every where, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink. The very deep did rot: Oh Christ! That ever this should be! Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs Upon the slimy sea."

The crew perish one by one, apart from the narrator. He, by killing the albatross, invoked the wrath of the sea. He alone must live on while the others are permitted to escape in death.

Curtis, Wardon Allan: The Monster of Lake LaMetrie

The story of Dr. James McLennegan and his sickly companion Edward Framingham who travel to a lake high up in the Wyoming mountains. When they reach the lake, McLennegan discovers it is home to an Elasmosaurus which attacks him, but he manages to kill it and removes the brain. Shortly afterwards Framingham seemingly commits suicide and McLennegan decides to place Framingham’s brain into the body of the Elasmosaur, as one does. While this works for a bit, the remainder of the story explores the horror of scale as Framingham's inability to adjust to his new size results in him snapping and devouring his now-insignificant former friend.

Foster, Alan Dean: He

A short story detailing an oceanographer's encounter with the last megalodon, a colossal shark that has lived for millions of years. He is feared by all other creatures and the sight of him installs a primal terror in humans.

Gardner, Martin: Thang

https://vintage.failed-dam.org/thang.htm The titular creature is large enough to grasp Earth between two fingers. It clears off all water and ice before chewing the planet, core and all, before it, in turn, is also eaten by a planet-eater eater.

Godwin, Tom: The Nothing Equation

A short story about how being stationed alone in an empty section of space drives a man mad. Like stories about lighthouses, but bigger. Short enough to link a complete ebook.

Gonzalez, J.F.: Clickers

"Phillipsport, Maine is a quaint and peaceful seaside village. But when hundreds of creatures pour out of the ocean and attack, its residents must take up arms to drive the beasts back. They are the Clickers, giant venomous blood-thirsty crabs from the depths of the sea. The only warning to their rampage of dismemberment and death is the terrible clicking of their claws. But these monsters aren't merely here to ravage and pillage. They are being driven onto land by fear. Something is hunting the Clickers. Something ancient and without mercy."

Basically, kaiju crabs invade the land -- because they're fleeing from something even bigger.

Gorky, Maxim: The Song of the Stormy Petrel

"A short poem, text can be found here. It describes the storm, vast and careless masses of water, roaring and ruthless skies, and a mighty storm petrel fearlessly taking on both elements. it even dares the tempest to get more intense, as all other oceanic forms of life (seagulls, grebes, a penguin) hide in horror before the face of the storm. stormy petrel in russian (буревестник), if translated literally, means 'the announcer of the storm'. there is a short old cartoon which depicts how this poem would function as a leitner, although the cartoon is very comedic and lighthearted. unfortunately, i wasn't able to find a version with english subtitles, but i think it would be clear just from the visuals"

Grant, Mira: Into the Drowning Deep

Seven years ago, the Atargatis set off on a voyage to the Mariana Trench to film a “mockumentary” bringing to life ancient sea creatures of legend. It was lost at sea with all hands. Some have called it a hoax; others have called it a maritime tragedy. Now, a new crew has been assembled. But this time they’re not out to entertain. Some seek to validate their life’s work. Some seek the greatest hunt of all. Some seek the truth. But for the ambitious young scientist Victoria Stewart this is a voyage to uncover the fate of the sister she lost. Whatever the truth may be, it will only be found below the waves. But the secrets of the deep come with a price.

Hawking, Lucy and Stephen: George's Secret Key to the Universe

The space aspects of it, as well as the fact that a character gets trapped in a black hole at one point, gives off Vast vibes to me. Synopsis for more info: The main characters in the book are George Greenby, Susan Bellis, Eric Bellis, Annie Bellis, Dr. Reeper, and Cosmos, the world's most powerful computer. Cosmos can draw windows allowing people to look into outer space, as well as doors that act as portals allowing travel into outer space. It starts by describing atoms, stars, planets, and their moons. It then goes on to describe black holes, which remains the topic of focus in the last part of the book. At frequent intervals throughout the book, there are pictures and "fact files" of the different references to universal objects, including a picture of Mars with its moons.

Hardinge, Frances: Deeplight

"In the old days, the islands of the Myriad lived in fear of the gods, great sea monsters that rose up from the Undersea to devour ships and depopulate entire islands. Now, the gods are no more. They tore each other apart in an event known as the Cataclysm. Fragments of their bodies (known as godware) are dredged up and sold. Hark and his best friend Jelt are petty criminals. When they embark on a dangerous scavenging expedition, they stumble across a strange, pulsing piece of godware and things begin to go very, very wrong."

Gods, the ocean depths, and poverty all play into the themes of insignificance in this novel.

Inglis, James: Night Watch

Concerns an interstellar probe which is still functional when our Galaxy is dying. The story ends with the community of probes launched by various races and drawn together by the fact that very few stars are still shining, setting out on the long voyage to a distant and still-young galaxy as the last star of our galaxy burns out behind them.

King, Stephen: The Jaunt

“As a family prepares to be "Jaunted" to Mars in the 24th century, the father entertains his two children by recounting the curious tale of the discovery and history of this crude form of teleportation. He explains how the scientist who serendipitously discovered it quickly learned that it had a disturbing, inexplicable effect on the mice he "sent through"—eventually concluding that they could only survive the "Jaunt effect" while unconscious. That, the father explains, is why all people must undergo general anaesthesia before using the Jaunt.

The father spares his children the gruesome semi-apocryphal account of the first human to be Jaunted awake, a condemned murderer offered a full pardon for agreeing to the experiment. The man "came through" and immediately suffered a massive heart attack, living just long enough to utter a single cryptic phrase: It's eternity in there...

The father also doesn't mention that since that time, roughly thirty people have, voluntarily or otherwise, jaunted while conscious; they either died instantly or emerged insane. One woman was even shoved alive into eternal limbo by her murderous husband, stuck between two jaunt portals. The man was convicted of murder; though his attorneys attempted to argue that he was not guilty on the grounds that his wife was not technically dead, the implications of the same argument served to secure and hasten his execution.

After the father finishes his story, the family is subjected to the sleeping gas and Jaunted to Mars. When the father wakes, he finds that his inquisitive son held his breath in order to experience the Jaunt while conscious…Hair white with shock, corneas yellowed with age, clawing out his own eyes, the boy reveals the terrible nature of the Jaunt: "Longer than you think, Dad! It's longer than you think!"”

Lewis, C.S.: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

"The Dawn Treader is the first ship Narnia has seen in centuries. King Caspian has built it for his voyage to find the seven lords, good men whom his evil uncle Miraz banished when he usurped the throne. The journey takes Edmund, Lucy, and their cousin Eustace to the Eastern Islands, beyond the Silver Sea, toward Aslan's country at the End of the World."

I mean it's a story about trying to get to the end of the world. What's more Vast than that?

Liu, Cixin: The Dark Forest (Three Body Problem Book 2)

I considered other books in the series but this book more than the others deals with the impact of discovering there is other life out in the universe and the distance between worlds as humanity learns an alien fleet is approaching earth at near-light speed. This book is both vast in the scale of the universe but also on a time scale as it covers the 400 years between the fleet’s departure and arrival at earth.

Lovecraft, H.P.: Dagon

Link

The narrator tells of being on a cargo ship that was captured by a German sea-raider in the Pacific. He would eventually escape and drift until he found himself a “black mire”, which was full of rotting fish and more foul stenches. The things that he witnesses in the vast expanse drive him to madness, and eventually he kills himself rather than face the creatures he witnessed there.

Macfarlane, Robert: Underland

A series of essays on "deep time" - that is, viewing the world over timeframes of billions of years, rather than the shorter timeframes we live within & understand. It is essentially the vastness of time. This concept stretches eons into the past and future and is very daunting to read about. The essays all revolve around things underground and often focus on how they're so much larger than us, existing far before us and stretching far beyond.

Also there's a chapter where the author talks about a calving glacier he saw surge upwards hundreds of feet from the sea, unbelievably huge. He recounts how the ice at its base hadn't seen sunlight in eons, and had never even been seen by human eyes, it was so ancient - it then sank underwater again, to once more be hidden. And if that doesn't sound like the origin of a vast avatar idk what does

Marquitz, Tim and Nickolas Sharps, ed.: Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters

From the forward: "Enter Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters. This collection of Kaiju shorts continues the traditions begun by Kaiju pioneers, bringing tales of destruction, hope and morality in the form of giant, city destroying monsters. Even better, the project was funded by Kickstarter, which means you, Dear Reader, made this book possible. And that is a beautiful thing. It means Kaiju, in pop-fiction, are not only alive and well, they’re stomping their way back into the spotlight, where they belong. Featuring amazing artwork, stories from some of the best monster writers around and a publishing team that has impressed me from the beginning, Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters is a welcome addition to the Kaiju genre and an anthology of epic proportions. My inner nine-year-old is shouting at me to shut-up and let you get to the Kaiju. So, without further delay, let’s all enjoy us some Kaiju Rising."

Notable for the fact the majority of the stories within are downer-ending horror short-stories versus more upbeat monster-fighting ones. Several also tackle concepts of an unstoppable, implacable force, themes of religious horror, and other Vast-aligned concepts.

Melville, Herman: Moby Dick

Okay so Ahab is Hunt, but the thing he's hunting is 1000% Vast. The book is very detailed in its descriptions of the enormity of whales and of the sea. Also, Moby Dick is basically outright stated as being God.

***

We all know what The Whale is about. Ahab has beef with Moby Dick, so he vows to hunt it. This is a particularly intelligent, huge whale that everyone advises to steer clear of, and possibly an allegory of God. The book itself is large, it's 135 chapters and a lot of pages and for some reason mandatory reading in some schools. It's a classic and rightfully so. Trying to read it in one sitting is like trying to hunt the proverbial whale, a foolish endeavor no mortal man should attempt. Infinity is best consumed one day at a time, and so is the book. Otherwise you'll drown in (mostly descriptions of) whales.

***

Man attempts to fight a giant whale that apparently is representative of the unfathomably great and terrible power of nature/fate/God, and thus almost everyone on his crew ends up drowning.

Mortimore, Jim: Beltempest

Synopsis: "The people of Bellania II see their sun, Bel, shrouded in night for a month following an impossible triple eclipse. When Bel is returned to them a younger, brighter, hotter star, it is the beginning of the end for the entire solar system...

100,000 years later, the Doctor and Sam arrive on Bellania IV, where the population is under threat as disaster looms — immense gravitational and dimensional disturbances are surging through this area of space.

While the time travellers attempt to help the survivors and ease the devastation, a religious suicide-cult leader is determined to spread a new religion through Bel's system — and his word may prove even more dangerous than the terrible forces brought into being by the catastrophic changes in the sun... "

Why it's Vast: The main conflict revolves around the massive natural disasters caused by changes to the Bel System's sun. Moons are ripped from their orbits, gravity waves create planetary earthquakes, and the void of space is rocked by solar flares. In response to these unstoppable disasters, a religion springs up in worship of the star -- as Simon Fairchild noted, religion was once a strong vector for the Vast, though it wasn't explored in much depth within the podcast.

North, Claire: The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

"The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August" is about the titular protagonist Harry August. He is born, he lives, he dies... Except he does this a lot more than most regular people. Harry is a kalachakra (or ouroborus, the names are used interchangeably), a member of a select few people who, upon dying, simply return to when they were born with all the memories and knowledge of their past lives. This is all well and good until, while on the deathbed of his eleventh life, Harry is warned by a little Kalachakra girl that the world is ending, and he must stop it from doing so."

Vast realised in endless lives of the characters stretching before them till infinity. Vast realised in the perfect endless memory of the main character and some others. Vast realised in eternity.

Oesterheld, Héctor Germán: El Eternauta

Juan Salvo, the inimitable protagonist, along with his friend Professor Favalli and the tenacious metal-worker Franco, face what appears to be a nuclear accident, but quickly turns out to be something much bigger than they had imagined. Cold War tensions, aliens of all sizes, space―and time travel―this one has it all.

Poe, Edgar Allen: A Descent into the Maelström

Inspired by the Moskstraumen, it is couched as a story within a story, a tale told at the summit of a mountain climb in Lofoten, Norway. The story is told by an old man who reveals that he only appears old—"You suppose me a very old man," he says, "but I am not. It took less than a single day to change these hairs from a jetty black to white, to weaken my limbs, and to unstring my nerves." The narrator, convinced by the power of the whirlpools he sees in the ocean beyond, is then told of the "old" man's fishing trip with his two brothers a few years ago.

Driven by "the most terrible hurricane that ever came out of the heavens", their ship was caught in the vortex. One brother was pulled into the waves; the other was driven mad by the horror of the spectacle, and drowned as the ship was pulled under. At first the narrator only saw hideous terror in the spectacle. In a moment of revelation, he saw that the Maelström is a beautiful and awesome creation. Observing how objects around him were attracted and pulled into it, he deduced that "the larger the bodies, the more rapid their descent" and that spherical-shaped objects were pulled in the fastest. Unlike his brother, he abandoned ship and held on to a cylindrical barrel until he was saved several hours later when the whirlpool temporarily subsided, and he was rescued by some fishermen. The "old" man tells the story to the narrator without any hope that the narrator will believe it.

Pratchett, Terry and Steven Baxter: The Long Earth series

Blueprints for an easily to build device that allows people to "step" into a nigh infinite series of alternate earths get published online. The series deals with the exploration of these alternate earths, and the way their existence and accessibility changes human society over the next 50 or so years. The earths next to our own are similar to ours except that there are no humans, but further earths diverged from our own earlier in geological history; millions of earths away are worlds where the KT extinctions never happens, billions of earths away there are worlds where jellyfish live in the sky. It's emphasized throughout the books that all of these earth's are entire planets with billions of years of history that no one will ever fully understand because there's just too much space.

Purser-Hallard, Philip: Of the City of the Saved...

It's set in a city where every human or descendant of humanity who has ever lived has been reborn all at once, and the book makes sure you understand the scope of that. To pull out a few statistics, the city is the size of a spiral galaxy and has a population of a hundred undecillion - or 1 followed by 38 zeros. There's a watchtower at the city's centre which is the width of a continent and the height of one astronomical unit (the distance of Earth to the sun), and a city council ampithetre the size of a gas giant. When I think of a book emphasising physical vastness, I think Of the City of the Saved, because it doesn't just gloss over the size and call it incomprehensible, it makes sure you begin to grasp the scale of things. And that every character in the book is just one person on that scale.

Reed, Robert: An Exaltation of Larks

The book shows the heat death of the universe, where the stars have long since burned out, and stellar formation ceased, leaving behind a dark, cold, and empty universe. Time travelers from the end of time have steadily been working their way back to the Big Bang to prevent this gradual death from happening by turning the universe into an effectively Perpetual Motion Machine that expands, contracts, and expands again.

Reisman, Michael: Simon Bloom: The Gravity Keeper

A boy inadvertently discovers the book that controls the laws of physics and learns to play with gravity and velocity, which on multiple occasions results in him taking an uncontrolled fall into the sky.

Sanderson, Brandon: Firefight

This is the second book in The Reckoners Trilogy, which is about the eponymous group hunting Epics--people who were granted superpowers by the mysterious red star Calamity, but also turned evil and destroyed society as we know it.

In this one, the Reckoners go to Babylon Restored, a.k.a NYC. The city was flooded by the hydrokinetic Regalia, killing thousands and leaving the survivors to inhabit the rooftops of the sunken buildings. Regalia has immense control over water, able to manipulate it on both a mass scale and in a more precise way to attack with tentacles and create clones of herself. Most terrifyingly, she can see out of the surface of any exposed water--which means almost nowhere in Babilar is safe from her eyes.

The fact that the city is flooded is especially problematic for protagonist David, who can't swim and discovers he has a fear of drowning--especially after he is nearly executed in this way. To make matters worse, the Reckoners' base of operations is an underwater bunker with a window open to the water. This culminates in him facing his fear in attempt to save his love interest by shooting at the window to get out of the bunker. While Regalia saves him for her own ends, she also reveals something even more grand and incomprehensibly terrifying--Calamity itself is sapient and apparently malicious.

Seuss, Dr.: Horton Hears a Who!

Hey kids! Take a minute to think about what would happen if the whole planet existed on a single speck of dust, and how easily everything you know could be eradicated by complete cosmic accident!

Simmons, Dan: The Terror

Being trapped in the Arctic? Not just in the Arctic but in the middle of an ice sheet on the ocean? With the only land being a 3 day trek away? So all you can see before you is open plains of snow and ice and knowing underneath you is also the cold, uncaring, freezing ocean? That's not even taking into account the monster hunting you and your men is easily the size of 3-4 polar bears

Swift, Jonathan: Gulliver's Travels

Plays a lot with perspective -- Gulliver is a giant on one island, and an ant on another. There's also an island that flies and blots out the sun to conquer the lands below it.

Tennyson, Alfred: The Kraken

Link to the poem

Vivid imagery of deep-sea colossi and the enormous weight of the ocean and eternity.

Tolstoy, Leo: War & Peace

real world leitner - inspires dread and fear in the hearts of millions of russian high schoolers with its enormous page count, oppressively large cast of characters and incomprehensible fragments of french inserted directly into the narrative

Verne, Jules: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

Themes of insignificance and descriptions of colossal terrors abound.

#leitner tournament #reading list #vast poll

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holmesillustrations · 11 months ago

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Vote for your favourite, the top 9 will proceed in the bracket. Since theyre all different shapes and sizes, make sure to click into the full views!

Paget Eliminations // Other Artist Eliminations

Full captions and details for each illustration below the cut:

"In the light of the lantern i read, with a thrill of horror, 'the sign of the four'." HM Kerr, Sign of Four (1890 Spencer Blackett Novel) Characters: Watson, Holmes, Batholomew Sholto

[Holmes and Watson hiding on the train platform] Harry C. Edwards, Final Problem (McClure’s) Characters: Holmes

"You infernal spies!" the man cried." FD Steele, Priory School (Collier’s) Characters: Holmes

"The lady lay back exhausted upon a couch enveloped in a loose dressing-gown of blue and silver." FD Steele, Abbey Grange (Collier’s) Characters: Hopkins, Holmes, Lady Brackenstall, Theresa, Watson

"Halloa, Watson! What is this?" Arthur Twidle, Bruce-Partington Plans (The Strand) Characters: Watson, Holmes

"What has happened to the Lady Frances? Is she alive or dead? There is our problem" FD Steele, Lady Frances Carfax (The American Magazine) Characters: Watson, Holmes

"Mrs. Douglas turned, and in an instant her arms were round him. Barker has seized his outstretched hand." Frank Wiles, Valley of Fear (The Strand) Characters: Cecil Barker, Douglas/McMurdo, Mrs Douglas, Holmes, Watson

"This quiet house is the center of half the mischief in England; the sporting squire the most astute secret-service man in Europe!" FD Steele, His Last Bow (Collier’s) Characters: Baron von Herling, Von Bork

"Dog and man were rolling on the ground together, the one roaring in rage, the other screaming in a strange shrill falsetto of terror." HK Elcock, Creeping Man (The Strand) Characters: Prof Presbury, Trevor Bennett, Holmes, Watson

"In the great drawing-room a lady awaited us, demure and remote as a snow image on a mountain." JR Flanagan, Illustrious Client (Collier’s) Characters: Violet deMerville

"I gripped the old man by the shoulder, but he shrank away." HK Elcock, Blanched Soldier (The Strand) Characters: Col Emsworth, James Dodd

"There was something in the woman's voice which arrested Holmes' attention." Frank Wiles, Veiled Lodger (The Strand) Characters: Watson, Holmes, Eugenia Ronder

#acd holmes #sherlock holmes #tumblr bracket #sherlock holmes illustrations #elim poll #oa elim #polls full bracket

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40sandfabulousaf · 1 year ago

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大家好! I revisited the nasi padang stall (Malay version of mixed dishes and rice) since the food is fresh and prices remain reasonable. Dining out has become expensive for many after food businesses raised prices time and again, citing inflation, rising wages and an increase in GST of 1% this year. Some did so disproportionately, and there're several articles showing customers' dismay at being overcharged for their meals. It almost seems like eating out is becoming a very unpleasant necessity.

During my catch up with Grace and Douglas, we concluded that not only did food businesses raise prices (some arguably to the point of price gouging), several of them also shrank portion sizes. We're paying more but getting far less for our dollars. To save money, the couple started cooking Japanese rice at home to eat with store bought unagi last year. Grace will try more recipes soon rather than be charged exorbitant prices for their favourite meals and treats. If food prices become unreasonable or portion sizes ridiculously small next year, I'll order less when outside and cook more food at home.

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There's a public transport fare hike next month as well as increases in GST by 1% and water bills by a whopping 18% over 2 years in 2024. It almost feels like we're transported back to the 1980s when essentials were so expensive, there was little left for discretionary spending. I work very hard for my money and would rather spend on nutritious food or save for retirement than line someone else's pockets when times are so lean. Thankfully, whilst unscrupulous business owners exist, there're also ethical ones who try to provide good value to customers even if they have to raise food or beverage prices. These are the ones worth supporting.

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Saving money is fine, but life's little indulgences still go on to make it worth living, you know? Pa and I returned to the vegan cafe and ordered the la mian as well as shared the turmeric tofu scramble and steamed dumplings. There was a new menu item - rainbow soba - which I was tempted to order. However, instead of tofu, the dish comes with avocado, which many locals don't find healthy, so I gave it a miss. The la mian and dumplings were delicious; the tofu scramble would've been tastier if less turmeric was added, but it was still nice.

Over the meal, Pa and I discussed the conflict in Gaza. The number of Palestinian civilians who have perished is horrifying. Those who remain alive are also suffering badly. I continue to pray for a ceasefire and for a two-state policy so that peace may hopefully be achieved once and for all. 下次见!

#Youtube

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dailytudors · 2 years ago

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28 SEPTEMBER 1553: On this day Mary, her sister, her stepmother and her cousin Margaret Douglas, departed from St. James Palace to Whitehall where they boarded the royal barge to the Tower of London. Mary was accompanied by the Lord Mayor of London 'and the aldermen and all the companies in their barges with streamers and trumpets, and waits, shawmes and regals, together with great volley shots of guns, until Her Grace came into the Tower, and some time after.'

Many of those around her were women. Her closest family members no doubt enjoyed the attention, especially her sister and cousin the ladies Elizabeth Tudor and Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox who had often been referred by Mary's father as the 'natural' daughter of Margaret Tudor, Queen Dowager of Scotland. But now with her cousin on the throne, she was going to receive a better treatment than that of the previous reign and slowly, she would become one of Mary's most trusted ladies.

As for Elizabeth, her sister had bought clothes for her. In spite of her illegitimate state, which she still viewed her, she wanted everyone to know that she was her sister and most importantly the daughter of their late father and king, Henry VIII, and as such she would be placed above other ladies.

Two days later the sisters, cousin, and their stepmother would emerge for the pre-coronation celebrations and the following day Mary would be crowned Queen, becoming the first Queen of England.

There is a lot of opinions regarding whether Mary was just a puppet or a true politician in every sense of the word and the truth was that she was. In Porter's words: "The picture of Mary as a woman who had little grasp of what was going on, who could not work with her politicians is entirely false. From the very beginning, the queen had a clear idea of what she wanted to do and the utter determination to achieve it. She never, even when unwell, shrank from the business of government, and she knew that she must draw on the experience of the men who had tried to deprive her of her throne. Without their expertise nothing could function." Furthermore, she was outright mad when Scheyfve and Renard advised her not to trust the lady Elizabeth and banish her from court. They didn't believe in any of Elizabeth's excuses for not attending mass, but Mary never wavered in her judgment which proved bad in the end, but her firm opposition to them in this and other matters proves that she was her own person and determined not to be influenced by anyone.

Sources:

Myth of Bloody by Linda Porter

Mary Tudor by Anna Whitelock

Bloody Mary by Carolly Erickson

Mary Tudor by David Loades.

#mary i of england #british monarchy #royalty #16th century #history #road to coronation #September 1553 #tudors

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venuscomb · 3 years ago

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Why We Love Dinosaurs Boria Sax, Nautilus

The Surprising History (and Future) of Dinosaurs Chantel Tattoli, Paris Review

How Do We Know What Dinosaurs Looked Like? Sara Chodosh, Popular Science

What It’s Like to Dig for Dinosaur Bones Steve Macone, The Atlantic

How We Elected T. Rex to Be Our Tyrant Lizard King Riley Black, Smithsonian Magazine

How to Weigh a Dinosaur Elizabeth Yuko, Lifehacker

WATCH: How to Build a Dinosaur Kimberly Mas, Vox

How to Outrun a Dinosaur Cody Cassidy, Wired

This Is What Dinosaur Meat Tasted Like Hilary Pollack, Vice

The Day the Dinosaurs Died Douglas Preston, The New Yorker

What If the Asteroid Never Killed the Dinosaurs? Daniel Kolitz, Gizmodo

How Dinosaurs Shrank and Became Birds Emily Singer, Quanta Magazine

On America’s Wild West of Dinosaur Fossil Hunting Lukas Rieppel, Literary Hub

To Date a Dinosaur Laura Poppick, Knowable Magazine

‘The Nation’s T. rex’: How a Montana Family’s Hike Led to an Incredible Discovery Steve Hendrix, The Washington Post

Why Does the U.S. Army Own So Many Fossils? Sabrina Imbler, Atlas Obscura

How Jurassic Park Changed the Way Movies Looked at Dinosaurs Keith Phipps, Vulture

The Real Science of Bringing Back the Dinosaurs Matt Blitz, Popular Mechanics

The Best Places to Visit for Dinosaur Lovers of Any Age Julie Vick, Afar

The Best Books on Dinosaurs Recommended by Paul Barrett, Five Books

#rawr means i love you in dinosaur #dinosaurs #paleontology #I was going to just do the link but what if the article link expires?#long post #I first learned that rawr means I love you in dinosaur from my nephew

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autumneternally · 3 years ago

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“Time blossomed, matter shrank away.”

- Douglas Adams

#autumn #fall #halloween #autumncommunity #nature #fujifilm #mimmiphotography

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dukereviewsmovies · 5 years ago

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Duke Reviews: Ant-Man And The Wasp

Hello, I'm Andrew Leduc And Welcome To Duke Reviews Where Today We Are Continuing Our Look At The Marvel Cinematic Universe...

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Where Today We Answer The One Question Everyone Had On Their Minds When Watching Avengers: Infinity War...Where Was Ant-Man?... By Watching Ant-Man And The Wasp...

In The Aftermath Of Civil War, Scott Grapples With The Consequences Of His Choices As Both A Superhero And A Father As He Struggles To Rebalance His Home Life With His Responsibilities As Ant-Man When He's Confronted By Hope Van Dyne (Who Has Taken On Her Mother's Identity As The Wasp) And Hank Pym Who Come To Him With A New Mission...

Will They Succeed?

Let's Find Out As We Watch Ant-Man And The Wasp...

Starting In 1987, We See Janet Van Dyne (Played By A Digitally Aged Michelle Pfeiffer) And Hank Pym (Played By A Digitally Aged Michael Douglas) Tell Their Daughter They're Going To A Conference When Really They're Going Another Mission...

And Unfortunately, It's The Mission That Cost Janet Her Life When She Shrank Between The Molecules Of A Soviet Missile So She Could Disable It Shrinking Smaller And Smaller Until She Entered The Quantum Realm...

With The Hardest Thing He Did Being To Tell Hope That Janet Was Dead, We Cut To Now Where Hank Recalls How Scott Went Subatomic And Came Back Which Give Him The Idea To Dust Off Some Old Plans Of A Quantum Tunnel Which Will Shrink Them Small Enough To Enter The Quantum Realm To Get Janet Back...

Meanwhile At Scott's House, We Him Spending Time With His Daughter, Cassie In A Homemade Playhouse That He Made And Is Running With The Help Of Luis, As Scott's Been Under House Arrest After Helping Captain America In Civil War Which Was A Violation Of The Sokovia Accords...

But After Taking A Plea Deal, Scott Was Allowed To Return To The US And Was Sentenced To 2 Years Under House Arrest And A 20 Year Prison Sentence Waiting For Him If He Leaves His House Or Defies The Accords Again

And As Pym And Hope Had Provided Lang With The Technology He Used Against Iron Man, They Have Also Been Ruled In Breach Of The Accords And They Have A Warrant Out For Their Arrest Which Forced Them To Go On The Run And Sever All Contact With Scott...

Spending The Next Two Years Trying To Find Ways To Keep Himself Busy Including Learning Close-Up Magic And Setting Up A Security Company With Luis And His Partners, He Unfortunately Has A Dream Where He Relives Of Janet's Memories Of When Hope Was A Child 3 Days Until His Release From House Arrest...

Contacting Pym On A Burner Phone He Put Away, Scott Briefly Tells Him What Happened Before Realizing He Sounds Like An Idiot, He Apologizes For The Trouble He Caused Before Smashing The Phone...

Later That Night, Scott Hears A Buzzing Noise Before He's Knocked Out By A Small Tranq Dart...

Waking Up The Next Morning, Scott Finds He's Been Kidnapped By Hope, Who Left A Decoy In His Place To Not Arouse Suspicion From The FBI. Angry At Scott For Helping Cap And Forcing Her And Hank Into Hiding, Hope Tells Scott That His Dream Coincided With Hank Briefly Opening A Quantum Tunnel...

Seeing Scott's Message As A Sign That Janet Is Alive, Hank And Hope Work In Their New Lab To Create A Stable Tunnel So Hope Can Take A Vehicle Into The Quantum Realm To Retrieve Janet...

Reuniting With Pym Who's Bitter For Scott's Actions But Puts His Anger Aside As He's Their Only Hope Of Locating Janet Inside The Quantum Realm...

Hope Arranges To Get A Part From A Black Market Dealer Named Sonny Burch (Played By The Unicorn) But Realizing The Potential Profit From Pym And Hope's Research, Burch Double Crosses Her Which Leads Her To Suit Up...

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(Start At 0:06)

But Despite Getting The Component, Hope Soon Faces A New Opponent In The Form Of The Ghost, Scott Goes In To Help Hope With The Ghost But Unfortunately The Ghost Escapes With The Part And Pym's Mobile Lab...

Hiding Out At Scott And Luis' Security Firm, They Tell Hank That They've Heard Tales Of This Ghost Of Theirs While Also Wondering If He Had A Tracker On The Lab Which He Did But It Was Deactivated At The Time The Lab Was Stolen And That Not Only Did The Person Who Stole It Knew What They Were Doing But They Were Phasing...

With The Lab Emitting Radiation, Hope Suggests Modifying A Quantum Spectrometer To Track It But To Do That It Means Going Into The Matrix...

I'm Just Kidding...Or Am I?

Meeting Hank's Former Partner, Bill Foster (Played By Morpheus) At The College Where He Works, He Helps Them Locate The Lab Just As The FBI Shows Up On The Campus...

Wondering If Foster's Idea Of Tracking The Suit Through The Regulators Could Work Hank Says It Could But They'd Need An Old Suit As The New Ones Don't Have Diffractors Which They Need To Track It...

Luckily, Scott Saved His Old Suit After Using It To Fight With Cap But The Bad News Is It's Inside Of A Trophy That's At Cassie's School For Show And Tell...

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(Start At 1:01, End At 4:02)

Getting The Diffractor Out Of The Old Ant-Man Suit They Use It To Track Down The Lab To A House In The Middle Of The Woods Where They're Immediately Captured By The Ghost...

Wow, You Guys Think You Can Go 5 Minutes Without Being Captured By The Bad Guy...

Capturing Hank Too, Ghost Reveals Herself As Ava Starr...

Any Relation To Ringo?

Surprisingly No, But She Is Related To Another Former Partner Of Hank's Named Elihas Starr Who Hank Not Only Fired But Discredited And In An Attempt To Get His Good Name Back He Continued His Research Only For It To End In The Death Of Him And His Wife During A Quantum Experiment That Caused Ava's Affliction...

Though She Was Found By Bill Foster, Who Has Tried His Best To Keep Her Safe Since The Accident, He Couldn't Protect Her From S.H.I.E.L.D. Who Built Her Containment Suit And Used Her As A Stealth Operative In Exchange For A Cure..,

But Discovering That They Were Full Of Bullshit, Ava Left With Foster Who Created A Containment Chamber To Slow Her Decay But It's Too Progressive For Him To Stop...

Despite Ava Wanting To Kill Hank For What He Did, She Instead Watched Him Where She Discovered That Hank Was Building The Quantum Tunnel Also About Lang And His Vision Of Janet..

Revealing That They Want To Use The Quantum Tunnel So They Can Extract The Quantum Energy From Janet So They Can Repair Ava's Molecular Structure But Knowing That It Would Kill Janet, Hank Says No...

But Threatening To Turn Scott Over To The FBI, If He Doesn't Help, This Leads Hank To Fake A Heart Attack So Bill Can Open An Altoid Box With Ants That Will Grow Large When Opened So They Can Escape...

Getting The Lab Back Before They Leave, Hank Grows It Back To Large Size So They Can Get To Work Where Hank Reveals That Elihas Starr Was A Traitor Who Stole His Plans For The Quantum Tunnel As They Work...

But As They Do That Burch Captures Luis And His Partners So He Can Question Them About Scott As Ava, Desperate To Be Cured Decides To Kidnap Cassie But Before She Does Bill Tells Her That If She Does She's On Her Own Which Leads Her To Go After Other Options...

Injecting Truth Serum Into Luis, We Get Another One Of Luis' Stories As He Tells Burch Where Scott Is...

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(Start At 1:14, End At 3:21)

Knowing That If Ghost Gets The Technology, He'll Be Ruined, Burch Decides To Call The FBI Believing It'll Be Easier To Steal It From Them As He Has A Contact There..

And While That's Understandable I Still Kinda Have To Say Where's The Logic In That?

Despite Having One Contact It's The FBI, There Are Agents That Are Likely To Recognize You And Are Likely To Get You...

Opening A Stable Tunnel, Pym And Hope Are Able To Contact Janet Who Gives Them A Precise Location But Warns Them That They Have 2 Hours To Do So Due To The Quantum Realm's Unstable Nature...

With Scott Back To Normal, He Gets A Call From Luis Who Tells Him Everything That Happened With Burch, Telling Hank And Hope Everything They're Rightfully Pissed And Sever Ties With Scott Once Again As He Takes The Suit To Rush Home Before Woo Can See Him Breaking House Arrest...

That Which He Doesn't But That's Just The Good News...

The Bad News However Is That Hank And Hope Are Arrested And The Ghost Kills Burch's Man On The Inside And Takes Back The Lab...

Convinced By Cassie To Rescue Hank And Hope From The FBI Despite The Risks, He Decides To Help Them Escape The FBI And Use A New Tracker To Track Down The Lab, While Scott And Hope Distract Ghost While Hank Deals With Bill Before Quantum Realm To Retrieve Janet...

Shrinking The Lab, Ghost Is Rightfully Pissed As Luis And Hope Drive Away With It Only To Be Confronted By Burch And His Men Which Leads To A Car Chase And Our Stan Lee Cameo...

Stan Lee Cameo!

With The Lab Going Back And Forth Like A Football On A Football Field Between Ghost, Burch And Team Ant-Man, It's Team Ant-Man That Gets The Lab Back However At The Last Second, Ghost Steals It And Enlarges It In The Middle Of Pier 39 In San Francisco...

But As All That Was Going On, Hank Finds Janet In The Quantum Realm, But With The Lab In Ava's Hands She Attempts Sabatoge Their Return So She Can Start Stealing Janet's Energy But Luckily Scott And Hope Stop Her And Hank And Janet Return From The Quantum Realm...

Using Some Of Her Quantum Energy, Janet Stabalizes The Ghost So Her And Bill Can Go On The Run While Burch And His Guys Are Arrested And Scott Manages To Get Home In Time For The FBI To End His House Arrest Despite Being Suspicious Of Him...

While Scott Reunites With Cassie And Gets His Buisness Up And Running, Hank, Hope And Janet Restore The Family Home On A Beach So They Can Live Happily Ever After For A While...

Or Until The Mid Credits Scene, Where Scott Ventures Into The Quantum Realm To Collect Particles In An Attempt To Heal Ava While Being Monitored By Hank, Janet And Hope, But Despite Being Successful He's Unable To Return As The Pyms Have Been Snapped Out Of Existence By Thanos...

There's Also A After Credit Scene But It's Not Important To Go Over So I'm Skipping It...

And That's Ant-Man And The Wasp And I Will Say It's Better Than The Original Ant-Man...

The Story Was Interesting, The Characters Were Better Written Than They Were In The First Movie, The Villain Was So-So But She Was Interesting I Will Say That Either Way I Say See It...

Now, Before I Sign Off I'd Like To Say A Few Words And Tell You About The Future Of Duke Reviews After We Finish The MCU...

First, I'd Like To Apologize For The Lack Of Clips In This Review But That's Because I Could Barely Find Any Good Ones On YouTube And Unfortunately It's Going To Be The Same Story With Next Week's Review Of Captain Marvel, I'll Post What I Can But For The Next 2 Weeks Be Patient With Me...

And Second As I Said I Want To Go Over The Future Of Duke Reviews After I'm Done With The MCU, Good News Is We Are Not Going Into The DCEU Or Any Other Superhero Properties For A While (And I Do Mean A While) As We're Going To Be Covering The Movies Of A Company That's Been With Us For Generations...

In Fact We're Going To Be Covering It For So Long That I'll Have To Pause In October, November And December So I Can Continue Our Traditions Of Duke's Monsterween And Duke's Yultide Reviews But Know That In January Of Next Year We'll Probably Be Back Working On That...

Now As To Which Studio I'm Not Going To Reveal Which Until My Spider-Man Far From Home Review Which Will Be In 3 Weeks But Next Week As I Said We'll Be Looking At Captain Marvel, So Until Then, This Is Duke, Signing Off...

#ant man and the wasp #paul rudd #evangeline lilly #michael douglas #lawrence fishburne #randall park #judy greer #bobby cannavale #Marvel #marvel cinematic universe #Ant Man #The Wasp

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tinyghanouj · 6 years ago

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The Giant of Rainy Grove (GT story) - Chapter 4

Emery led Grace, Owen, and Will across the clearing to the giant. “Just to clarify, you were on your way home when Randy’s men killed the child, right?” Emery asked in a low voice. Owen nodded. They approached, sidestepping Roland’s twisted body. The corpses of the other men lay scattered around the mountainous figure of the still-kneeling giant. One was draped over a tree branch like a piece of discarded clothing. Randy yelped in horror as the giant crushed the last of his men in his fist. The giant’s ice blue eyes narrowed. “My son was five years old,” he growled. “Before I kill you, I will break five of your bones. Slowly” “Giant!” Emery’s authoritative, baritone voice rang out in the night. The large head turned, cold eyes scrutinizing the group of humans who dared to approach him and his prey. “Speak, human.” “On behalf of the village of Rainy Grove, I am deeply sorry for the death of your son. A small group of our men committed an unforgivable act. However, the rest of my villagers are peaceful and were horrified at this. They are innocent. I must ask you what your intentions are regarding them.” The giant opened his fist and dropped the lifeless body. It landed inches from Randy. Randy scooted backward and retched as his late comrade’s skull cracked on a stone. “Human, I have no quarrel with your village. But I will take my revenge on my son’s murderers.” He glared at Randy before his gaze sought out Owen, who moaned and covered his face. Emery placed a hand on Owen’s trembling shoulder. “Giant, this boy did not shed your son’s blood. He is remorseful for what happened. Take your revenge on your son’s killers and leave him.” “He was one of them. My son’s blood is on his hands, and he must die.” Emery opened his mouth to respond, but Grace stepped forward, moving as close to the giant as she dared. “Giant, my brother is not a murderer.” Her voice trembled as she looked up, way up at the enormous face. “The whole village knows how gentle he his. He has never hurt anyone.” “Anyone except my son!” He snarled. Grace pointed at Randy with such violence that the giant raised his eyebrows. “He made my brother go hunting with them. Randy was always bullying him. He threatened—” Randy’s voice came out as a squeak. “I never—” “Silence!” roared the giant. He fixed his eyes on Grace. “Please…” she whispered. “Spare my brother’s life. He is all I have in this world. I’ll do anything!” Grace fell to her knees and gazed into the giant’s eyes. The giant studied Grace as she wept, her soft hair in disarray and her hands, red and calloused from years of work, clasped before her. His features began to soften as he took in her wet face, her patched dress, her vulnerability. His hand imperceptibly inched toward her. He caught himself and placed it on his knee. Owen hiccuped and blew his nose and the giant’s fingers clenched as he drew back, eyeing Owen with disgust and loathing as his features darkened again. He gestured to his son’s limp form and jabbed his finger into Owen’s midsection. “I will allow this fool to live for his sister’s sake, not for his own. But I have not finished. A human life in exchange for my son’s life,” he shouted, shaking the ground beneath them. “I will take one of your villagers as a servant, to work in my home. Choose someone to go with me, or I will destroy your village.” His broad shoulders slumped, Emery bowed his head. “I must accept your offer.” “You have exactly one day to produce my servant.” The giant’s fingers wrapped around Randy’s left leg and dragged him along the ground. Grace turned and followed the others back to the tavern without looking back, covering her ears as Randy’s piercing shrieks filled the air. She had saved her brother, but at what cost? ******* The sun rose over a perfectly circular expanse in the center of the village. It shone on the wooden platform that served as a stage during festivals, in happier times. Emery and three other village elders sat with Grace, Owen, and Will, surrounded by a scattering of villagers. Emery stood silently in the center, his gaze falling on each attendee in turn. The breeze ruffled his curly grey hair and beard as he sighed. “Friends, you know why we are here. Yesterday, the hunters killed the child of a giant. This giant has taken his revenge on the guilty parties, but justice must be completed by giving him a servant.” Emery turned to three men who were arguing in whispers. “What is it?” Andrew, a shepherd, stood up straight. “Chief Emery, we were just saying that no one has seen the giant since last night. Perhaps he was satisfied with his revenge and went home.” “Yes, where is the giant?” asked a woman behind Andrew. Elder Douglas gestured for silence. “After the giant killed Randy the hunter, I saw him take his son’s body in his arms. He left Rainy Grove and headed northwest. But his words were true. He will return.” “Yes, he will come for his servant,” Emery said. “In consequence, we must bid farewell to someone among us, someone who must go and serve the giant to save our village. We must choose here and now so that person can make arrangements for the journey.” A murmur traveled through the crowd. People shrank into their seats, whispered to their neighbors, or looked pointedly at the others. Robert the butcher pointed with what remained of his right index finger. “I think young Owen should go himself. I’ve got no problem with the boy but, you know, he’s responsible for this mess.” A few grunts of approval, as well as a few hisses, greeted Robert’s speech. “He’s right, Chief Emery,” said Owen. “I should have tried to save the child. I’ll go with the giant.” Grace took his hand. “No, Owen. You can’t go.” “She’s right,” said Will. “If you go, the giant is sure to kill you. He is grieving, and the sight of you will remind him of his son every day. He won’t be able to stand it, and one day he will lose his temper.” Will stood and faced Emery. “As Owen’s guardian, it is my responsibility to go in his place.” A frenzy of protest greeted his words. “Why you?” “Not you!” “What’ll happen to the Crazy Knight?” “You can’t—” “I’ll go!” The crowd, hushed, looked at Grace. “I’ll go. I told the giant I would do anything to save my brother’s life. I meant it.” “No. I can’t lose you,” whispered Owen. “Why not Jack?” asked a middle-aged woman in an apron, indicating the village drunk, who was reclining against a bench. The red-faced, bleary-eyed man shook himself out of his stupor. “Why should I go? I didn’t do anything!” “Well, no one would miss you!” Grace yanked her arms free from Will and Owen’s grasp. “I should go. It is my responsibility to go.” “She’s right, you know,” said the woman who had annoyed Grace at the tavern. She folded her pink arms over her chest and tossed her head with a smirk. “It’s none of our faults. Let her go with the giant.” “Quiet!” hissed the women on either side of her. “It’s true,” said Grace. She turned to Emery, who was regarding her intently, his face serious and compassionate. “You know that it’s true.” Grace gestured to the crowd. “They had nothing to do with this. It has to be me.” “You had nothing to do with it either,” said Owen. “This is all my fault. I should go. It doesn’t matter what happens to me. He can kill me if he wants to.” “No one has to die.” Grace’s voice was firm. Her features set, she turned to each of the elders, one by one. “I must go. It is the only way.” The other elders nodded at Emery. He closed his eyes for a few moments and bowed his head. He placed his trembling hands on Grace’s shoulders. “It is decided. You, my child, will go with the giant.”

#g/t #g/t community #g/t fluff #gt #gt fluff #gianttiny #Giant/tiny #giants

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atlanticcanada · 4 years ago

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Canadian economy posted its worst showing on record in 2020

The Canadian economy posted its worst showing on record in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the country, shutting down businesses and putting millions out of work.

Statistics Canada says real gross domestic product shrank 5.4 per cent in 2020, the steepest annual decline since comparable data was first recorded in 1961.

The drop for the year was due to the shutdown of large swaths of the economy in March and April during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic that crushed the economy.

Newsletter sign-up: Get The COVID-19 Brief sent to your inbox

Since then, economic activity has slowly and steadily grown.

Statistics Canada says the economy grew at an annualized rate of 9.6 per cent in the fourth quarter of last year, down from an annualized growth rate of 40.6 per cent in the third quarter.

That was higher than expected, with the average economist estimate at 7.5 per cent, according to financial data firm Refinitiv.

However, despite the better-than-expected result for the quarter as a whole, December eked out a 0.1 per cent increase, which followed a 0.8 per cent increase in November.

Statistics Canada noted that total economic activity in December was about three per cent below the pre-pandemic level in February 2020.

Looking ahead to January, Statistics Canada said its early estimate was for growth in the economy of 0.5 per cent.

CIBC chief economist Avery Shenfeld wrote in a note that the early January figure should set aside fears of an outright downturn in the first quarter.

Statistics Canada said wholesale trade, manufacturing and construction sectors led the increase, while retail trade fell to start the year.

BMO chief economist Douglas Porter said the economy soldiered through second-wave restrictions better than anticipated, and may signal a better-than-anticipated quarter, and potentially year overall.

"Look for new growth drivers to kick into gear as the economy re-opens in stages through this year, leading to roughly (six-per-cent) growth -- a nice mirror image to last year's deep dive," he wrote in a note.

"It's not precisely a V-shaped recovery, but it's very close."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 2, 2021

from CTV News - Atlantic https://ift.tt/384Qd5w

#new brunswick #prince edward island #nova scotia #news #politics #canada #CTVAtlantic

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bigyack-com · 5 years ago

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Should Google Shrink to Save Itself?

Topic A in New York City: a state law that eliminates broker fees for renters. Tenants are thrilled; landlords and brokers, not so much. Send us your thoughts. (Want this in your inbox each morning? Sign up here.)

Google reportedly weighs divesting a big ad business

As antitrust regulators turn up the heat, the company is reportedly considering a sale or spinoff of its third-party ad tech unit, Keach Hagey and Rob Copeland of the WSJ report, citing unnamed sources.The context:• The Justice Department has increasingly focused on Google’s third-party ad business, which was “built largely on the company’s 2008 acquisition of the ad-technology firm DoubleClick,” Ms. Hagey and Mr. Copeland write.• Google’s ad-tech business consists of software used to buy and sell ads across the web.• Critics say Google unfairly bundles these tools together and uses them to help its own services, like search and YouTube.Some Google executives have discussed informally “whether the company should consider divesting its third-party ad tech business, according to people familiar with the situation,” Ms. Hagey and Mr. Copeland write. (A Google spokeswoman said there were no plans to divest the unit.)Proponents of divesting the business note that the ad tech arm “has steadily declined in importance to Google overall since the DoubleClick purchase, while units like search and YouTube have soared.” That’s because web search traffic is stagnant, while mobile internet use is booming.“For Google, a partial voluntary breakup of its advertising business might be preferable to whatever regulators come up with on their own,” Alex Webb of Bloomberg Opinion writes.

Investors hit snooze on Casper’s I.P.O.

The mattress seller officially priced its I.P.O. at $12 a share, the low end of a sharply cut price range. It’s a sign that public-market investors remain sour on money-losing start-ups with no clear path to profitability.The bed-in-a-box company is valued around $476 million. Just last year, it was valued around $1.1 billion in a private fund-raising round.Investors remain wary of money-burning I.P.O. candidates, having turned up their noses at Uber and WeWork last year. It shows the public markets aren’t willing to subsidize these companies’ growth efforts.It’s not the only bad news for start-ups this week: The Federal Trade Commission moved to block the sale of Harry’s, the upstart razor brand, to the owner of Schick. If unprofitable start-ups can’t sell themselves to bigger rivals, and they suffer badly when they go public, what can they do?

Tesla’s epic rally hits a bump

Market fundamentals didn’t appear to apply to the electric-car maker’s shares this past year. At least they didn’t until yesterday.Tesla’s stock fell 17 percent, in what Tom Maloney of Bloomberg notes was its worst drop in eight years. Shares closed yesterday at $734.70, which is three times more than where they traded in June.Elon Musk lost $5.9 billion on paper in just one day, leaving him with an estimated net worth of $39.3 billion. (He could still earn a huge bonus if he keeps Tesla’s market value above $100 billion over six months: The company is currently valued at $132 billion.)The stock dropped after even hardened Tesla critics conceded defeat. The hedge fund manager Steve Eisman, who famously profited by betting against subprime mortgage lenders before the financial crisis, said he had covered his bet against the company amid its “cultlike” rally.Today’s a new day, however. Shares in Tesla were up 2 percent in premarket trading.

Coronavirus said to spur Chinese concessions on trade

Beijing said today that it would cut tariffs on $75 billion of U.S. imports. Analysts say the coronavirus outbreak was a major factor in the decision.China will halve tariffs on some American products starting Feb. 14. The Finance Ministry said in a statement that the move was meant to “alleviate economic and trade frictions and expand economic and trade cooperation” between China and the U.S.But analysts saw the economic impact of the coronavirus. With Chinese consumers sharply cutting spending, it appeared unlikely that Beijing would be able to hit targets for increasing U.S. imports that were laid out in the recently signed trade agreement with Washington anytime soon.“I see it as a measure to signal to the U.S. that, ‘We’re not going to be able to ramp up imports straight away, but we’re still on board with the deal,’ ” Julian Evans-Pritchard, senior China economist at Capital Economics, told the FT.Global markets rose this morning, and S&P 500 futures pointed toward a positive open when trading begins.

Trump’s latest cudgel in his immigration fight: Global Entry

The Trump administration’s feud with New York State over protecting immigrants has expanded in a way that could affect many New York business travelers.Residents of New York State are temporarily barred from applying for Global Entry and similar programs that let travelers speed through borders and airport security lines, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Jesse McKinley of the NYT report.The move is tied to the enactment of the Green Light Law, which prohibits agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection from gaining access to New York D.M.V. databases without a court order.It’s the latest stage of the battle between federal officials and New York State over immigration. The Trump administration has already criticized New York City for policies that protect undocumented immigrants.“This is obviously political retaliation by the federal government, and we’re going to review our legal options,” a senior adviser to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said.

Bernie Madoff says he’s dying and wants to leave prison

As part of a request for early release, the mastermind of the largest Ponzi scheme in history told a court yesterday that he had terminal kidney disease, David Yaffe-Bellany of the NYT reports.Doctors have determined that Mr. Madoff has just over a year to live, according to medical records attached to his filing. Under federal guidelines, prisoners who receive that kind of diagnosis can be eligible for early release.He has already served 11 years of his 150-year prison sentence for a variety of crimes, including money laundering, perjury and theft. Victims of his fraud lost an estimated $13 billion.Federal officials denied a previous request, saying that “his release at this time would minimize the severity of his offense.” Bernie Ebbers, the former WorldCom C.E.O., was given early release in December from his 25-year prison sentence after his health deteriorated sharply. He died on Sunday.

The speed read

Deals• Analysts don’t understand why the Intercontinental Exchange would want to buy eBay. (FT)• Spotify agreed to buy The Ringer, the website founded by Bill Simmons, to add more podcasts to its offerings. (NYT)• Nestlé plans to invest $200 million in the drug maker Aimmune Therapeutics, whose peanut allergy treatment recently won F.D.A. approval. (Reuters)• Vanguard became famous for offering index funds. Now it’s getting into private equity. (WSJ)Politics and policy• The United States trade deficit shrank last year — because the economy is cooling, not because factories are reopening. (NYT)• Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg are nearly tied in the latest results from the Iowa Democratic caucuses. (NYT)• Britain plans to ask the public which E.U. rules the country should scrap. (FT)Tech• Jeff Weiner will step down as C.E.O. of LinkedIn on June 1 and become the social network’s executive chairman. He’ll be succeeded by Ryan Roslansky, the company’s product chief. (CNBC)• Facebook’s move to encrypt its messaging platforms has run into opposition from child welfare advocates, who worry that the measure would let predators act with impunity. (NYT)• Huawei, the Chinese tech giant, sued Verizon for patent infringement. (CNBC)• The C.I.A. plans to offer more cloud-computing contracts to Amazon rivals. (Bloomberg)Best of the rest• Some bondholders are said to have reached a deal with of Puerto Rico’s oversight board, possibly paving the way for the U.S. territory to exit bankruptcy protection. (WSJ)• Three big investors in Credit Suisse have sided with the Swiss bank’s C.E.O., Tidjane Thiam, in his fight with the firm’s chairman, Urs Rohner. (FT)• The latest generation of Nike’s super-sneakers will qualify for the Tokyo Olympics. (WSJ)• Kirk Douglas, the Hollywood star, died yesterday. He was 103. (NYT)We’d love your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to [email protected]. Read the full article

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brgintl · 6 years ago

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2019: Miami Beach’s Luxury Market Improves in the First-Quarter

The luxury market in Miami Beach, Florida—including both condos and single-family homes—improved during the first quarter of 2019, according to a recently released report.

The median sales price of luxury single-family homes, defined as the top 10% of the market, soared 61% year-over-year to $10.1 million, according to the Douglas Elliman report. The number of sales—nine—remained the same as last year. Meanwhile, inventory dropped 38.5% to 152 homes.

The median sales price of luxury condos climbed 12.7% to $3.23 million in the first quarter of this year. The sales volume slipped 2.8% to 70, while inventory shrank 6.6% to 1,006.

This largely contributed to steady sales in Miami Beach over the last year, combined with the slowdown in new developments.

Boca Raton’s Luxury Condos Are Heavily in Demand

Boca Raton was among the strongest-performing luxury condo markets in the first quarter across the region. The median sales price jumped 48.3% to $1.18 million, while the average sales price soared 68% year-over-year to $1.6 million. There were 60 luxury condo apartments sold, down from 64 at the same time last year.

Another factor is the relatively low price points for luxury condos, which benefit from tax reform and deduction capping, he said.

Compared to the luxury condos, a luxury single-family market in Boca Raton saw signs of weakening. There were 49 luxury single-family homes sold in the first quarter of 2019, down 10.9% from a year ago. The median sales price dropped 14.9% annually to $1.83 million.

from BRG International - Feed http://bit.ly/2XtpKHi via Beyond Realty Group

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cynthiatherrera · 4 years ago

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Revisiting the monetary policy endgame

Last year, at the beginning of September, we wrote a blog post entitled The Monetary Policy Endgame that laid out one possible future for the path of monetary policy, should economic growth falter, productivity not materialize and populist politics continue to thrive. Some parts of that analysis seem worryingly prescient nine months hence, so we wanted to revisit the analysis from a different vantage point today. Part of the global policy response to the exogenous shock of Covid-19 and the subsequent economic lockdowns has been some combination of new and expanded quantitative easing (QE) programs, interest rates pushed to zero, or even more negative levels, and currency depreciation. These policies should go a long way toward helping us weather the economic storm of Covid-19 and jumpstart the economy once the storm passes, but they do not on their own create a long term trajectory for sustainable growth, which was something already sorely needed in parts of the world before the crisis hit. In this post, we imagine what it might take to reinvigorate such growth and avoid an acceleration toward the negative monetary policy endgame we previously described.

Examining the engine of growth

Coal mines are not often thought of as bastions of technological innovation. Yet, one of the sparks that ignited the Industrial Revolution was a humble invention from just such a mine – the steam engine. Originally intended to solve the problem of flooding by helping miners pump water out of mines, the new technology was quickly applied to transportation, and the construction of new ships and trains eventually led to soaring productivity in Western Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries.

If the world ever needed another “steam engine moment,” it would be now. A growth spurt on the scale of the Industrial Revolution would be a sure-fire economic lifesaver from the Covid-19 storm. But what is today’s flooded coal mine and where would today’s steam engine equivalent come from? Asked another way, if we happened to be looking back in the year 2030, and the world had just completed a decade of above-trend growth, throwing water on the prophetic fires of today’s economic doomsayers, how might the world have done it?

Before speculating on how above-trend growth might be achieved, we must first understand the component parts that drive economic growth. The Cobb-Douglas production function suggests that real output is a function of labor and capital resources, and a third factor, productivity, which is the ability to extract more output from fixed labor and capital pools. Since the size of the labor resource is largely a function of slow-moving demographic cycles (50 years long or more), the burden of raising output on shorter time horizons falls more heavily on capital and productivity. Capital and productivity themselves are intricately intertwined – only through sufficient investment can productivity-enhancing technologies be invented.

Today, investment is more than just capital expenditures – in our modern economy, total investment includes research and development (R&D) too. To understand the importance of R&D, one need look no further than the epitome of modern-day capex – the energy industry in 2006-2015. Since 1995, energy capex averaged 20% of the S&P 500 total, and from 2006-2015, it never dipped below that 20% mark. From 2008-2014 it averaged 31% of S&P 500 capex, peaking at 33% in 2013. The results of all that investment, the oil price trend over the last six years, needs no further explanation. Nobody can blame the energy industry for not investing, but investment oriented around growing volumes needs to be accompanied by some defense against price declines, especially in a disinflationary world. Perhaps investments must include some form of pricing power preservation, or economic moat. R&D, while not a perfect measure, is a vital component of any comprehensive framework for investing while protecting against industry rivalry (think Porter’s Five Forces) when the global economic pie is not growing as fast as it has historically.

How much investment is enough?

So, both capex and R&D are important, but how much total investment is enough? If the growth rate of total investment is persistently below the growth rate of nominal output, how can an economy maintain the capacity required to function at existing levels of output, much less to grow its output, through increased capacity or productivity? While the world as a whole risks edging towards under-investment post-Covid, recent history shows Europe, in particular, struggling to invest at a rate equal to, or above, its nominal growth rate (see graph). From 2000-2019, U.S. nominal GDP grew at an average of 4.0%, while total investment grew at an average of 4.7%, a 0.7% outspend. In China, this outspend was even greater, at 1.7%. However, in Europe, while nominal GDP grew at 2.9%, investment only grew at 2.8%, leaving a -0.1% under spend. From 2016-2019, this deficit was even more acute, at -3.8% (nominal GDP grew at 3.0% and total investment shrank by 0.8% each year).

Public and private investment correlate strongly with a country’s multi-factor productivity and corporate sales. Given regional investment trends, it should be little surprise that while the S&P 500 and Shanghai Composite have roughly doubled since the turn of the century, the Eurostoxx 50 has declined by about a third. The fact is that in Europe, monetary policy carries an outsized (perhaps insurmountable) burden in driving output, as there is little help coming from Cobb-Douglas’ organic sources of growth when both investment (capital) and demographic (labor) pools are in decline.

Lessons from the past

While QE programs and negative interest rate policies are likely to meet initial success as the world emerges from lockdown, they are no long-term substitute for investment. One of the earliest records of financial repression is to be found in Ancient Rome. In an effort to maintain a quality of life that had become increasingly difficult to finance, as well as an enormous empire whose borders were becoming increasingly difficult to defend, a succession of Caesars began to degrade the quality of the Roman currency, the denarius, by reducing the silver content of coins, so they could then produce more coins to fund deficits. Eventually services would not be rendered (including those of Rome’s mercenary armies), goods would not be traded, and long-term projects would not be financed because the financiers did not know what the real value of their principal repayments would be in the future.

A lesser known fact is that the first prototype of a steam turbine also came from Ancient Rome, 1,500 years before it was (re)invented in the coal mines of England. Would things have ended differently had the Romans, during a time of relative peace, allocated a strong denarius towards productive investment rather than weakening the currency in order to sustain nominal output?

Today, the world does not have the luxury of peace to deliberate its next policy. Covid-19 is the equivalent of wartime economic conditions. It has rendered financial repression through zero or negative interest rate policies the quickest stop-gap solution, not least because the virus and the policies enacted to combat it pose a threat to our quality of life. We think central banks have been absolutely right to use every tool at their disposal in fighting this devil we know, as it’s not the time to fear any of the devils we don’t. But while these monetary tools exist for policymakers to prevent the economic shocks seen this year from becoming permanent states of affairs, the permanence of such tools may result in the long-term creation of the very shocks they were intended to avoid. That’s because they have the potential to change the capitalist incentive structure.

icon-pointer.svgFollow Rick Rieder on Twitter.

Innovation/Investment, the engines of growth

As we emerge from the COVID crisis, it is imperative that policymakers recognize the importance of investment in driving long-term output. For now, the current slate of monetary policy will likely prove effective in winning the economic battle with COVID-19 (and as such, is the right prescription), but if central banks want to also win the war against the negative potential monetary policy endgame, the next step would be to start thinking about how to resuscitate private investment in cooperation with federal governments. It’s not the policymakers’ job to invent the steam engine – but they should create an environment so conducive for investment that new inventions start piling up, increasing the odds of some of them being revolutionary. Fields like cloud and quantum computing, and 5G technology, all seem like potential hotbeds for inventions that could spark the next Technological Revolution.

Given its advantage in investment and R&D already, as well as constructive regulatory and legal regimes, the U.S. is an obvious region to see further innovative technologies produced, but China has also been investing at an even greater pace. Europe might seem to be an unusual source of inspiration for the next Industrial (or Technological) Revolution, but perhaps no less unusual than a coal mine was in the 17th century. Europe is already ahead of the world in some notable respects: it is at the forefront of regulation and capital allocation with regards to ESG. Why shouldn’t policymakers incentivize responsible investment the way they do environmental and social awareness?

As the lines between fiscal and monetary policy become blurred, even the European Central Bank (ECB) could explore unconventional ways to incentivize investment, as we also argued in a blog post last year. It is already at the forefront of unconventional monetary policy, even if it is by necessity. After all, necessity is the mother of invention – and there has never been a greater need to invent our way out of the monetary policy endgame, and revitalize global growth, than in the aftermath of the Covid-19 crisis.

Rick Rieder, Managing Director, is BlackRock’s Chief Investment Officer of Global Fixed Income and is Head of the Global Allocation Investment Team. Russell Brownback, Managing Director, Head of Global Macro positioning for Fixed Income, and Navin Saigal, Director, is a portfolio manager on BlackRock’s Credit Enhanced Strategies Team and he contributed to this post.

Investing involves risks, including possible loss of principal. Fixed income risks include interest-rate and credit risk. Typically, when interest rates rise, there is a corresponding decline in bond values. Credit risk refers to the possibility that the bond issuer will not be able to make principal and interest payments. International investing involves risks, including risks related to foreign currency, limited liquidity, less government regulation and the possibility of substantial volatility due to adverse political, economic or other developments. These risks may be heightened for investments in emerging markets. This material is not intended to be relied upon as a forecast, research or investment advice, and is not a recommendation, offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or to adopt any investment strategy. The opinions expressed are as of June 8, 2020 and may change as subsequent conditions vary. The information and opinions contained in this post are derived from proprietary and non-proprietary sources deemed by BlackRock to be reliable, are not necessarily all-inclusive and are not guaranteed as to accuracy. As such, no warranty of accuracy or reliability is given and no responsibility arising in any other way for errors and omissions (including responsibility to any person by reason of negligence) is accepted by BlackRock, its officers, employees or agents. This post may contain “forward-looking” information that is not purely historical in nature. Such information may include, among other things, projections and forecasts. There is no guarantee that any forecasts made will come to pass. Reliance upon information in this post is at the sole discretion of the reader. Prepared by BlackRock Investments, LLC, member Finra ©2020 BlackRock, Inc. All rights reserved. BLACKROCK is a trademark of BlackRock, Inc., or its subsidiaries in the United States or elsewhere. All other marks are the property of their respective owners. USRMH0620U-1208514-1/6 from BlackRock Blog https://www.blackrockblog.com/2020/06/12/revisiting-the-monetary-policy-endgame/

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mastcomm · 5 years ago

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DealBook: Should Google Shrink to Save Itself?

Good morning. Topic A in New York City: a state law that eliminates broker fees for renters. Tenants are thrilled; landlords and brokers, not so much. Send us your thoughts. (Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.)

Google reportedly weighs divesting a big ad business

The context:

• The Justice Department has increasingly focused on Google’s third-party ad business, which was “built largely on the company’s 2008 acquisition of the ad-technology firm DoubleClick,” Ms. Hagey and Mr. Copeland write.

• Google’s ad-tech business consists of software used to buy and sell ads across the web.

• Critics say Google unfairly bundles these tools together and uses them to help its own services, like search and YouTube.

Some Google executives have discussed informally “whether the company should consider divesting its third-party ad tech business, according to people familiar with the situation,” Ms. Hagey and Mr. Copeland write. (A Google spokeswoman said there were no plans to divest the unit.)

Proponents of divesting the business note that the ad tech arm “has steadily declined in importance to Google overall since the DoubleClick purchase, while units like search and YouTube have soared.” That’s because web search traffic is stagnant, while mobile internet use is booming.

��For Google, a partial voluntary breakup of its advertising business might be preferable to whatever regulators come up with on their own,” Alex Webb of Bloomberg Opinion writes.

____________________________

Today’s DealBook Briefing was written by Andrew Ross Sorkin in New York and Michael J. de la Merced in London.

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Investors hit snooze on Casper’s I.P.O.

The bed-in-a-box company is valued around $476 million. Just last year, it was valued around $1.1 billion in a private fund-raising round.

Investors remain wary of money-burning I.P.O. candidates, having turned up their noses at Uber and WeWork last year. It shows the public markets aren’t willing to subsidize these companies’ growth efforts.

It’s not the only bad news for start-ups this week: The Federal Trade Commission moved to block the sale of Harry’s, the upstart razor brand, to the owner of Schick. If unprofitable start-ups can’t sell themselves to bigger rivals, and they suffer badly when they go public, what can they do?

Tesla’s epic rally hits a bump

Market fundamentals didn’t appear to apply to the electric-car maker’s shares this past year. At least they didn’t until yesterday.

Tesla’s stock fell 17 percent, in what Tom Maloney of Bloomberg notes was its worst drop in eight years. Shares closed yesterday at $734.70, which is three times more than where they traded in June.

Elon Musk lost $5.9 billion on paper in just one day, leaving him with an estimated net worth of $39.3 billion. (He could still earn a huge bonus if he keeps Tesla’s market value above $100 billion over six months: The company is currently valued at $132 billion.)

The stock dropped after even hardened Tesla critics conceded defeat. The hedge fund manager Steve Eisman, who famously profited by betting against subprime mortgage lenders before the financial crisis, said he had covered his bet against the company amid its “cultlike” rally.

Today’s a new day, however. Shares in Tesla were up 2 percent in premarket trading.

Coronavirus said to spur Chinese concessions on trade

Beijing said today that it would cut tariffs on $75 billion of U.S. imports. Analysts say the coronavirus outbreak was a major factor in the decision.

China will halve tariffs on some American products starting Feb. 14. The Finance Ministry said in a statement that the move was meant to “alleviate economic and trade frictions and expand economic and trade cooperation” between China and the U.S.

But analysts saw the economic impact of the coronavirus. With Chinese consumers sharply cutting spending, it appeared unlikely that Beijing would be able to hit targets for increasing U.S. imports that were laid out in the recently signed trade agreement with Washington anytime soon.

“I see it as a measure to signal to the U.S. that, ‘We’re not going to be able to ramp up imports straight away, but we’re still on board with the deal,’ ” Julian Evans-Pritchard, senior China economist at Capital Economics, told the FT.

Global markets rose this morning, and S&P 500 futures pointed toward a positive open when trading begins.

Trump’s latest cudgel in his immigration fight: Global Entry

The Trump administration’s feud with New York State over protecting immigrants has expanded in a way that could affect many New York business travelers.

Residents of New York State are temporarily barred from applying for Global Entry and similar programs that let travelers speed through borders and airport security lines, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Jesse McKinley of the NYT report.

The move is tied to the enactment of the Green Light Law, which prohibits agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection from gaining access to New York D.M.V. databases without a court order.

It’s the latest stage of the battle between federal officials and New York State over immigration. The Trump administration has already criticized New York City for policies that protect undocumented immigrants.

“This is obviously political retaliation by the federal government, and we’re going to review our legal options,” a senior adviser to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said.

Bernie Madoff says he’s dying and wants to leave prison

As part of a request for early release, the mastermind of the largest Ponzi scheme in history told a court yesterday that he had terminal kidney disease, David Yaffe-Bellany of the NYT reports.

Doctors have determined that Mr. Madoff has just over a year to live, according to medical records attached to his filing. Under federal guidelines, prisoners who receive that kind of diagnosis can be eligible for early release.

He has already served 11 years of his 150-year prison sentence for a variety of crimes, including money laundering, perjury and theft. Victims of his fraud lost an estimated $13 billion.

Federal officials denied a previous request, saying that “his release at this time would minimize the severity of his offense.”

Bernie Ebbers, the former WorldCom C.E.O., was given early release in December from his 25-year prison sentence after his health deteriorated sharply. He died on Sunday.

The speed read

Deals

• Analysts don’t understand why the Intercontinental Exchange would want to buy eBay. (FT)

• Spotify agreed to buy The Ringer, the website founded by Bill Simmons, to add more podcasts to its offerings. (NYT)

• Nestlé plans to invest $200 million in the drug maker Aimmune Therapeutics, whose peanut allergy treatment recently won F.D.A. approval. (Reuters)

• Vanguard became famous for offering index funds. Now it’s getting into private equity. (WSJ)

Politics and policy

• The United States trade deficit shrank last year — because the economy is cooling, not because factories are reopening. (NYT)

• Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg are nearly tied in the latest results from the Iowa Democratic caucuses. (NYT)

• Britain plans to ask the public which E.U. rules the country should scrap. (FT)

Tech

• Jeff Weiner will step down as C.E.O. of LinkedIn on June 1 and become the social network’s executive chairman. He’ll be succeeded by Ryan Roslansky, the company’s product chief. (CNBC)

• Facebook’s move to encrypt its messaging platforms has run into opposition from child welfare advocates, who worry that the measure would let predators act with impunity. (NYT)

• Huawei, the Chinese tech giant, sued Verizon for patent infringement. (CNBC)

• The C.I.A. plans to offer more cloud-computing contracts to Amazon rivals. (Bloomberg)

Best of the rest

• Some bondholders are said to have reached a deal with of Puerto Rico’s oversight board, possibly paving the way for the U.S. territory to exit bankruptcy protection. (WSJ)

• Three big investors in Credit Suisse have sided with the Swiss bank’s C.E.O., Tidjane Thiam, in his fight with the firm’s chairman, Urs Rohner. (FT)

• The latest generation of Nike’s super-sneakers will qualify for the Tokyo Olympics. (WSJ)

• Kirk Douglas, the Hollywood star, died yesterday. He was 103. (NYT)

Thanks for reading! We’ll see you tomorrow.

We’d love your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to [email protected].

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