Real reason why Trump is running for presidency

TRUMP TV

Mr Robot is back !!!!

Yes it is back for Season 2 which means some amazing writing is due. This shows creator Sam Esmail has always managed to provide some quality material in all 10 episodes of Season 1. Hope it continues with Season 2 also. Here are some of my favorite writing from the first few episodes.

I still don't understand why people like sports. They get so emotional over the we'irdest things. But I do see the beauty in the rules, the invisible code of chaos hiding behind the menacing face of order.'

In the fallout of the Great Depression, FDR closed all the banks for a bank holiday, and then he reopened them in stages when they were reported to being sound. Later, historians discovered what we in this room now know, that those reports, they were mostly lies. Nevertheless, it worked. It worked because the public believed the government had everything under control. You see, that is the business model for this great nation of ours. Every business day when that market bell rings, we con people into believing in something, the American dream, family values. Could be freedom fries for all I care. It doesn't matter as long as the con works and people buy and sell whatever it is we want them to. If I resign, then any scrap of confidence the public is already clinging onto will be destroyed, and we all know a con doesn't work without the confidence.

A guy walks up to a woman at a bar. He flirts with her. He makes small talk, but the woman insists she isn't gonna go home with him. Guy says, "What if I offer you $1 million to sleep with me?" The woman's never had a million dollars in her life. She stops and considers the offer very seriously. The guy changes his mind, says, "What if I change my offer to a dollar instead?" Woman is aghast. "What kind of woman do you think I am?" Guy says, "We already figured that out. Now we're just negotiating."

 

God can help you. Is that what God does? He helps? Tell me, why didn't God help my innocent friend who died for no reason while the guilty roam free? Okay, fine. Forget the one-offs. How about the countless wars declared in his name? Okay, fine. Let's skip the random, meaningless murder for a second, shall we? How about the racist, sexist, phobia soup we've all been drowning in because of him? () And I'm not just talking about Jesus. I'm talking about all organized religion... exclusive groups created to manage control, a dealer getting people hooked on the drug of hope, his followers nothing but addicts who want their hit of bullshit to keep their... their dopamine of ignorance, addicts afraid to believe the truth... that there is no order, there's no power, that all religions are just metastasizing mind worms meant to divide us so it's easier to rule us by the charlatans that want to run us. (CHUCKLING) If I don't listen to my imaginary friend, why the f... should I listen to yours? ♪ ♪ People think their worship's some key to happiness. That's just how he owns you. ♪ ♪ Even I'm not crazy enough to believe that distortion of reality. ♪ ♪ So f... God. ♪ ♪ He's not a good enough scapegoat for me. ♪ ♪ Please tell me I didn't say all of that out loud. ♪ ♪ sh1t. I did.

Nic pizzolatto, take note this is how you maintain the quality of writing in season 2. Im still bitter about the second season of True detective.

People who refuse to age

Paul Rudd

Can anyone of us believe that he is born in 1969. Here he is at the TV movie Great gatsby at 31 years old.

In 2000

And now at 47 years old he looks like.....

Does this guy even age. It is almost as if he has aged backwards like Benjamin Button.

no one knows what is happening '''with him..

Is he a vampire ?
What does he do to look ageless ?
Is he an immortal ?
Some ancient tantric/yoga ritual ?

Penny dreadful series finale

I was so disappointed to note that penny'dreadful h'as come to an end.

H'ere is a series finale review by price peterson of tv. com



Much like Victorian London, the television industry is a dark, macabre game of shadows. Ghouls stalk its blood-stained streets and night creeps devour the innocent whole. Also sagas about strong-willed monster magnets sometimes get struck down too soon. Which is to say... Penny Dreadful is over.
Yes, just when Season 3 started to really heat up, it petered out in an almost astonishing fashion. This week Showtime aired the final two episodes back to back as if to say "Please get out of here, Eva" and even with a full 120 minutes to say farewell the entire thing felt rushed and anticlimactic and, if we're being quite honest, beneath these characters. Still, there were a number of amazing action sequences and eloquent turns of phrase (as always). But friends, I choose to embrace my bitterness with both hands. Penny Dreadful deserved better. Let's talk about these last two episodes!

The main thing you need to know is it all ended with this title card, so if there was any question as to whether this series would be coming back for a fourth season, this put that to bed immediately. Is it even worth lamenting why Showtime would seemingly cut the season short and then unceremoniously dump the series finale without advertising it as such? Was getting Ray Donovan back on the schedule such a huge priority? Grumble grumble, etc. Anyway! (Still grateful to Showtime for greenlighting this thing in the first place.)

The first half of our two-parter began with several shots of poisonous fog flooding London. As we later learned, it was literally toxic and had killed several thousand citizens already. So, Vanessa's (Eva Green) prophecies were true: Permanent night, air as pestilence, jerks eating live frogs in their boss' office:

Ugh, Renfield (Samuel Barnett) is disgusting. This was what Patti LuPone walked in on. Some weirdo listening to all her audiotapes and eating live frogs! That is grounds for firing in my opinion.

But then again, Renfield WAS doing her an act of kindness by helping get rid of these things. They were popping up from every drain pipe!

Honestly, the one flaw of Magnolia was that next to no characters ever picked up a frog and ate it. Hopefully the inevitable Magnolia reboot (original soundtrack by Ariana Grande) will address this.

So then the boys finally arrived back in London and they IMMEDIATELY missed America. Like, London was literally poisonous now, and a stampede of rats greeted their feet. The London tourism board was really going to have their work cut out for them.

When they all arrived back at Sir Malcolm's (Timothy Dalton) pad they were greeted with a number of annoyances. First of all, someone had hung a slaughtered wolf above Vanessa's bed. (Ugh, vampires love dumb symbolism apparently.)

Also, the house had been overrun by night creeps! Fortunately Catriona (Perdita Weeks) showed up and shot a lot of them. Who WAS this lady? She's a new character and instantly great, but whoops! The series is over now. We'll never learn more about her. (Frown.)

One of the vampire creeps managed to bite Sir Malcolm on the throat and he immediately was like, "Well, time for suicide." But Cat grabbed a fire poker and burned the vampirism out of him. It didn't feel great, but it did the trick. Sort of like a back-alley massage. I'm guessing.

Then things got sadder. John (Rory Kinnear) was trying to enjoy a nice meal of, like, a bean, with his poor family and every time he tried to make plans with his son to do fun stuff, the son just coughed blood everywhere. Kids never listen.

I liked a few episodes back when John started robbing rich old men in order to support his family, but we haven't seen him do that in a while. Maybe he lost his nerve, who knows. Either way, his son looked like sh*t and that is just bad parenting.

Now that Dorian (Reeve Carney) had fully sold Lily (Billie Piper) out to go get her brain damaged, he had no use for the whore-horde (whorde) hanging out in his dining room. He let them keep their frocks but he truly needed them to GTFO please.

But Justine (Jessica Barden) is a feisty one, so she went and playfully stabbed him. Dorian might be immortal, but he does not tend to love grievous bodily harm.

At this point Justine refused to leave, stating that she'd rather die here than have to go be a hooker again. (Were there only two options?) So Dorian kissed her and then snapped her neck, and it was sad and kind of pointless and it was the first time this season started to feel like it was just wasting opportunities that it had painstakingly set up. Rest in peace, babygirl.

So, now it was time for Victor (Harry Treadaway) to finally inject electric poison into Lily's brain so that she'll be his chill, mindless girlfriend again.

But that's when Lily decided to enlighten him on the time she used to have a daughter, and how one time a john knocked her unconscious and her baby froze to death in the night. It was not a very fun story, but it was enough to convince Victor that he had been truly a piece of garbage for this. He ended up unlocking her shackles, and she kissed him goodbye. So ended another in-retrospect pointless subplot.

Things got pretty fun when Ethan (Josh Hartnett) attempted to track Vanessa back to the vampire lair (she was now Dracula's girlfriend, remember?) and got attacked by Dracula (Christian Camargo) and his stooges. But what they didn't expect was that he suddenly turned into a wild dog and ate most of them!

But then, what ETHAN didn't expect was that another wolf man ran up and helped out!

It was Wes Studi! He was a wolf man also. (But his hair got long for some reason; it looked chic and ponytail-capable.)

Just a couple of wolf men, hanging out and growling at each other. A real wolf-a-palooza.

The second episode began with word spreading of Vanessa's friends seeking to find her. Dracula seemed slightly concerned about this, but guess who wasn't?

Vanessa! I liked that they had a definite Gomez and Morticia thing going on. Anyway, she seemed ready and willing to ditch her friends and stay with Dracula forever, so this was going to be a heartbreaker of a showdown if we're being quite honest.

At this point Wes Studi admitted that HE had been the one who turned Ethan into a wolf man back in the day. He did it because he wanted Ethan to be the one to become God's dog or whatever the prophecy foretold. Ethan wasn't super stoked about this, on account of the fact that he had mass murdered much of the civilized world by now. Outside of maybe presidential candidates, nobody willingly signs up for something like that, you know?

Speaking of a plotline and character that ultimately didn't really go anywhere: Dorian Gray! In his final scene, he just sort of talked about being lonely and immortal and jaded, and then when Lily decided to leave he was like "You'll be back." No she won't! Just ask Showtime.

Oh well. They were a fun couple while it lasted.

Oh man, this was dumb. Why even introduce Dr. Jekyll (Shazad Latif) if he never becomes Mr. Hyde? In this case on his way out, Dr. Jekyll casually mentioned that his dad died and he inherited the name Lord Hyde. Uhhhh okay. That's not really how that story worked, but whatever. Get out of here, you useless sidekick.

At least Patti LuPone got a great final episode out of it. Here she was hypnotizing Renfield into divulging where Vanessa had been hiding out. Renfield is a creep and an idiot, so it took barely any time at all for her to suss out that Dracula had been hiding out in an old condemned slaughterhouse. At first I laughed because they probably should've just immediately checked all the condemned slaughterhouses to begin with. But then I realized that this version of London probably had millions of condemned slaughterhouses. So yeah, hypnosis it was.

So then John's son finally hacked out his final blood clot and died, and do you know what John's wife then suggested? That John go take the dead child to Dr. Frankenstein's office and resurrect him into a pale-faced abomination ASAP!

John did not love this idea (probably because he didn't want to have to share his expensive goth makeup), but when his wife threatened to divorce him, he had to think it over. Decisions, decisions.

Things then got VERY fun when the entire gang rolled into that slaughterhouse and started murdering night creeps for days.

Like, seriously, so much carnage. Patti LuPone was up in the mix shooting creeps in the face. Cat was running up poles and stabbing everybody. Man, what a good time. No wonder Victor just blindly agreed to tag along for no reason. Who doesn't love a creep slaughter?

But while that was happening, Ethan went to go look for Vanessa. And he found her just sort of hanging out in a dramatically candle-lit room. Dracula wasn't there because he was busy standing on a balcony watching all his friends get killed. Which meant Vanessa and Ethan were able to enjoy one final convo.

You know, for a show that has been about Vanessa finding the strength within herself to keep dark forces at bay, it sure is a shame that this saga ended with her utterly failing to save herself or stop the bad guys. She just sort of became Dracula's girlfriend, and then her only solution to get out of it was to allow Ethan to shoot her. That's not only dark, that's very unsatisfying.

Anyway, they said one last Our Father and then suddenly Vanessa was dead. And what kind of effect did this have?

The sun came out. Dracula just sort of snuck off. I'm not sure if frogs were still coming out of the toilets, but at least that sun came out. So our protagonist's death wasn't TOTALLY pointless.

We were then treated to a series of denouements, the first of which had Ethan and Sir Malcolm hanging out in Vanessa's old bedroom and promising to become travel buddies. (Or Whatever.) Good for them?

Also, John opted not to resurrect his son, and instead dumped his corpse into a polluted river. But, you know, tastefully.

And to finish off an otherwise delightful day, John swung by Vanessa's freshly dug grave and just sort of stared at her tombstone like, "Wait, what happened?" Or maybe that's just how I was feeling.
Friends, Penny Dreadful was a truly wonderful, inspired, audacious television show. I wasn't super in love with this finale, mostly because it seemed to have been forced into a "series finale" late in the game and rendered much of the earlier season setups pointless. It also didn't do justice to the characters in my opinion. But every single frame was a pleasure to behold and we are still so lucky to have had Eva Green on our TV screens week in and week out. Showtime may not have known what it was getting itself into (and I shudder to think about the budgetary spreadsheets involved) but I am so grateful it ever existed. This season as in the previous ones, Penny Dreadful felt like a secret. A macabre, beautiful, poetic secret. I shall miss it dearly.
Okay thanks bye.
QUESTIONS
... Did you find the series finale satisfying? - No it seemed abrupt
... Did Vanessa deserve a more heroic death? - May'be  no't sh'e ha'd a g'ood run
... Are you disappointed we never met a proper Mr. Hyde?- Nope
... Will Ethan ever find love now? - Yes and sh'e will die

MIRROR (by Sylvia plath)

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful ‚
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

Brexit explained

The song the end was just amazing

Josh hartnett promoting penny dreadful (best goth series)

History of Japan

BEST HISTORY LESSON

Mr Robot Season 2 : Cant wait for it !!!

DL hughley killing it on Sway in the morning

How the B in BRICS just fell off the radar

Washington post article on the failure of the rising Brasilian economy and the challenges it faces leading upto the olympics by Nick miroff and Dom philips

BRASILIA — It was called the “Brazil model,” or simply “the Lula model,” back when this country’s economy was roaring and its president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was a superstar of the developing world. By balancing support for big business with big social-welfare programs, the union boss turned statesman presided over an era of growth that lifted tens of millions of Brazilians out of poverty. Lula’s presidency cut a new template for a Latin American left that had long insisted that class struggle and revolution were the only road to fairness. The coronation came when Brazil was chosen to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, confirming its rise as a global power. 

President Lula

Now Brazil is limping to the Games. Its economy is facing its worst crisis since the 1930s. A Zika virus epidemic rages. And on Sunday, lawmakers will vote on whether to impeach President Dilma Rousseff, Lula’s hand-picked successor. Their three-day debate opened Friday with Rousseff opponents shouting “Dilma out!” in raucous proceedings. [Zika’s terrifying path]

 “We are in an extraordinary situation,” said Otaviano Canuto, the top International Monetary Fund official for Brazil, in an interview. “And it is even more extraordinary because the political dynamic overshadows everything else.” Supporters and opponents of the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff protest in Brazil 

Brazilians take to the streets as lawmakers weigh whether to impeach the president. If two-thirds of the lower house votes to remove Rousseff and a similar measure clears the upper chamber, Rousseff will be suspended. Senators will then have 180 days to conduct hearings, raising the possibility that while the world’s elite athletes are jumping, diving and racing for Olympic glory, lawmakers will be conducting impeachment proceedings against the president on live television. The plunge that Rousseff and the country have taken has laid bare the frailty of Brazil’s commodity-driven growth. Big parts of the Brazil model, it turns out, were glued together with kickbacks, dirty money and lies. Rousseff is not accused of illegal personal enrichment but of improperly using money from government banks to cover budget gaps. A separate inquiry is examining whether her Workers’ Party benefited from an illegal campaign-finance scheme, which could lead to an annulment of her victory and force new elections. [As Lula faces charges, a divided Brazil wonders: What’s next?] 

Rousseff and her supporters, Lula chief among them, have likened the impeachment push to a slow-rolling political “coup,” a loaded term in a country that lived under military rule between 1964 and 1985. Yet there is little doubt that Rousseff would not be facing the mutiny if she were not so politically weak, with an approval rating of 13 percent. The country is facing a 3.8 percent economic contraction for the second year in a row. In a telling sign of how investors and business leaders view the president’s economic policies, every step that takes her closer to impeachment seems to bring a rally on Brazil’s stock market. “She’s a bad manager, and she’s behaved irresponsibly,” said Eduardo Mufarej, chief executive of a 5,000-employee company that makes educational materials for private schools. Vote to impeach Brazil's Rousseff moves one step closer Play Video1:10 Committee members in Brazil's lower house of Congress voted to recommend impeaching President Dilma Rousseff by a vote of 38 to 27, sending it to the full lower house for a vote on April 17, 2016. Rousseff faces charges of breaking budget laws to support her reelection in 2014. (Reuters)

Enrollment in the private school system was 7.8 million students in 2014, but since then, nearly a million students have gone back to the public system because their parents no longer can afford tuition, Mufarej said. The Lula approach Lula grew up poor and never finished high school, but his masterstroke as leader was speaking like a populist while governing as a pragmatist. He put conservative bankers in his cabinet and did not attack business leaders or the United States. It was a marked contrast to Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, who stood for the more confrontational version of Latin American leftism. Latin America had been simmering with ideological tensions for decades, and Brazil was no different, with an elite walled off from a huge underclass living in squalor. Lula, who was elected in 2002, worked diligently to build political consensus. He dramatically expanded a program known as Bolsa Família that provided welfare payments to families whose children showed up for classes consistently and got their scheduled vaccinations, and it became the signature social program of his presidency. With the economy humming from a global commodity boom and Lula’s government passing the pie around, more than 30 million poor Brazilians found a foothold in a new, aspiring middle class
. 

Lula left office in 2010 with an 87 percent approval rating, so high that President Obama called him “the most popular politician on Earth,” telling reporters: “I love that guy.” The riches flowing from Brazil’s mines, oil fields and farms fueled a consumer spending binge, but they patched over the structural problems that made Brazil a creaky, onerous place to do business. A privatization plan to build much-needed roads and railways faltered. Productivity remained low because the workforce was badly trained and poorly educated. Companies wasted thousands of hours deciphering a greedy tax system. And all the while, the old way of making deals — lubricating them with graft — went unchanged. Big construction and energy companies grew fat on state contracts and government loans under Lula and Rousseff, and the opportunities for illegal enrichment were infinite. Slush money poured into political campaigns. The dirt from those years is now being unearthed by a hard-charging team of prosecutors and a tough lower-court federal judge, Sérgio Moro, who is overseeing the investigation of a bribery scheme at national oil company Petrobras. Through wiretaps, raids, arrests and plea deals, the probe has exposed spider webs of corruption throughout Brazil’s elite. [Brazil’s economy tanks as multibillion-dollar corruption scandal expands] At least 130 people, including company executives, former lawmakers and others in the pay-to-play scheme have been jailed at one point or another. Nearly two-thirds of federal lawmakers are undergoing some form of investigation or legal probe. Rousseff lacks her predecessor’s back-slapping personal touch, and critics say she has governed rigidly and intervened in the economy with disastrous results. That criticism extends to her 2012 decision to force power companies to slash electricity rates. As the boom years ended, “a combination of mistakes created a crisis of confidence” in her leadership, said Rafael Cortez, a political analyst at the Sao Paulo consulting firm Tendências. If lawmakers vote to remove her, she would be replaced by Vice President Michel Temer, her former running mate turned political enemy. Known for his flashy suits and slicked-back hair, he also has been named in the Petrobras inquiry and is potentially facing his own impeachment process. [Hundreds of thousands protest throughout Brazil] Next in line is lower-house leader Eduardo Cunha, the figure leading the drive to oust Rousseff. He also happens to be under investigation on suspicion of money laundering, corruption and allegedly funneling $5 million in kickbacks into Swiss bank accounts. In all, federal police think as much as $12 billion was siphoned from Petrobras, once one of the world’s mightiest oil companies. Much of the affair has come to light through the “Car Wash” investigation, which has reached all the way to Lula. Brazilians were shocked last month to see him taken in for questioning by federal police amid allegations that he received properties and other gifts from former government contractors. Rousseff tried to appoint Lula to her cabinet as chief of staff, a move that would afford him broad legal protections, but a judge blocked the attempt, opening yet another courtroom battle. With both sides digging political trenches, anger has surged in a famously easygoing country whose unofficial national symbol is a beach sandal. “I don’t remember another moment in Brazilian history when passions were as visceral as they are now,”said Ricardo Boechat, a popular radio and television commentator. “Not even during the military dictatorship.” A symbol of polarization With the expectation of large pro- and anti- demonstrations outside Brazil’s Congress during the impeachment vote, prison laborers were brought into the capital last week to put up a separation barrier between the two sides. The structure was the most poignant symbol yet of Brazilians’ polarization. It has become something of a cliche to say that Brazil will inevitably emerge stronger from the corruption investigations and the political bonfire they have lit. Another possibility is that the damage will be so extensive that the country and its politicians will languish in scandal and cynicism for years. [Brazil’s new hero is a nerdy judge who is tough on official corruption]

 No single figure has emerged as a strong, corruption-free alternative to Brazil’s current leaders. Lula would be eligible to run again in 2018 and has all but said he plans to do so, meaning he could soon be back in power — if he does not end up in prison for corruption. He remains popular among Brazilians who remember his presidency as the best years of their lives. WorldViews newsletter Important stories from around the world. “This whole crisis is about the possibility that Lula will run again in 2018,” said Wagner Santana, secretary general of the metalworkers union where Lula was president in the late 1970s before going on to found the Workers’ Party. Santana sees the anti-corruption drive as a witch hunt and the impeachment attempt against Rousseff as a naked power grab. But many Brazilians, including quite a few who once cheered Lula, are fed up. Santana’s office at the union’s shiny headquarters on the industrial outskirts of Sao Paulo looks out on new condominium towers that sprouted during the boom, but also the slums that have grown with the crisis. Between them is a massive Volkswagen plant, the largest in South America, where many of the union’s rank and file are employed. The plant has the capacity to produce 390,000 cars a year, Santana said. This year, it will make fewer than half that number,

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The Revenant - a cinematographic masterpiece.

If you are in for a movie with a simple story of revenge in the wild west involving Indians , then you should like the Revenant but it is not about Clint eastwood type movie but all about the emotional / physical trauma of a father/husband in getting that revenge.

It is a dark ...... dark movie.

But this movie should be applauded for the cinematography, visual effects and direction. Alejandro Inarritu has shown his ability to create a spectacle even without a strong script like birdman.

There are two sequences in this movie which are exemplary and would be the new parameter for future movies.

The Bear scene

The epitome of CGI is the audience never realising that there are VFX used in the scene. The behavior of the Mama bear was so authentic that it almost looked similar to a Animal planet footage.The way it was shot with the bear cubs roaming about and Leo unfortunately stumbling upon Mama who naturally defended its cubs. The shot following Leo and the Mama bear with' the correct angles which depicted the brutality of the attack.

The Horse falling act

Never realized what it would feel like for a horse to fall off the cliff. I felt the chase scene with the Indians was so reminiscent of my gaming experience with "'Red dead Redemption''

Dont know how did they shoot this sequence but expect Hollywood to use it in the future.

This movie is almost devoid of dialogue except if you can understand whatever Tom Hardy blabbers... was it even English. Wats the point of putting up an accent if you cant understand a word of it

It is the cinematography which makes this movie watchable. It is not Birdman but certainly a spectacle.

NBA TV rights deal - A call for Justice

Has the NBA ever been more richer than now?

The NBA had signed a nine year 24 bn $ deal with the current broadcasters ESPN and Turner. It is a 180% increase from the current deal. The new deal will take effect from 2016-17 i.e after the end of the current season. NBA is set to receive around 2.6 bn $ per annum from ESPN and Turner combined.

I love the fact that most of the money is set to go to the players as part of the new players association agreement with the league. Atleast 51% of the deal is set to be distributed to the players.

The current salary cap of 70 mn $ looks like peanuts in comparison to the above deal  which is the reason why players like Enes Kanter and Roy Hibbert almost get the same pay as Russell westbrook and Kawhi Leonard who are expected to be  future Hall of Fame players.

This anomaly in the pay-talent scale is so prevalent in the NBA that it upto the player to make the choice of either opting for more money  or  a paycut to chase the ring.

Russell westbrook can, if he chooses play for the sixers , get a 25mn p.a deal but he chose to continue playing with the team he was developed in OKC.

Such decisions are critical to the team as they need to limit their player salary spend within the cap. Otherwise they need to pay double for every dollar above the cap.This system is meant to ensure that there is a talent parity in the league across the 30 teams. The intention was to ensure that the large market cities like NY and LA dont spend buy the entire talent pool with their deep pockets and push all the smaller market teams to the D league.

It is absolutely essential for the NBA to ensure that all the 1230 regular season games (man thats a lot !!!) are competitive and valuable TV time to sell. This strategy has worked for the NBA.

The National Basketball Association is the most watched sports league in the United States and they are not looking for one major annual event like Superbowl for their entire revenue (NFL) or the World series like Major league baseball

As I saw recently even Milwaukee Bucks game against GSW is as interesting as a top tier contest. It has ensured that there are not many bad games in NBA relatively to the other leagues.

It has also ensured that most of the teams are able to sell their season tickets easily and creating valuable ad space for the entire 1230 games which keeps all the team owners happy.

This also ensures that the NBA brand is valued at a premium and even a team like OKC or Bucks will fetch a huge profit when sold.It looks like NBA has been at the forefront of all other sports leagues their management and preserving at their brand.


But I believe it is time for NBA to give it back to the players. The league makes around 4 bn $ annually. By standards lets assume around 10% is required as operating costs for running the league and a further 25% as the expected return for the owners then we are left with a cool 65% for the players salaries.

Lets do the math. 65 % would be like around 110mn$ as the salary cap for the players which would be more appropriate in the current scenario.

The league has no business in withholding  huge cash reserves and has an obligation to distribute the same to their stakeholders. And there are no valuable stakeholders than the players involved.

By the way this agreement is not only important to the players like Lebron James and James Harden. They would still get their money from their individual lucrative shoe deals.It is important for players like Hassan Whiteside, patrick beverley who in their own way are extremely valuable to a team but simply cant  get the big bucks in the existing CBA. Now valuable role/fringe players would be paid a just price. It is important for them as they cant get a shoe contract or multi year sponsorship deal and basically their entire life earnings needs to come from the small 5-10 year window in the league.

This new deal should ensure that there are atleast three 20 mn$ players in the playoff teams and superstars can earn upto 40mn$ per annum.

Only such an agreement would do Justice to the ridiculous amount of money that NBA earns now and can someone please pay Stephen curry 30mn$.

How can the best player in the league earn a meagre 11 mn$.

the leftovers a retrospective

This show was so enthralling that I decided to re watch the last three episodes again. I realised that there was something which I noticed the first time but didn't feel like going back to it. In ep 9 liv Tyler was called for a hearing with GR mgmt about the school bus incident. When they ask her about the bomb buyout and her plan for Oct 14. There was a single frame shot of the truck on the bridge to miracle I.e they clearly showed us what is going to happen in the last episode. That's a subliminal touch by the director

The leftovers s02 e08 a detailed analysis

In this golden age of  television every once a while you get a cathartic episode which is the milestone of the series. The leftovers just had one last week which seems to provide answers to its ever confusing world.

I have not seen "lost" yet but based on reviews it seems to be very similar to this where the audience is usually bewildered and searching for answers. According to me this episode gave us s lot of answers albeit in finer details.

PURGATORY

Kevin wakes up in HOTEL PURGATORY. At first he is confused at where he is then realized that it must be the other side that Virgil was v talking about. Then the cupboard advises him to know thyself and adorn accordingly. He chose the hitman outfit even when presented with the obvious choice of police uniform. Why didn't he chose that , what would have been the story then. Im already imagining a game which would allow us a choice to adorn accordingly and the game resets to that profession.

Anyways , the international assassin story line is intriguing and he has paid 50000 usd to get a meet and greet with the current presidential candidate paddy. Virgil is the concierge in this hotel and advises Kevin not to drink water in the hotel as It would contain them in purgatory. It was at this point a crucial clue comes up. A bird just flies around the hotel.

Assuming that everything is just happening in kevins head, how can Kevin know about the bird which Regina Davis used to bury in the ground. I.e. This has to be purgatory which means there are miracles in miracle.

Double paddy
I believed that in this world paddy has split herself into two , the conniving presidential candidate and the little girl personifying her dark and lighter sides. I don't believe the contention that she got a plastic surgery. Kevin realised that his mission is not yet over when he didn't go back after killing the bad paddy. Fortunately his father was there to help him out in realising that he's needs to get the little paddy as well. If his father can dial into purgatory from the real world v then Kevin should have the ability too.

Then we have a Mary Jamison sighting and it is a boy ladies and gentlemen

The trip to the well and the final talk with lil paddy really personified the lighter side of her and the jeopardy scenario were really poignant and incisive analysis on her character and at the end of it would feel sorry for her.

Kevin miraculously gets back to life by buying him in mud ala true blood style like the bird and now we have a series