by John Walters
Tweet du Jour
Why? 🤷🏻‍♂️ #why
— Josh Rosen (@josh3rosen) April 2, 2018
Starting Five
DiVincenzo and the Wildcats rose above the competition all tourney long
Super ‘nova
Massimino. ArciDiacono. And now DiVincenzo. Every time Villanova wins a national championship, a true Paisan is part of the squad (Rollie, who coached the ’85 team that shocked Georgetown, passed last summer). Last night redshirt sophomore Donte DiVincenzo, “The Italian Scallion” (as PFT Commenter dubbed him, “because he’s onions”) and also “the Michael Jordan of Delaware,” scored 31 points and had a White Men CAN Jump block at the rim to lead the Cats to a 79-62 walkover of Michigan.
It’s Villanova’s—and Jay Wright’s—second championship in the past three seasons.  The Cats won all six games by double digits. The best team clearly won.
2. Hare Brained
When Donald Trump was told he’d be meeting a bunny, his first thought was, “It’ll be nice to bang see Karen McDougal again; and now I know I don’t have to pay.” So imagine his disappointment when he learned it was not that kind of bunny.
Then, of course, because Easter is the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus, the prince of peace, President Trump began to wax ineloquent on how we’ll be spending $700 billion on our military.
3. Trump V. Bezos
Until further notice, Gal Gadot’s pic runs on all Amazon stories
Donald Trump’s Twitter tirade against Amazon last week and Monday has played a huge role in trimming more than 10% off its market cap high of about $762 billion. So think about that: Trump tweets that Amazon is getting away with not paying its taxes (let that irony sink in for a moment) and should be paying the U.S. Postal Service $2.5 billion more per year.
So if Trump actually wanted that $2.5 billion, wouldn’t he have quietly negotiated this with  CEO/founder Jeff Bezos? Instead, he tweets his ire and costs Amazon more than 20 times that figure while not collecting a cent? This isn’t about fair taxation; this is about spite because Bezos owns The Washington Post, whose reporting on Trump and the GOP is honest hostile to them. But as Andrew Ross Sorkin of CNBC asked a guest this morning, “You don’t think there’s anything Nixonian about this?”
If you lost money today trading in Amazon stock or any other security, and you know of anyone who knowingly or recklessly made a false public statement about that company or its stock, causing your losses, you should contact a securities lawyer today.
— Richard W. Painter (@RWPUSA) April 2, 2018
Amazon is NOT a monopoly; it is a monopsony: a company that controls the market in such a way that its consumers pay LESS for goods. That’s not a bad thing. Now people might argue that Amazon will run every one out of business and then control the market (kinda like if you owned a hotel chain and then became president and forced all diplomats to use your hotels in order to curry political favor?).
A few people suggested that Bezos should just find the change under his couch, buy Twitter, and then ban Trump from using it. We have a simpler suggestion: why doesn’t Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey grow a pair and at least impose a Twitter suspension on Trump? Hell, I’ve even been suspended a day from Twitter; something tells me Trump, whose tirades are much uglier and who spread lies about Amazon in the past week that literally cost the company $100 billion, is more deleterious.
4. Happy 50th To A Monolithic Film
If you’ve never seen Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, based on the novel by Arthur C. Clarke, it may be playing this week at your local independent draft house cinema, as the prescient film turns 50 this week. The film begins with a chilling “Dawn of Man” scene in which we presumably witness the first murder (set to the robust and now familiar musical stylings of “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”) and then advances directly to the year 2001, in which a spaceship, Discovery One, is bound for Jupiter on a mission so important that only its onboard computer, HAL, knows it.
Turns out that Clarke was eerily prescient about the potential toxic effects of AI.
5. No Thanks
This is the Angel’s Landing hike in Zion National Park in southern Utah, often called the “scariest hike in America.’ I just love that the lawyers and pols haven’t gotten together to shut this down. It’s obviously not safe, but we humans should be allowed to put ourselves in peril, as long as no one else is endangered by our actions, in our lifelong pursuit of wonder and adventure. That is living, after all.
And here’s what happens when the weather turns
It’s not that I don’t think I could physically do this. It’s just that I think I’d be so inside my head during the hike that I’d potentially freak. The trick is to not give a fu hoot. Maybe wait until you’re terminally ill to do this. As far as I’m concerned, all of these people are rock stars. Literally.
If you’re wondering, a 13 year-old girl died on this hike in February, one of six deaths here since 2004.
Reserves
Martin Luther King, 50 years ago tonight, Memphis–“I’ve been to the mountaintop….Like anybody, I would like to live a long life….But I’m not concerned about that now….I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land” pic.twitter.com/Pme2Z1nXPA
— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) April 3, 2018
Music 101
Electricity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_QCjmZnUmM
Would there be Phish if there hadn’t been Captain Beefheart (a.k.a. Don Glen Vilet, 1941-2010)? A high school pal of Frank Zappa, Vilet is one of the few people whose own Wiki page has a pull-quote:
“He had dropped out of school by that time, and spent most of his time staying at home. His girlfriend lived in the house, and his grandmother lived in the house, and his aunt and his uncle lived across the street. And his father had had a heart attack; his father drove a Helms bread truck, part of the time Don was helping out by taking over the bread truck route [and] driving up to Mojave. The rest of the time he would just sit at home and listen to rhythm and blues records, and scream at his mother to get him a Pepsi.”
Remote Patrol
Roseanne
8 p.m. ABC
Live from the TCM Classic Film Festival: Michael Douglas
8 p.m. TCM
Roseanne Barr and Michael Douglas were both pretty big deals in the late Eighties/early Nineties. She’s now 66 and he’s 73.
I have some questions about a topic on yesterday’s post – about that kid that was accepted into all the Ivy schools & apparently to all 20 (TWENTY) colleges to which he applied. Why would anyone apply to so many colleges when you must know your academic credentials are so stellar? Does it not cost to apply? Is this just an ego thing where kids today brag about the number of schools that accepted them? Since I don’t have kids & my college days were, ahem, a few decades back I honestly am mystified.
I applied to ONE school. In person, in October of my senior year, at our county’s Board of Education to the UMd representative. I was, er, accepted on the spot. 🙂 I also applied for financial aid & was ‘given’ an “Honor scholarship” which paid my tuition every semester until my senior year when Univ of MD decided to eliminate that type of scholarship since it was not actually “economically based” (I’d had no idea & was pretty peeved with the elimination). I was also ‘given’ a “Workship”, which basically was a form of indenture to the school – they assigned me to a campus job of their choosing before my freshman year & it paid my room & board in advance each semester & my work at the campus job then paid it back. I had it all 4 years. When I say ‘given’ (with the quote marks), it’s because I EARNED both. I have no idea if workships at my alma mater still exist but I doubt they would pay enough for one’s entire room & board these days. Heck, it would barely pay for the “r” in room! My assigned shifts were the weekends (EVERY Saturday & Sunday), 8-10 hours each day which meant I could never go home or anywhere else on the weekends during each & every semester. ( I did get to leave early one Saturday so I could see a ‘home’ football game in person, but it was such a hassle, like negotiating early prison parole, that I never did it again). By my soph year, I started working more hours, so I could pay the workship off early & get a little cash too. Looking back, I’ve always felt fortunate to have attended college at a time when it did NOT cost 6 figures (!) & that I didn’t have to go into decades of debt to pay for it. I’ve also felt fortunate for that workship, although at the time, it felt like a prison sentence & the job itself was drudgery. Still, I ended up learning far more about a workplace &
the human interactions that occur there (both good & bad) than in any of my classes.
Anyhoo, that kid seems to have a promising future, even if I will always think that applying to that many schools is ridiculous (unless you know your academic record will hurt your chances).
How many schools did you apply to, jdubs? Did you have your heart set on ND since the crib? 🙂
Susie B: To answer your questions on the above comment:
–Yes, 20 is about 3 to 4 times too many schools to apply to, but there’s a thing now (my niece is a high school senior and she just did this) where you apply to a bunch of schools if you have the grades and pay one big fee. They sort of share the application. There’s more to it than that, but I don’t recall the details.
–Like you, I worked all four years at college and was also on about a 2/3 academic scholarship.
–Applied to Notre Dame, Georgetown, Arizona, Air Force Academy. If there were more, I don’t remember. Got into first three. Knew I wanted to go to ND.
It’s been 20 years since I was in college but it’s possible he filled out a generic application for a number of schools and he was accepted that way.
Wait, wait, wait. jdubs – you have NEVER purchased anything on AMZN?! I stopped shopping in malls 14 years ago (only to save money, as soon as I win that lottery, I’ll BE BACK!), & for that reason & because of my current (10 years & counting) obsession to save & invest, I don’t buy much of anything anywhere but most of what I do buy (except clothes), I buy on AMZN. Do you think your AMZN, er, virginity is because you live in a metropolis & just have to literally walk out your door & can pass store after store? Or did you take a vow of, er, internet shopping celibacy? Have you bought anything from any site online?
The reason why AMZN was my very 1st stock purchase was because of my own use & positive experience with the site. And that I had realized I was buying more & more various items there & figured “everyone” (well, everyone EXCEPT you apparently) was too. I also looked at ‘the financials’ on YHOO Finance back in Nov 2008 & nothing there was a red flag to me. However, almost EVERY talking head on CNBC repeatedly & incessantly said AMZN was “overpriced” from the day I bought until just about 2 years ago; after the stock had increased 25 times…
Anyhoo, I must say I’m surprised. Shocked actually. You & my mother are now the only two people I know who’ve not ever bought from Amazon & she’s never had internet access. 🙂
Yup, Susie B., never bought a thing on AMZN. I’m not a shopper. Kitty food, my food, and the occasional sundry. It does help that I can walk to most anything I need/want to purchase, but mostly I’m just really cheap. Of course, maybe if I put up a paywall here….