Lion ponderings

 The blockbuster model this year seems to be audio segmentation.  They can split a sound track into separate dialog, music, effects tracks, theoretically by generating each track from scratch.  The output contains none of the original audio but is generated from training on many clean sources with just dialog, music, or effects. Lions have never needed such a thing, but gootubers use it to replace copyrighted music.  It's used as the ultimate noise reduction in restoring analog audio.  It might be able to recover extremely damaged audio, with a lot of hallucinations. Hiss has been all but forgotten for over 10 years now.  Only the oldest ASMR videos have hiss.  Only generation X remembers it being a necessary part of audio. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Government shutdown perks. To be clear, food stamp benefits continue under court order but the government repres...

 Continuing the effort to make some minimal use of the hard earned wifi monster, downloaded some more comfort movies from the golden age. Honey I shrunk the heroine was really just about the hottie 18 year old Amy Oneill.  She came unto her own when the survival instincts kicked in.  The heroine survivalist formula made lions optimistic about Send Help.      Cropping was horrendous.  They used a lot of composition tricks, having him on stand on steps, photographing the wife from behind to create forced perspective, having her bend over, to make Rick look reasonably tall, but the wife was a lot taller than him no matter what they did.  This couple wouldn't exist today.    The hottie looked like a stuck up classmate during that time.  She married a chief marketing officer & became a teacher.  She wasn't as easy on the eyes after 40.  $3k teacher pension + executive compensation.  It was executive/doctor/lawyer + tea...

 Regarding BRK's downgrade right before their quarterly report, as lions noted before, analysts recommend the opposite of what they do.  It sounded like price manipulation. Sure enough, BRK reported a big jump in profits after the downgrade. Of course, if it was legit, it would symbolize a peak of dysfunction by downgrading everything which isn't Nvidia.  It still didn't go anywhere near past lows from the downgrade. Lions believe it represents the fair market value. Being overweight BRK, the lion portfolio has been a dumpster fire for the whole year of course. The competing duality of VOO & BRK actually kept it from going anywhere, but lions view the S&P as extremely overpriced.  Suspect the S&P is going to take a Nikkei 225 nosedive & similarly not recover for 35 years.  There is no passive investing.  The benchmark nikkei boom was 300% in 5 years so the S&P probably has a way to go.  The S&P stands at 200% in 5 years.  ...

 The very very very last 8 minute mile before the big day was really solid, except for the usual sciatica.  The big unknown is maximum speed while managing sciatica.  Managing it with an eccentric stride has been able to keep a sub 9 minute pace of some sort.  It needs to be way below 9 minutes to hit all the water stops. Helas, whatever the time is, finishing will be equally momentous. The weather continued trending wetter & colder.  It's going to be 2 days of aimless walking without the truck.  That's when the tours are going to happen.  The truck is only going to be useful on race day & night for some walks. The Thu night forecast was drier & colder & justified bringing the truck.  It's important to cover the camera in a ziplock bag as soon as it rains.  Any water is going to corrode the flat flex connectors right away.  There will be tools for accessing & drying the inside.  There were never any tests of the ...

Another year & the pendulum swung yet again to no longer owning any property to build a man cave on.  After the inflation of 2022, fixed costs rather than principal became the new limiting factors in owning anything.  Inflation had finally caught up with homeowners.   Reviewing current prices in greater Gainesville, prime walkable locations, Subject to change with 1 time never again inflation events, but $150/sq ft including the land can't be beat by any off grid man cave at $200/sq ft not including land.  The property tax at 2% is still horrendous.  It's not even beating rent anymore, let alone senior discounts. A man cave music room with Steinway could still happen, but it would have to contribute a seriously high value to justify itself.  Lions would have a hard time draining their brokerage account on such an economic disadvantage.  It would have to be top 1% net worth suitable for burning.  It seems the off grid guys are either all...

   Next in the wind down to the starting line came the mane chopping.  Lions did it without a mirror.  It was quite uneven & shorter than desired.  It'll last 3 years.  It seems the rubber band used to mark the upper bound shifted up as the mane was being cut & pulled tight.  The tracker_trt program must be used as a rear mirror, but getting the phone in position is quite difficult.  It almost requires a head mounted display.  The cheap VR goggles need to strap around the mane but might work for a long mane. The godox doesn't wake up without the full ID signal, so it had to be constantly power cycled.  Usage in a model session would require the wireless system or adjusting the timeout.  A smaller flash might be the only way.  Recovering the 580EX II would require a donor flash. An xmas without mane. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- After 15 years, fina...