Krakatoa, The Favourite and My Lost Earring

[mallorys_camera]

A better picture of Rutger suffering for Christmas.

###

Krakatoa exploded.

I seem to remember that in 1883, last time Krakatoa exploded, the global spread of atmospheric ash caused beautiful sunsets and plummeting temperatures throughout the Northern Hemisphere for years afterwards. Day after day of cloud-filled skies and rain, leading to crop failures and mass famine.

Yet it doesn't seem to be a particularly big news story.

###

For Christmas, I wanted to give RTT a Stash account. He’s a demon with sports statistics, and investment analysis uses the exact same skill set. So, I set up a dummy email account for him, set up a Stash account with his real social security info linked to my bank account—figuring he would put in his banking info when he took possession of the Stash account.

This set off a bunch of red flags on the Stash end. Which I totally understand: How are they to know that he’s not some evil kid scamming some old lady? We have different surnames.

“But that’s a great idea,” said Lance, the extremely helpful Stash customer service rep. “Gifting Stash accounts.”

“I know!” I said. “And now it’s yours absolutely free!”

It will all get ironed out. RTT will have to talk to Lance, unlink my bank account, link his own. I’ll have to give him the $$$ I was going to use to fund it. I was trying to avoid that because I specifically want him to use the $$$ to invest in equities, not in video games, JUUL pods or Uber rides. But, of course, he always had the option of withdrawing all the $$$ and shutting the Stash account down.

Anyway, I suspect he’ll turn out to have a talent for it and will be running his own hedge fund in 10 years.



In other news, L and I went to see The Favourite.

Historically inaccurate, but highly entertaining. The kind of movie Jonathan Swift might have made had he been reincarnated as a hipster filmmaker in the 21st century with access to phantom memories of his 18th century life.

The acting was extraordinary, particularly Olivia Coleman as Queen Anne. As written, I’m sure the part was grotesque; but Coleman managed to infuse it with a tragic, heartbreaking, wistful intensity. If she doesn’t win an Academy Award for this, the Oscars are a farce.

Amazing set design, too—long, tapestried galleries in perpetual chiaroscuro.

But somehow in the course of the evening, I lost one of my favorite earrings.

And once that happened, I became obsessed.

As if finding the lost earring would magically right all that’s upside down in my world. A slo-mo reversal of the volcano’s explosion!

It’s all I can think about this morning.

Comments

[bleodswean]

We must be older than volcanoes, P, because I'm concerned about Krakatoa, too. You know, the day after the Camp Fire, I woke to a day filled with night, black as midnight all day long and on a day predicted to be in the high 50's it remained 37 degrees the entire morning and um...if smoke and ash can do that from a wild fire...I just cannot image a freakin' volcano.

So, I am researching Stash because I, too, have a precocious son who would rather buy vape oil but needs to learn the investing ropes. You're into this platform, huh? I wonder if he would put the Christmas $$$ in it if I told him to...

[mallorys_camera]

I did a series of pieces for a client recently on investment apps aimed at Millennials. Micro-investing, they call it. Stash stood out to me because it includes a lot of learning materials. If you want to do your own due diligence, though, the other apps are Acorns and Robinhood. Robo-advising is the hot new trend in investing, and Stash has a partial robo-advisory angle in that its algorithm makes investment recommendations. But the investor has to take care of the mechanics of investing—which I liked.

Impossible to say, of course, whether Robin will get into it. He seemed enthusiastic over the phone, and from my perspective, there's not all that much difference between FGAs and PE ratios. :-) And Robin is totally into FGAs! :-)

Krakatoa. Sigh. I know. There's a Big Picture that so far as I can tell is mostly being missed.

[gale_storm]

Yow. I get that about losing an earring. Frustration multiplied by anger, with some self-inflicted mental violence tossed into the mix. I'd go further into how the mixture is broiled and served, but...

Yeah. Oh, the film sounds fascinating!