Blooded the Brave: It’s all backwards, what’s up is down, what’s right is wrong

(INTELLIHUB) — Hip-hop artist/Rapper Blooded the Brave, a.k.a. Kyle Reese, appeared on The Shepard Ambellas Show Friday, where he spoke about his new synth-wave sound and governmental control.

“It’s all backwards, what’s up is down, what’s right is wrong, and what’s wrong is all around,” the rapper with an alter-ego explained to Shep during the live broadcast. “That’s where we are at, we are in the upside-down, it’s like doublespeak is real, 1984 is here.”

“I’m not shocked by it — I have an inner peace because these people that are pulling the strings are so desperate, they’re scared of us,” he explained. “I mean, we’re the ones with the power, that’s why they do this, that’s why people feel like they have to […] do everything they tell us because we’ve been brainwashed.”

You can listen to the entire broadcast here. Fast-forward to hour number two of the show at the 1:00 mark.

Check out Blooded the Brave’s video The Upside down.

Follow @BloodedtheBrave on Twitter and visit his official website BloodedtheBrave.com.

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New "Wu Tang Coin" Raises Money To Buy Martin Shkreli's Copy Of "Once Upon A Time In Shaolin"

In the latest sign that the market for initial coin offerings has probably peaked, Bloomberg is reporting that a company is planning to launch an ICO with the explicit goal of raising enough money to purchase the only extant copy of “Once Upon A Time In Shaolin”, the rare Wu Tang Clan record and current record holder for most expensive single album ever sold. Martin Shkreli once paid $2 million for the record.

Behold Wu-Tang Coin, the digital token at the heart of a purported ICO whose sole purpose is to raise money to buy and publicly release the Wu-Tang Clan album that convicted fraudster Martin Shkreli once spent $2 million on.

The coin launched Monday, according to its Twitter account, which has a whopping 13 followers. Rare Music Ltd., the company behind the efforts, is seeking to raise $3 million to $4 million, according to a white paper listed on the internet. Because of its decentralized nature, the creators of Wu Tang Coin claimed in a White Paper that an ICO would be able to circumvent legal restrictions barring the owner from publicly releasing the album for commercial purposes until the year 2,103.

The goal of the project is to release the album for free on the internet. The company says coin holders will be compensated with "gifts" to incentize participation.

A straightforward purchase of the album by a music company would be pointless because the album cannot be “commercially exploited” in a reasonable amount of time. Therefore,
we propose to:

1. Raise funds via an ICO and attempt to negotiate a purchase with the album’s current owner.

2. Give Wu-Tang Coin donors to the ICO (i.e. owners of Wu-Tang Coin) gifts to incentivize participation.

3. Release the album on all free and paid streaming music sites after a short amnesty period (six months) designed to give owners of Wu-Tang Coin time to enjoy the album exclusively, before everyone else.

As we reported earlier this month, the ownership of the Wu Tang album is in doubt after Shkreli sold the album on eBay for just over $1 million – about half what he paid for it in late 2015, shortly before being labeled “the most hated man in America” after his former company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, raised the price of Toxoplasmosis drug Daraprim by 5,000%.

After being convicted on three counts of securities and wire fraud after the conclusion of a month-long trial in Brooklyn Federal Court, Shkreli"s bail was revoked shortly before the auction ended and he was sent to a notorious federal jail in Brooklyn to await his sentencing in January. Prosecutors asked that his bail be revoked after a published what he described as a satirical post saying he would pay a $5,000 bounty for a strand of Hillary Clinton"s hair. It"s unclear what will happen with the Wu Tang album.

Read the White Paper in full below:

Wu-Tang+Coin+whitepaper+v1.0.0 by zerohedge on Scribd

Eric Peters: "One Day Your Investment Style Will Blow Up: Will You Fold Or Double Down?"

Sunday morning brings us the traditional Weekend Notes from One River CIO, Eric Peters, whose panoply of topics under discussion today include systematic investing, economic forecasts, Fed reaction functions, Twitter algorithms, bond yields for the new abnormal, fear and greed, and of course "Rocket Man."

Below are several excerpts from his latest weekly note:

Anecdote

“Whatever investment style you adopt will blow up someday,” said the CIO. “When that day comes, will you fold or double down?” he continued.

We were discussing systematic investing. I see its future dominance and am building my firm accordingly.

“If you’ve surrendered control to a machine, how will you make that decision?” he asked. Before I could answer, he supplied his own. “I’d rather practice making decisions along the way so that I’ll either avoid the blow up or at least understand my strategy in the crisis.”

That’s a credible position to take on the matter; for years I took it myself. But time changes most things, ourselves in particular. Day by day, month by month, we’re different people. Humble, hubristic, stubborn, objective, greedy, fearful, certain, confused, euphoric, depressed, and every imaginable combination thereof.

The two greatest advantages of developing decision-making algorithms are that they allow us to consistently be our finest selves, and they can apply our process across more markets than a single human ever could. But the difficulty of distilling profound complexity into a set of robust rules leads many practitioners to cut corners - which takes the form of choosing rules that worked in the recent past for seemingly arbitrary reasons, and building algorithms without sensible risk-mitigation to avoid its corresponding costs.

Such strategies put their investors at risk of catastrophic loss in exchange for a pile of pennies, and/or tend to make money in every time period except for the future.

But such pitfalls are not machine error, they reflect human weakness, and are thus common to both poorly designed discretionary and systematic strategies.

Because ultimately, every conceivable form of successful money management requires the experience to identify rules that tend to make money over time, and the introspection necessary to come to know our finest selves.

Bonus #1: Peters on bond issuance in the "illiquidstan" market:

Tajikistan issued 10yr bonds this month. Less than 1bp of mankind can locate Tajikistan on a map. Nearly all are Tajiks.

But the bonds paid 7.125% which is roughly what pensions need to prevent insolvency. Bahrain issued $3bln of 12yr paper at 6.75% ($15bln of bids). Iraq issued $1bln at 5yrs at 6.75%. Belarus issued 10yr paper at 7.63%. And Ukraine issued $3bln of 15yrs. $1.6bln rolled existing paper that nearly defaulted 2yrs ago when investors wrote off $3.6bln in debt and delayed payments for 4yrs.

This new issue yielded 7.37%.

Bonus #2: Rocket Man

“Did he really call me Rocket Man?” cried the chubby Korean kid. “Yes he did Rocket Man,” said some nervous sycophant in a cheap suit, saluting his Dear Leader.

“Did he call me a scared, barking dog?” barked earth’s most powerful man, typing a tweet. “Woof!” answered the President’s pack. “He called me a suicidal madman on Twitter!” stammered shorty, combing his black bouffant. “He said he’d tame Trump with fire?” asked The Donald, incredulous, swirling his sweep.

“He tweeted North Korea would be tested like never before!” screeched Kim, pounding the table, knuckles mere dimples, baby fat.

“He said he’ll detonate a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific?” asked our entertainer in chief, excited, knowing a sensational season opener when he sees one.

“Shall I go thermonuclear?” asked the itsy bitsy dictator. And his generals glanced left, right, unsure. “Shall I do it?” he screamed. The garden gnomes stood motionless. “Tell me, shall I mention Trump’s little hands?” asked Kim Jong Un, dead serious. They shook their heads in perfect unison; such a devastating insult would surely end 3.5mm years of human evolution. “Dear Leader, such an insult must be saved, savored,” pleaded his generals. “Very well, I’ll call him a dotard!” cried the child.

“Kim called me a dotard! A dotard! What the hell does that even mean?” whispered the steward of earth’s largest nuclear arsenal. An Ivy League intern explained, “Mr. President, it’s actually pronounced DOE-turd, and it’s a middle English word used by Shakespeare that means an ageing imbecile…” The Donald cut him off, “You’re fired!”

The room fell silent, the enormity of this unexpected crisis sinking in. You see, dotard is the kind of nickname that just might stick.

But at least the risk of nuclear Armageddon had receded. Because of course, it’s simply not possible to end civilization amidst such buffoonery.

Does Michael Moore Matter Anymore? An Open Letter From One Filmmaker To Another

Authored by Douglass Herman via Strike-The-Root.com,

“This is the true joy in life – being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one: being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.” ~ George Bernard Shaw

Mike: I’m a fellow Michigander, a fellow filmmaker like yourself, raised with small town Midwestern values like the ones you claim to have. I’ve mostly applauded and admired your efforts in the past. Indeed, long before I became a filmmaker, I championed your documentary film, Fahrenheit 9/11. While working as an Alaska commercial fisherman, I lobbied the local theater owner, Rusty, to show the film there in Kodiak, Alaska in 2004. He said he despised you but I told him the Orpheum would be packed for several showings and he’d make a nice fat profit. And he did.

Speaking of nice fat profits, how’s your weight, buddy? You really should contact my friend Gillian Michael and get on a weight loss program. Maybe you could make a documentary while you do it. Call it High Fructose Snowflakes or Fast Food Fat Folks or something really fun and creative. Like that guy who made Supersize Me.

Sadly, in recent years, you’ve seemed to become almost a parody of yourself. Like a cartoon character or one of those loopy Saturday Night Live sketches that are more embarrassing than funny. Where, I wonder, is the old Mike Moore? The guy who tilted at windmills, who stood up to the powerful with homespun humor and a shaky camera? Indeed, the very same things you said to the auto industry in Roger and Me, years ago, are the very same things Donald Trump is saying to the auto industry today. Or so it seems to me.

To your credit, you sounded prescient when you said, LOUD AND CLEAR, that this presidential election would be the Biggest Fuck You to those in power. Bravo; you were right. To Wall Street, Big Business, The Media and Washington DC, the average working class Deplorable spoke out on election day. But you forgot to add Yourself, Mike. Seems to me that America said fuck you to people like YOU. Lots of folks in the “flyover” states said fuck you to Hollywood and highly-paid celebs like yourself. I mean, you were worth an estimated $50 million and the proud owner of nine homes according to divorce court records a couple years ago. Trump supporters backed a rich fellow like yourself. But they wished and hoped and prayed that ALL of you rich hypocrites would move somewhere else, anywhere else – as many claimed they would - and help us make America great again. But those were idle threats from the affluent idle, sad to see.

Like yourself, I’m disgusted with what our country has become, and like yourself and millions of others, I want to do something about it. But a Two Million Snowflake March on Washington DC will be more counterproductive than anything, I believe. How about Love Trumps Hate? You do remember that slogan, right? Act locally and think globally, and maybe just a little Kindness Generates Kindness.

Since you’re going to DC, suppose you suggest to Black Lives Matter they get a life, not take a life. Stop harassing folks, stop kidnapping kids, and do what you and I did when we were young. Work for a living. Maybe you could suggest to all of your millions of Facebook and Twitter followers that they take a tip from fellow playwright G.B. Shaw about “Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”

The election, that you and so many others claimed was hacked by Russians, was a huge FU to fat hypocrites like yourself. We said FU to people who called themselves progressive but were no more progressive than the biggest Bushco Neocons. We said fuck you to Hollywood. We said go-to-hell to the shitty music and television industry and spoiled celebs like yourself, sanctimonious folks who backed the corrupt Clinton Machine. We saw through it, and for better or worse, we rejected it.

So now, Mike, you want all the sore losers like yourself, many of them struggling from payday to payday, to get on over to Washington DC to protest? Why not offer to pay their tickets, both travel tickets and disorderly conduct tickets? I mean, put up or shut up, Mike.

Put Up or Shut Up Protest

Let me ask you this, Mike. Did you ever protest, actually protest, anything Obama or Clinton or Holder did in the past eight years? Did you protest Fast & Furious gun running to Mexican drug gangs? Did you, Mike? Or droning wedding parties? Or did you protest the vicious destruction of small countries like Iraq, Syria or Libya, independent nations that never attacked America?

Did you ever protest the wholly undeserved Nobel Peace Prize given to Barack Obama? Did you? Because most of the folks I know would have thanked the committee and said no thanks to that prize. What kind of narcissist accepts a prize they haven’t earned? But that’s what Obama did, and most so-called Liberals support him and consider he’s done a great job. Why is that? You get all angry about Trump, and claim he didn’t earn the presidency. And yet you seem to be okay with a guy who bombed more folks than ALL of the dictators we toppled. And got a peace prize for doing it! Seems to me that Liberalism is a disease of denial or hypocrisy.

Can I just give you a suggestion, Mike? Your devotion to justice and activism is laudable. But you cannot support human rights at the higher cost of human wrongs. You soon become morally bankrupt. Even for a guy as wealthy as you.

Suppose instead you threw your considerable weight behind worldwide causes of truth and justice. Like the freedom flotilla to Gaza, like Colonel Ann Wright supported and lots of the veterans did, too. Or how about trying to stop wars BEFORE they start? Before the shadow state and the swamp creatures in DC rubber stamp some immoral war? Make a documentary about that, Mike.

Now about your considerable weight: How about a Reality TV show called Celebrity Biggest Loser? Seems like a sure winner to me.

Kanye West Arrives At Trump Tower, Discusses "Life" With The President-Elect

Following his pro-Trump outbursts (and subsequent nervous breakdown), Kanye West has been summoned to Trump Tower.  A pool reporter was unable to determine the reason for his visit.

JUST IN: Kanye West walks into Trump Tower https://t.co/84ClHD4MX3

— NBC News (@NBCNews) December 13, 2016

The meeting between the two:

My bro Kanye West and Trump choppin it up in New York https://t.co/CHx7xk5cJs

— LottoMoney (@LottoMoney_) December 13, 2016

West arrived at Trump Tower Tuesday morning, a surprise since the meeting had not been previously announced. Mr. Trump and West came down to the lobby after their meeting, where Mr. Trump called West a “good man.”

“Just friends, just friends,” he said. “He’s a good man. Long time. Friends for a long time.”

Asked what they had discussed, Mr. Trump replied: “Life. We discussed life.”

When reporters began directing questions at West, he said: “I’m just here to take a picture right now,” giving them a thumbs-up.

Maybe they talked about the presidency. Last year, West announced at the MTV Awards, “I have decided in 2020 to run for president.”

On a more serious note,  according to E News, West and Trump discussed a potential leadership role during their meeting Tuesday morning.  Trump spoke with West about becoming an “ambassador of sorts” in an “entrepreneurial leadership role," the entertainment news site reported.

West made waves when he and an entourage entered Trump Tower on Tuesday morning for a meeting with the president-elect. The duo emerged for photos after the meeting, where they "discussed life," Trump told media.

In addition to his music career, West owns his own clothing line. Earlier this year, West claimed he plans to run in the presidential election in 2020.

At a concert in November, West said that although he didn"t vote, if he had cast a ballot, it would"ve been for Trump. “I said something that was kind of politically correct,” West told the concert crowd in San Jose, Calif. "I told y’all I didn’t vote, right? What I didn’t tell you ... If I were to have voted, I would have voted on Trump.”