The Blogger Himself

Portugal recorded its worst daily coronavirus death toll on Sunday, with more than 85,000 infections and almost 1,500 deaths reported in the past week.

That is the highest rate worldwide in proportion to its population of more than 10 million, according to an AFP tally based on government figures.

So, here I am, sitting here, in the worst affected country in the middle of a pandemic respiratory virus.

I get a cold.

Yes, a damn cold. It’s not a ‘flu, not a covid, a cold. Given that I’ve not been anywhere nor met anyone quite how is a mystery. But there we are…..

So, got this one entirely wrong then:

Ladbrokes owner Entain has rejected a takeover offer from US casino giant MGM Resorts worth around £8.1bn, saying the proposal “significantly undervalues” the FTSE 100 gambler and its prospects.

Shares soared by more than a quarter to £14.29 in early trading, valuing the gambling behemoth at £8.4bn.

I did tip it, back on the 18th of Dec.

GVC Is Now Named Entain, And Is An Undervalued Buy

The thing is, I got the reason wrong. So, it doesn’t count, does it?

My view
I’m bullish on the whole American betting market. It’s never been difficult to bet even if it has often been ever so slightly not entirely legal. The new legality I expect to lead to a booming market.

I rate the British bookies as likely candidates to do very well in it. Yes, certainly, it’s a different market and different culture but running a book is also running a book.

Finally, Entain looks undervalued compared to its peers. I’m a bull.

The investor view
I believe it’s worth picking up some Entain to hold for the medium term haul. I expect the undervaluation against peers to narrow and there’s always that chance of a full US listing to unlock further value.

This is more than a speculation yet less than a significant core holding.

Events that you don’t predict don’t make your prediction right.

Folks,

Maybe someone can aid here.

I might have mentioned this before but the last solution didn’t seem to work.

The Robin Hood stock trading site. It used to have an API that allowed places like RobinTrack to tell us all what were the stocks the folks at Robin Hood were interested in. Sorta a leaderboard. Not of gains and losses, but volumes of trade through the platform. That API is been cut off. But, I think at least, the leaderboard still exists within the site.

I can’t gain access to the site from Europe. Even if I could I’d also need a US bank account to show them to prove that I really was in the US, not just on a VPN.

So, to see that leaderboard, on a regular basis, it needs to be someone in the US who a) has an account and b) will, two or three times a week perhaps, send me a screen shot or the like of that leaderboard.

Umm, anyone?

So, the local supermarket started selling the 1/2lb jars of Marmite. Which I have been indulging in, one every couple of weeks. Likes my Marmite on toast I does.

This might not have been the wisest move ever for someone who can, sometimes, get gout.

We’ll see if my having looked it up and found out about this makes any difference. Because it would be nice to stop limping…..

Bloke wants to sell me some system of chatting to potential customers over the web. Sorta a VOIP or webchat thingie to go on the blog.

As he says, it’s vital to convert leads as fast as you can.

Thing is, he’s advertising the service by commenting on the blog. You know, a lead conversion system that gains leads by spamming?

I’ve been asked if I want to become an FRSA.

This is not, note not, as screamingly posh as becoming an FRS.

Whachuthink?

Update – so, thanks for the opinions. Not something I’ll be going forward with then.

As you know I do an econ stats, occasional stock tip, thing for an American site. Last November I tipped Ocado. Moving from grocer to grocery tech supplier, gold rush the money’s in shovels, rerating possible. Currently showing a 148% profit that tip. So, I partly preen, a normal sorta thing in such columns, and suggest taking profits as I’ve no new information about what happens next.

The piece is rejected for being “superficial”.

That’s tough editing.

Not that I’ve applied for it of course, nor has anyone been stupid enough to approach me:

From the coronavirus strategy to the merits of Rule, Britannia!, the prime minister’s new spokesperson will have to deal with the full range of issues confronting the government.

As the selection process for the first incumbent reaches its closing stages, though, the successful candidate is likely to face a harder question still: why on earth would you want to do it?

With the closing date for applications passed and the Downing Street machine back to full gear with Boris Johnson’s director of communications, Lee Cain, returning to the office, it was reported on Sunday that the process of sifting through the CVs will now intensify.

And although the job answering the questions of the press on camera will command a salary of £100,000 a year and a place on every news broadcast, the clearest signals yet are about those who view the opportunity with caution.

No one in their right minds would give me the job either. But I would love to be the first prime ministerial spokesman to tell a journalist, live on air, “Fuck off, twat”. It’s not whether that would happen but how quickly….

$925,000
308 WORSTALL ALLEY
Newtown, PA 18940

It must be me, right? Given how rare Worstall is as a name.

This not actually being so, it’s v rare in the UK – three of us now I believe. But over in the US there are hundreds. Mostly in PA and over into OH. Leading to me once getting an email from a kid in OH somewhere asking if I was the Dr. Worstall he’d taken Driver’s Ed from…..

So, little videos made saying “Happy Birthday” and the like by famous people.

Caitlyn Jenner
Patriarch-turned-matriarch of the Kardashians
£2,075 a video

Lee MacDonald
Zammo McGuire in BBC TV’s Grange Hill
£15

Presumably “famous in the comments section of his own blog” would mean me paying them….

Me on Farming Today.Starts at 7.17.

Over at Quora it’s possible to make money by posing questions for people to answer. Not a lot, it’s the sort of amount that might attract a third worlder. But possibly this model needs a certain analysis. For we do end up with questions that aren’t worth answering:

When were the Chinese economic reforms of 1978 put in place?

Something BiG says:

“I think you do more research for one throwaway column than the average “journalist” does for above the fold on the front page.”

And, well, I cheat. I write about things that I already know about. Or am interested in at least, have something to say about.

In one sense this is just what we’d like all to be doing. In another it’s rather different. The newspaper, the journalists on it, have to pick up the stories that are there and say something about them. That requires lots of looking around in order to have something to say. Even, to find out what is going on.

My cheat is to look around, see something I’d like to say something about, then do a piece. That is a fundamentally different approach. I’m specifically choosing the things I’ve already got an approach to, that largely guided by my already knowing something to a lot about it and having references to it. Journalism is, in its essence, the other way around. Here is something that has to be written about now, what in buggery is it?

There are rare occasions when I’m asked for a piece on something where I don’t already have a view. I flail around at such points just like everyone else.

The prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann was feared as a gun-toting criminal according to locals in the small town he holed up in shortly after she went missing.

Christian Brückner found a job as a waiter in a remote village 40 miles from Praia da Luz and befriended a German couple who looked after foster children, often staying at their house, local reports claimed on Sunday.

Remarkably, Portuguese police have not yet visited the village of Foral to interview potential witnesses, despite the overwhelming evidence that the convicted sex offender was living there in the weeks after Madeleine disappeared.

That’s the next village but one from where we were back then.

Not, actually, a lot there. In English we’d not say village but hamlet (there is no church for example, at least not that I know of). In fact, not really a Portuguese village at all. Rather more an area of spread out large houses with gardens, not the way the P countryside generally works at all. That being more small labourer’s places actually in the village, then farms around it.

That’s the Royal Crescent in the background. And at the time I was doing software in Russia. Games development and stuff.

Lord knows which newspaper took that, can’t recall it at all.

What’s the difference between a TV screen and a computer screen?

I see vast screens for TVs at x price. And the same size but in the computer section for 2 x x. What’s the difference?

So the bloke in a hazmat suit and a face mask came down the road this morning spraying the pavement etc with – I assume – disinfectant.

At which point it started to piss down cats and dogs.

Those sewer rats aren’t going to get it. Although what it’s done for the rest of us is a bit of a mystery.

That’s Academia.eu, the site.

It keeps telling me that people are citing me. Which is lovely, obviously. Then they want some money each month for me to find out who and why. Which is a lot less attractive.

Is this the sort of thing that a university library would have free access to? Or is it purely a single user, single fee?

I would assume that all the cites are to me saying something at Forbes anyway – my list of academic papers is exceedingly short, even if it has just doubled by rising by one.

This blog’s chief canine officer gets a trot out up and down the street of a morning. Accompanied by a roll of sandwich bags to deal with the usual accompaniments of a canine morning trot up and down the street.

The roll of such I noted this morning. Or, rather, noted something about. A neatly squished mozzie – or some such – in that roll. Several layers deep, entirely dry, obviously been there some time. The assumption is that in some factory somewhere an innocent insect alighted on some moving surface of plastic which then got quickly rolled up and packed.

Mildly interesting might be stretching matters but I’ve not seen such before……

I was reading The Observer and thinking, hmm, haven’t I seen this before?

Not an unusual experience for that paper as the whines are ever the same.

Have they, though, forgotten to add this week’s content to the site?

Ah, no, it’s Saturday. Gonna be one of them days, eh?