Good Sunday to you,
I finally went to see Odyssey last night. I’d been intending not to, after everything I’d read on X, but my daughter persuaded me, and I actually quite enjoyed it.
Maybe not an A+ movie, but a pleasant enough way to spend a few hours. I didn’t feel violated by all the casting, in the way that purists were, although Helen should have been stunningly beautiful, which she wasn’t. To use the parlance of the incel rugby player, she was a three-pinter.
And what people see in Zendeya, who plays Athena, remains a mystery to me. Given that Athena is the Goddess of Wisdom I would have advocated casting someone who at least looks like they might have a high IQ.
If anything, the greater violation was the proliferation of American accents. I love an American accent as much as the next man. I want to live in the US. But to me, maybe I’m just biased, anything classical or mythological always sounds better in an English accent.
During the first scene with Tiresias, the blind prophet of Thebes, I thought I was going to hate the film. I turned to my daughter and said as much. What’s the point of prophesying stuff if people can’t understand what you’re saying. But after that, it was OK.
It’s amazing, though, that with the mightiness of modern sound, engineers often can’t get the mix right, so that spoken words, especially by actors with poor diction (eg Zendeya and whoever played Tiresias, though they were by no means the sole offenders), get lost. Even my daughter, whose hearing remains intact, complained that she couldn’t make out what they were saying.
Note to actors: being natural does not mean being incomprehensible.
I sound like my dad.
In other news, bitcoin staged another welcome and unexpected rally this week, with the companies I mentioned last week seeing gains of 15-25% or more.
A bitcoin bull market in which you don’t have a position is a deeply frustrating experience, and not one I recommend. So don’t miss this next one.
I show you the easiest way to play it here, a way that avoids the complexities of cold storage and the bureaucratic rigmarole the FCA has imposed on UK investors.
The jury’s still out on whether we get one more retest of the lows before the next bull market, but it’s looking increasingly unlikely. The next bull market may already have begun.
In other news, in case you missed it, here is this week’s piece. It is a whopper of a report on gold miners and well worth a look if gold miners are your thing.
It was very encouraging to see gold rebound in the wake of last week’s interest rate rises by the Fed. The inference, as far as I’m concerned, is that the lows for gold are now in, just below $4,000.
We’re still in consolidation mode, and I doubt we see new highs before next year, but it looks like we now have a base.
Turning to an ongoing theme on these pages, being the decline of Britain, how about these for some stats?
The pound has lost 40% of its purchasing power since 2020 (partly due to Covid money printing), according to Truflation measures. With all that debasement and the increased money in circulation, the number of millionaires “should” have increased.
But it has actually declined by ~60% since 2021, reaching its lowest level in 20 years.
The wealth destruction taking place in this country is staggering.
The US is growing its number of millionaires at 1,200 per day meanwhile, and has created over 1.6 million new millionaires since 2020. Americans are much better at debasing their currency.
We must be the only country in history to have printed this much money and still seen declines in nominal wealth.
I know I am mixing data sets but you get the point.
Thank you for being a subscriber to the Flying Frisby.
Until next time,
Cheerio,
Dominic
If you live in a third world country such as the UK, I urge you to own gold or silver. The pound will be further devalued, as will the euro and dollar. The bullion dealer I use and recommend is The Pure Gold Company. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe. More here.
PS I appeared on the New Zealand Every Day Investor podcast this week. Here is the interview, if you fancy it.
