Courtney Marie Andrews leads with “Burlap String” .. great song, I love her voice:
Apple Mentions in Berkshire Annual Report
61,242,652 shares Apple Inc. 1.1 (percent owned) 6,747,000,000 (cost) 7,093,000,000 (market value 12/31/16)
166,713,209 shares Apple Inc. 3.3 (percent owned) 20,961,000,000 (cost) 28,213,000,000 (market value 12/31/17)
255,300,329 shares Apple Inc. 5.4 (percent owned) 36,044,000,000 (cost) 40,271,000,000 (market value 12/31/18)
250,866,566 shares Apple Inc. 5.7 percent owned) 35,287,000,000 (cost) 73,667,000,000 (market value 12/31/19)
907,559,761 shares Apple Inc. 5.4 (percent owned) 31,089,000,000 (cost) 120,424,000,000 (market value 12/31/20)
“Berkshire’s investment in Apple vividly illustrates the power of repurchases. We began buying Apple stock late in 2016 and by early July 2018, owned slightly more than one billion Apple shares (split-adjusted). Saying that, I’m referencing the investment held in Berkshire’s general account and am excluding a very small and separately-managed holding of Apple shares that was subsequently sold. When we finished our purchases in mid-2018, Berkshire’s general account owned 5.2% of Apple. Our cost for that stake was $36 billion. Since then, we have both enjoyed regular dividends, averaging about $775 million annually, and have also – in 2020 – pocketed an additional $11 billion by selling a small portion of our position. Despite that sale – voila! – Berkshire now owns 5.4% of Apple. That increase was costless to us, coming about because Apple has continuously repurchased its shares, thereby substantially shrinking the number it now has outstanding”
907,559,761 shares Apple Inc. 5.6 (percent owned) 31,089,000,000 (cost) 161,155,000,000 (market value 12/31/21)
“Apple – our runner-up Giant as measured by its yearend market value – is a different sort of holding. Here, our ownership is a mere 5.55%, up from 5.39% a year earlier. That increase sounds like small potatoes. But consider that each 0.1% of Apple’s 2021 earnings amounted to $100 million. We spent no Berkshire funds to gain our accretion. Apple’s repurchases did the job. It’s important to understand that only dividends from Apple are counted in the GAAP earnings Berkshire reports – and last year, Apple paid us $785 million of those. Yet our “share” of Apple’s earnings amounted to a staggering $5.6 billion. Much of what the company retained was used to repurchase Apple shares, an act we applaud. Tim Cook, Apple’s brilliant CEO, quite properly regards users of Apple products as his first love, but all of his other constituencies benefit from Tim’s managerial touch as well.”
Movies Watched -- Open Your Eyes (1997)
In Spanish. 117 minute running time so at least half an hour too long, plus this was just a mess from start to finish, like a Spanish Trust Fund Kid’s project, it was just terrible. The only good part was seeing Penelope Cruz, who is very beautiful. Once again John Farr has given me a shit recommendation. “This dark, boldly inventive film, accented with intriguing futuristic elements, keeps its audience engrossed and guessing until the very last frame.” No, John, it’s just crap.
Eyes Wide Open
Movies Watched -- Elle (2016)
In French. 131 minute running time so at least 30 to 40 minutes too long … this movie was comically bad … Isabelle Huppert is in her SIXTIES, nobody wants to rape her, especially every half hour … and it was perverse in the way that only French movies can be, just dumb and sickening and it makes you wonder how the hell these things get made. Total garbage. Do I have John Farr to blame for this one? Yes, another terrible recommendation, Farr! Nominated for eleven French Césars, sweet Jesus!
Dick Brody gets it right: “‘Elle’ sets up a house of cards that trivializes and—in the guise of earnest dramatic attention—pathologizes Michèle’s pleasures by embedding them in her own peculiar, almost impossibly exceptional life experience, in circumstances that, despite the sobriety of the drama, turn the character into a muffled mockery, an unwitting freak show … Verhoeven is uninterested in Michèle except as a tool for his problem set, for his message mechanism, for his facile issue-mongering, issue-muddying provocation.”
Tight for a 63-year-old woman
The Tragedy of the Commons
From Eleanor Randolph’s interview on Booknotes:
“… the old saying in the Soviet days was, ‘What's mine is mine, what's yours is yours and what's ours is nobody's.’”
Read:
Today Is The Greatest Day I've Ever Known
A cover of “Today” by Fruit Bats that is vastly better than the original:
Movies Watched -- The Child (2005)
In French. 96 minute running time. This was completely absurd. Bruno is a 20-year-old Belgian kid with blue eyes and blonde hair who looks like a surfer dude and spends his time stealing and lying … he has an improbably beautiful girlfriend with amazing bones who has just had his boy child (L’enfant), but Bruno, who is also an enfant, has the bright idea to sell the baby for quick cash, this is the kind of a guy he is … it’s just so silly. This got the Palme D’Or, but only because they give it solely to French language movies, and there was nothing else made in 2005 in French.
John Farr is to blame for this bum reco: “we realize these kids have no positive examples to draw on in making decisions, and that by circumstance, adulthood has been thrust on them well before they're ready for it” … oh spare me, John.
Je m'appelle Jimmy
Movies Watched -- The Hustler (1961)
135 minute running time so at least 35 minutes too long … not a feel-good picture … gambling (pool sharks), alcoholism, love and desperate women (what would now be called a “co-dependent” relationship) … stars Paul Newman when he was peak handsome (age 35, looked younger) and George C. Scott (pre-Buck Turgidson) … way too long and a major downer, I can’t recommend this one, just read the script instead (which is good).
Yeah, percentage players die broke too, don't they, Bert?
Ruby Ridge Roadblock
Jon Ronson on Booknotes:
“… it [was] at that roadblock that the militia movement really began in the United States. This became the touchstone. Timothy McVeigh visited Randy Weaver's cabin a couple of years later. And -- because the government had become just what the conspiracy theorists have always said the government was, out of control, determined to destroy the lives of simple people who wanted to live free. The government had fitted into that stereotype. They became the monsters that the extremists always said that they were.”
Ain't No Consolation Prize
Lucie Silvas with “Black Jeans” … I dig it: