A series of nested grifts

I watched the Young Royals conclusion. This is the story of Wilhelm, Prince of Sweden, falling in love with Simon while at a boarding school. This episode was the longest, almost an hour, so the whole series, 18 episodes, was about 14 hours of story. Through this third season I thought about how this might end. Simon could be designated prince consort and become part of the royal family. Simon could decide he could never fit in with the royal family and say goodbye to Wilhelm. Or Wilhelm could give up royalty and go with Simon. At the end of episode 5, after Wilhelm blows up with his parents, Simon said he couldn’t take it anymore and wanted out. So the middle option seemed likely. In this episode Simon clarified he couldn’t take the royalty anymore. Back when season 1 was released (and long before I saw it and long before season 2 was considered), Edvin Ryding, the actor playing Wilhelm, was on NPR. Part of what he said is if a gay prince takes the throne there will be no heirs. They dynasty ends. Either the monarchy also ends or the next monarch comes from another line of the family. Beyond that I’m not going to say how the story ends. There are a couple more things to mention. How old must one be to drink alcohol in Sweden? The last episode showed that Wilhelm just turned 17. Yet at a party in this episode (as was the case in other episodes) there was a great deal of drinking by the students, with permission from the adults. One side story was the friendship between Simon’s sister Sara and Felice. I began to wonder if this was going to develop into lesbian love. Then Sara became girlfriend to August. Then she betrayed August because he betrayed Wilhelm. So Sara is available again. At the party in this episode one of August’s classmates admits to the guys he’s gay. The guys offer to help him lose his virginity. I enjoyed this series and recommend it. It’s a good story. And it is a good queer positive show. We need as many of those as we can get. I see Netflix also has a feature Young Royals Forever, which appears to be a behind the scenes documentary. I’ll save it for the weekend. Hunter of Daily Kos reported that the nasty guy’s Truth Social knockoff of X (formerly Twitter) went public yesterday. It’s a complicated corporate scheme that got it onto a stock market quickly. Once there the nasty guy’s base gobbled up the stocks and the price soared. This is a company that has never made a profit – it lost more than $45 million in the first 9 months of 2023. There is no reason to think profits would be coming. Yet, the company’s value – share price times number of shares – climbed above $5.7 billion (The next article said it reached $7 billion). Since the nasty guy owns 60% of the shares his net worth just jumped $4 billion and put him in the world’s 500 richest people. Institutions, which usually handle and benefit from initial public offerings, appear to be avoiding this one. Also no sign of Saudi royalty or Russian oligarchs. Which means this is driven by the base. The nasty guy isn’t allowed to sell his portion for six months – unless he gets permission from the company’s board. I hear his sons are on that board. He’s got expensive legal bills and about $175 million due soon. So it would not at all surprising he dumps a bunch of his shares, which crashes the price of the stock. Which means he could suck a few billion out of the wallets of his supporters. Liz Dye of Public Notice wrote: “As with everything Trump does, this entire thing appears to be a series of nested grifts.” That grift isn’t your style? Try this one. Hunter also reported the nasty guy is promoting the sale of a Bible. Considering how unchristian he acts that right there is a laugh. But this is not just any Bible.

Does your Bible include a “Handwritten chorus to ‘God Bless The USA’ by Lee Greenwood”? Does your Bible also fill out a few more pages by providing full copies of the notably public domain U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence? No? It doesn't? Well, then, you're probably going straight to hell, because Jesus isn't going to put up with you carrying around a Bible that doesn't have those things.

This is put out by GodBlessTheUSABible.com. And appears to be independent of the nasty guy’s corporations. The only connection is he is being paid (I’m sure well) to promote it. Hunter wrote:

In theory, Trump is running for president. You'd be hard-pressed to find him on the campaign trail, mind you, and on days when he doesn't have to be in a courtroom, he appears to be devoting himself to golf championships and picking the pettiest possible fights. His aides can't rouse him into leaving his home to campaign on more than a sporadic basis, but for an unknown licensing fee, he'll dust himself off, set up a couple of American flags behind him and hold up whatever book you want. I don't know what kind of person thinks to themselves, “You know, I really need a Bible, but I don't like how focused most of them are on Jesus. Is there a version that waters that down a bit with random, unrelated patriotic schlock?”