Back to the 80s. The heyday for period drama at Granada TV. Brideshead Revisited, The Jewel in the Crown, Sherlock Holmes: fabulous locations, inventive sets, top tier casts, lavish productions.
‘The Breakfast Room’
Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947)
French Post Impressionist
Love his domestic scenes
The roses on the tablecloths are beautifully painted.
@7559pr « Si vous souhaitez un autre dîner, venez à l’heure où les phalènes s’envolent. »
« Les vieux rêves étaient des bons rêves. Ils ne se sont pas réalisés, mais je suis content de les avoir eus. »
Ces deux phrases résument à elles seules le caractère particulier de cette histoire.
Ben Affleck sold his AI startup to Netflix for $600 million last month. One month later, he "gifted" Jennifer Lopez his $30 million stake in a mansion that's been sitting unsold for two years.
This is the most rational financial decision in recent celebrity divorce history.
The mansion was purchased for $60.85 million in cash in June 2023. Listed at $68 million in July 2024. Price cut to $52 million. Zero buyers. Pulled from the market entirely. The asset has been bleeding carrying costs and depreciating for 22 months straight.
When you just cleared nine figures from a Netflix acquisition, the calculus on a stuck luxury property changes completely. At Affleck's new net worth, that $30 million stake is roughly 5% of his liquid position. Meanwhile, every month that mansion sits unsold, there are property taxes, insurance, maintenance, and security on 38,000 square feet with 24 bathrooms and an 80-car parking lot. Split ownership with your ex-wife means you're paying half those costs on a property you'll never live in again while having zero control over the sale timeline.
Gifting the stake does three things at once. It eliminates his ongoing carrying costs immediately. It gives Lopez sole decision-making power, which actually makes the property easier to sell because there's no longer two-party negotiation on price and timing. And it gets classified as a property transfer incident to divorce, which means different tax treatment than a sale.
The PR framing is "generous gesture." The actual move is a guy who just made $600 million looking at a $30 million liability with negative optionality and walking away from it.
This isn't generosity. It's portfolio management.
Having watched a bit of Cadfael, I might go thru and watch the rest of it. It is about a Welsh crusader turned Benedictine monk in the 1200s with a keen eye and a desire for justice who solves mysteries. Zoomers beware, it's a show you have to pay attention to or you'll be lost.
I watched The Lion King (1994) recently with my kids. I hadn't watched it since I was probably 8. What an epic movie. It's kind of nuts how epic it is actually. And some points in the score punch way above their weight for an animated movie - the cue "Kings of the Past" is a good example.
No big grand takeaway here, was just sort of blown away with fresh eyes by the general epic of this 1990s animated movie.
I’m very serious about this. You need to be making your home a beautiful and orderly place. Your home, then your wardrobe, then your yard and garden, then the borders of your place, then your neighborhood, town, state, country. It all radiates outward.
But you can’t think about all that. You can only control your immediate surroundings, where you live and what you wear. This orders your mind - and the way you dress sends signals to everyone who sees you, that you care, that people around them care. That we are fully formed adults whose actions in the world matter.