Rob Sheeley thought he might die, right there in that West Texas basement.
Eyes bugged out. Heart pounding. Hyperventilating. They'd find him in a fetal ball at the bottom of the stairs, passed out from sheer excitement.
That's what can happen when dreams come true.
"It took everything I had to keep it together," Sheeley said, describing the January day he walked down those stairs in Big Spring and gazed upon row after row of shelves holding 100,000 virgin discs, the entire vinyl inventory of a record store that closed its doors in 1984.
From Abba to Zappa, it was there. Bruce Springsteen. James Brown. The Ramones. Ozzy Osbourne. Prince. All sealed in their original wrappers.
Image credit: Photographer Jeff Wheeler / Star Tribune
The Fusion team The Digilantes investigates cyber scammers and who they are in an interactive web series. In the first episode, they trace down the people behind the infamous website mugshots.com.
There are a lot of people online that want to rip you off. But The Digilantes are here to help. Investigative duo Natasha Del Toro and Dan Lieberman go on a hunt for cyber scammers. Our first case looks into the mugshot industry, websites that post mugshots and then charge hundreds, even thousands of dollars to take them down, whether you are guilty or not. The biggest of them all is mugshots.com. Some call it extortion, but no one can find who is behind the site. So we decided to find them ourselves.
Photographer Patrick Demmons' specialty is to shoot portraits using the classic tintype process from the mid 1800's. In this short presented by Wired, Demmons takes us through the process of taking these types of photographs.
Watching Channel 4's interesting documentary "The Mad World of Donald Trump" (2016) yesterday, I found out that when Donald Trump got interviewed by television presenter Selina Scott for an ITV documentary back in '95, he wasn't too happy with some of the facts Scott revealed and began to send her intimidating letters.
[…] My 60-minute documentary exposed how through bluff, bombast and braggadocio, he had convinced the American business community he was far richer than he was, and that while the rest of his rivals were 'losers', he knew how to make the US great.
This ability to blag people into believing he was a commercial genius was most vividly illustrated in a helicopter ride we took over New York. Pointing to the Empire State Building, he told me he owned it.
'What all of it?' I asked.
'Yes, 100 per cent,' he replied.
Later, forgetting he had told me he wholly owned the building, he said he only owned 50 per cent of it which he then considerably reduced. It was the same story with the Trump Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City.
'It's wholly owned by me,' he said. 'Are you sure?' I asked. 'Well maybe 80 per cent,' he demurred. 'Are you quite sure?' I pressed. He replied: 'Well it's actually 50 per cent…'
I showed both assertions in my film with many other inconsistencies with the telling soundtrack It Ain't Necessarily So.
Trump went ballistic. Over many years he sent me a series of intimidating letters branding me 'sleazy, unattractive, obnoxious and boring.' He said I was 'totally uptight', and that I had begged him for a date. In his dreams!
This vicious tirade was often accompanied by fanzine newspaper cuttings which purported to show how much money he was making.
Leonard Stern, a New York pet food mogul and real estate developer, decided to finance a series of documentaries about celebrity businessmen. He did a smart thing -- for the first documentary, he chose Donald Trump, who was then riding his bestselling book "The Art of the Deal" and beloved by the media.
I was called in to write the piece after the filmmakers shot the footage. It was easy work, because they had remarkable stuff: Donald working with the mob in Atlantic City, intimidating tenants, hiring illegal immigrant labor, verbally assaulting his family and underlings, trying to move a Florida airport because jets flew directly over his home… the list goes on and on.
Perhaps most interesting from a political point of view, the filmmakers revealed Trump to be the opposite of a small-government conservative. He got his start with his father's money and political connections, and he made money the same way his father did: on the backs of taxpayers.
But most upsetting to Trump was the film's revelation that he hadn't made as much money as he said he had. The producers were among the first to show that his financial empire was built on braggadocio... as recent reports show it to be to this day.
[…]
"Trump: What's the Deal?" was never shown on television. Donald Trump went after Leonard Stern --- in a big way. Lawyer's letters. Threats of lawsuits. Personal attacks.
Stern decided he didn't need the trouble and canceled the series. The producers finished the film. But no broadcaster would touch it. Trump had done his work.
Watch the trailer:
Watch the full documentary:
Featured image: Donald Trump on the cover of New York Magazine taken from "Trump: What's the Deal?".
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has put together a beautiful animated video with posters from some of the films from the early 20th century to present that have won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
During a period of six months, entrepreneur Kathleen O'Grady worked as hedge fund manager Ray Dalio's assistent at Bridgewater Associates. Working for Dalio, O'Grady learned 5 key lessons that she shares in a longer blog post that was written back in 2011.
I would not be an entrepreneur specializing in Authentic Leadership if it were not for my experience working for Ray Dalio at Bridgewater Associates. For approximately six months, I supported Ray Dalio (Founder), Bob Prince (Co-CIO), and Ray’s brilliant, philanthropic son Matt Dalio (Founder of The China Care Foundation) as their Executuve & Personal Assistant. Despite its brevity, this previous position has proven time and time again to be a major contributing factor to the person I am and the work I do in the world.
I learned more about self leadership in that six months than most people learn in a lifetime. Seeing the recent article on Ray in The New Yorker, titled Mastering the Machine, I was compelled to write this blog.
Dick Sheaff from The Ephemera Society of America shows us that junk mail isn't a modern day phenomena. The same get-rich-quick schemes that exists today, existed back in the days, but then they were delivered by mail with the help of the local mailman.
The mid- to late-nineteenth century saw the beginnings of advertising agencies (most, at first, simply placing newspaper ads for their clients), of compiled mailing lists and pre-printed labels…and of junk mail fishing for fresh, new contacts. For a variety of reasons, the first junk mail (targeted mail, generic mail…take your pick) went to and through local postmasters. Small town postmasters knew anybody and everybody in town, knew their businesses, knew their interests, knew their foibles. Much such mail was addressed directly to the postmaster, asking him to pass it along to someone in town likely to be interested in the product. Other mail, addressed to "The Leading (Teacher / Grocer / Doctor / you name it)" in town also bore a side note to the postmaster asking him to re-direct it to somebody else likely to be interested, if appropriate.
Postmasters in those days were allowed to send and receive Post Office business mail for free; many a PM took advantage by engaging in some other occupation on the side using the free mail privilege. Not really kosher, but Washington largely looked the other way. Knowing this, some early junk mailers made it clear on the outer envelope that the PM was welcome to sign up as a local company agent and do some business with and for them.
"…hand this letter over to any man who wants to make $5,000":
He sat in a Denny's restaurant, drinking coffee between cigarette breaks after a long and sleepless night, answering question after question.
He knew none of it made sense: He was a successful and well-traveled professional, with close to seven figures in the bank, and plans for much more. And then he gave it all away, more than $718,000, in chunks at a time, to two Manhattan psychics.
