(Watching this now. Fascinating history.)
The Proust Ball of 1971 was a lavish costume party held on December 2, 1971, at the Château de Ferrières in France, organized by Marie-Hélène de Rothschild and Guy de Rothschild to celebrate the centenary of Marcel Proust’s birth. The event, often cited as one of the last great high-society costume balls, featured around 350 guests at dinner and another 250 for the subsequent party, including celebrities like Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Richard Burton, and Marisa Berenson.
Key details of the evening included:
Theme and Attire: Guests wore full-length period gowns inspired by the Belle Époque and Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. Yves Saint Laurent designed costumes for several attendees, including Jane Birkin and the hostess, while Marisa Berenson appeared as the Marchesa Casati in a Paul Poiret gown.
Decor: The Great Hall was transformed into a winter garden with 1,500 potted palms and tables named after characters from Proust’s novel, decorated with orchids.
Photography: The legendary photographer Cecil Beaton documented the night, creating "faux period" portraits in the style of the 19th-century photographer Nadar, which were later sent to guests as gifts.
Notable Incidents: Elizabeth Taylor wore jewelry borrowed from Van Cleef & Arpels, while the Duchess of Windsor famously lost a feather from her headdress into her soup. The hostess also revealed a hidden emerald the size of a baby’s fist at her table setting.
(The 1968 rebels in France were called soixantehuitards or 68ers.)
(The old aristocracy was daying. The working class, one generation later, was replaced by migrants from AFrica and the Mideast.)
Gwyneth Paltrow SLAMMED For Israeli Real Estate Ad
Laura Loomer Goes FULL PANIC Mode Over Tucker Carlson
Microsoft is facing a big AI question after the hype got expensive
$MSFT getting sued for being down 20% by Michigan pension fund for deceiving them about the profitability of AI cloud computing $NVDA $AMD
A Michigan pension fund is accusing Microsoft of hyping up its artificial intelligence products and inflating its stock price last year, before a sharp drop in January.
The stock price’s steep drop in January and the continued decline over the months that followed, is the crux of the lawsuit. Lawyers for the plaintiffs wrote that Microsoft “engaged in a scheme to deceive the market” and artificially inflated the stock price before its fall this year.
Microsoft, along with other tech titans, has pitched AI as the most transformative technology since the internet or electricity. In a race between corporate behemoths and mammoth startups, Microsoft and others are pouring billions into the costly technology to develop generative and agentic AI models and secure sizable shares of the market.
But Wall Street has grown wary of the eye-popping deals between companies and the investments that keep growing. After a stellar run in 2025, Microsoft’s stock price has slid this year by almost 17%.
In a proposed class action lawsuit filed Friday in a federal court in Seattle, the St. Clair Shores Police and Fire Retirement System said Microsoft misrepresented its AI-driven cloud computing revenue growth for its 2025 fiscal year, which ended on June 30, 2025.
Microsoft reported that the cloud computing division Azure’s revenue had grown by 34% from the year before and that Azure would continue to drive growth at Microsoft.
But during Microsoft’s earnings call early this year, the company reported slower Azure growth. Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood attributed this to supply constraints for its AI technology as the company diverted its high-tech computer chips to research and development.
In January, after Microsoft reported its second quarter earnings, amid higher-than-expected spending and lower Azure revenue growth, the company’s stock price fell by 10%. It was the biggest one-day drop for Microsoft in almost six years.
A Microsoft spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the company was aware of the complaint and believes the allegations are without merit.
“Microsoft stands by the integrity of its public statements and will vigorously defend itself in court,” the spokesperson said.
At the same time, Microsoft’s investments in AI, known as capital expenditures, ballooned above previous expectations for the first six months of its 2026 fiscal year. The company, which spent more than $88 billion on capital expenditures during its 2025 fiscal year, is on track to spend more than $144 billion this year. Microsoft’s capital expenditures were above prior projections and exceeded Wall Street expectations.
Several C-suite executives are named as defendants in the lawsuit, including Hood, CEO Satya Nadella and Executive Vice President Rajesh Jha, who plans to retire this year.
Microsoft AI spending shows no signs of slowing down, though recently Wall Street has not reacted as negatively to the company as it did early this year. During the company’s most recent earnings call in April, Hood disclosed that Microsoft’s AI investments for the calendar year will be roughly $190 billion.
During that earnings cycle, Microsoft offered signals that AI demand was picking up. Azure revenue growth was up 40% year-over-year and the overall AI business was on track to bring in $37 billion in revenue for the 2026 fiscal year.
Wall Street reacted tepidly in early May with a slight bump in the stock price over the following few days. The price has since taken another steep drop and is down 16.7% on the year.
https://citizenwatchreport.com/microsofts-ai-story-is-facing-its-first-big-reality-check/#more-225323
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This type of indicator has sometimes moved ahead of stock market moves by around 3 to 6 months. Now it is flashing a warning.
Liquidity conditions are DETERIORATING rapidly:
The Excess Liquidity Leading Indicator has rolled over sharply and turned negative for the first time since 2021.
This metric measures real money growth relative to economic growth, and historically has led the US stock market by 3 to 6 months.
A declining reading also typically signals a flatter yield curve over the following 3 to 6 months, a trend already underway and reinforced by this week's hawkish Fed dot plot, which pushed short-term rates higher.
Meanwhile, Chair Warsh presided over a notably hawkish first FOMC meeting, with the Fed now playing catch-up to financial conditions that have seen their sharpest tightening since the post-2020 inflation shock.
This suggests liquidity conditions could deteriorate further over the next few months.
Are equity markets heading for tougher months ahead?
https://citizenwatchreport.com/this-type-of-indicator-has-sometimes-moved-ahead-of-stock-market-moves-by-around-3-to-6-months-now-it-is-flashing-a-warning/
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The Medicaid debate just hit a much bigger question
This video of a Trump advisor saying on CNN that the White House is “not afraid” to cut Medicaid and says “everything” is “on the table” including cuts on Social Security.
MAGA is about to lose their health care. #HandsOffOurSocialSecurity
https://x.com/CalltoActivism/status/2067671760850317497 Watch on X
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The Decades of Evidence SSRI Antidepressants Cause Mass Shootings
Most holistic doctors consider Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRI) anti-depressants to be one of most harmful mass-prescribed drugs on the market (it typically makes their top 5—which typically also includes the NSAIDs, Statins, and Acid Reflux PPIs). However unlike the other drugs, which are just unsafe and ineffective, SSRIs also have a fairly unique problem—they can kill people who are not even taking the drugs.
Note: the only other examples I know of where a drug hurts non-users are birth control pills (which are designed to not break down) being recycled in certain municipal water supplies and shedding of the COVID-19 vaccines—something which theoretically should not be possible but nonetheless is happening and harming the more sensitive members of society.
What follows is a revised and updated article summarizing the extreme dangers of those drugs I was requested by a few readers to write in light of recent tragic events and what was recently uncovered from the 2023 shooting at a Christian elementary school.
https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/the-evidence-ssri-antidepressants
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Aspiring Jewish screenwriter murders girlfriend, drains her body of all its blood
‘Kasian was tortured and mutilated before she was killed and all of her blood was drained from her body,’ the Los Angeles County district attorney said.
Alex Hanley, a neighbor, told Global News that several people in the building heard screams but that they couldn’t tell whether it was a person or a television program.
https://theuglytruth.xyz/blake-leibel-aspiring-jewish-screenwriter-murders-girlfriend-drains-her-body-of-all-blood/
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