Original Source: https://boringmoney.in/p/brightcom-made-a-profit-by-hiding (my newsletter Boring Money. If you like what you read, do visit the link and subscribe to receive future posts directly in your inbox)

The standard way for a company to make a profit is to produce a thing at some cost, then sell that thing at a higher cost, and pocket the difference. Another, if slightly frowned upon, way of making a profit is to not worry too much about what your company is producing or selling. Instead, at the end of the quarter, you can pick up your financial statements, take a pen, put some nice numbers under “revenue” and erase the numbers under “expenses”. On paper, the company’s making a profit either way.
The risk, apart from running out of money, is that the company might get caught. This month, Brightcom Group, an ad-tech company, got caught. [1] Here’s a SEBI enforcement order describing the stuff Brightcom did, and one of the many things it did was to show profits which didn’t exist.
Some intangible assets are under development
If your company buys, say, a truck, the standard way to account for this expense in your books is by dividing the cost of the truck by the number of years you expect this truck to last, and then adding this number to your expenses every year. This is slightly weird because you do pay cash upfront for the truck. But still, it’s useful to not have to call it an expense just for the first year because it is an asset that lasts many, many years.
If you buy a truck, account for it the standard way I described above, but then the truck meets with an accident and gets trashed the next day? Then that’s it. You have to now account for the full expense of the truck in one go and can’t split it into chunks every year.
In short, as long as an asset is “alive,” you can split its expense into chunks and account for each chunk every year. If it’s “dead,” you have to account for it right away.
Modern accounting is surprisingly thoughtful and there’s a weird in-between “alive” and “dead” that it allows for. Instead of buying an asset, if you’re building it, your asset is in some sense neither dead nor alive. So you can just, umm, add nothing to your expenses until you figure if your asset is actually dead or alive.
Brightcom was spending a lot on salaries, marketing, and stuff, but it didn’t want to show these expenses. So it decided that it wasn’t “spending” but instead “investing” in building an asset. From SEBI’s order, here’s Brightcom’s CFO:

Brightcom was building software and this software would eventually be an intangible asset. But, until Brightcom could figure whether this asset would eventually be dead or alive, it didn’t count any of its expenses as expenses, instead put it under an “intangible assets under development” category. This way, the company could show a nice profit because all its expenses were apparently assets. In all, the company hid ₹863 crore ($100 million) and showed a profit of ₹440 crore ($50 million) in 2020. If its expenses had actually been counted as expenses, Brightcom would’ve shown a loss of ₹428 crore.
https://preview.redd.it/a2xn3xc5bb1d1.jpg?width=762&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8b9bfd5cd84b25807c6025ad9a26980abc57d2da
Asset’s dead but it’s not an expense
One problem with showing your expenses as an “asset under development” is that this asset can’t be under development forever. At some point, depending on if this asset is dead or alive, you have to account for your expenses in some way.
… Or not. If your company makes any money, you put those figures in your profit and loss statement. This is simple and straightforward. But accounting isn’t simple and straightforward. If your company makes money, but it’s not a result of your actual business, then you can’t put it under the P&L. Instead, you have to account for it under a separate subheading called “Other Comprehensive Income”.
The idea behind this new sub-head is that the company's P&L is supposed to reflect its actual ability to make money. If you hold a lot of dollars and the price of the dollar goes up (or down), your company didn’t really do anything to make that profit (or loss) so you’d put it under Other Comprehensive Income and not in your P&L. So stuff like this wouldn’t affect your profit, on paper at least. [2]
Yes, of course, Brightcom recognised the ₹863 crore loss that it had hidden under “intangible assets under development” by categorising it as Other Comprehensive Income. SEBI wasn’t excited about it.
Share this post so that Boring Money can move from “asset under development” to P&L
Sell your stake but keep quiet about it
If a company is doing well, its founders don’t usually sell stock. So if a founder sells some shares, they have to tell everyone about it by regulation, because it could be a sign that things aren’t well.
There are three entities that need to know if a founder sells stock:

1. The company itself, via its registrar and transfer agent (RTA)
2. Depositories that hold stock on behalf of investors
3. Stock exchanges

1 and #2 are important, but they’re obvious. The company has to know if its founders sell stock, and so does the depository that actually moves the stock from one account to another. #3 is how the rest of the rest of the world gets to know. A founder sells some stock, files a disclosure in a stock exchange, the exchange updates its records and screams out that this has happened, and that’s how public investors know.

In March 2014, if you had asked Brightcom’s RTA, a depository, or a stock exchange about how much stake its founders owned, they would’ve all said, “about 40%”. If you asked them again in June 2022, the RTA and the depository would say “about 3.5%”, but the stock exchange would scratch its head and say “18.47%”.
That’s because Brightcom’s founders—primarily CEO Suresh Reddy, his friends and family—sold their stock but didn’t inform the stock exchanges. Here’s what they said when SEBI asked what’s up:

Man, I’m just some dumb guy writing about finance every once in a while, and even I know that if you pledge your shares as collateral to get a loan, you don’t transfer ownership. You just inform your depository and investors about it, and you still own the shares. Reddy & Friends transferred some of their shares to someone else (that is, sold them) and decided not to inform the stock exchanges. Then they used pledging as an excuse and everyone had different answers about how much stock they really owned.
How much money they make tho
When a company’s stock price shoots up in a short period of time, and there’s no concrete reason for it to happen, in all likelihood, it’s a scam. The management of the company may or may not be involved, but it definitely helps if they are.
Last month, I wrote about Sadhna, a company that SEBI charged with running a pump-and-dump. The founders owned a lot of shares, they spread some false news, the share price shot up, then happily sold their stock to naive investors, and made a profit. If you see Brightcom’s share price trajectory without knowing any of the company’s other shenanigans, it might seem a similar story. The stock price was around ₹3 in January 2021. By December, it was at ₹117. 40X in a year is definitely not normal.
In a pump-and-dump, it’s important for those running the fraud to own shares before the price goes up. The fraud that Reddy & Friends are accused of, which I described above, was of selling stock and hiding the fact that they sold it. By early 2021, they had in fact sold 80% of their shares and it’s only later that the share price started going up.
But wait, here’s more from SEBI:

In 2020 and 2021, Brightcom sold a large chunk (almost 15% stake) of shares to a group of investors. [3] Later, Suresh Reddy—who had been selling Brightcom shares all these years—became a partner at these entities that had just bought a large chunk of stock.
It’s all a bit confusing but here’s what I think happened. In late 2020 and early 2021, it had become apparent if you called yourself a tech company, investors would push your price up. The finer details didn’t matter. Brightcom, of course, happened to be an “ad-tech” company. So there was a decent chance that its share price would go up (or it could be made to go up, there are ways). But since Reddy & Friends had already sold nearly all of their shares, they needed to buy more shares so that they could sell them when the price went up. But they couldn’t buy them directly—because how would they justify selling shares so soon?—so they got some proxy investors to do so on their behalf.
As expected, the share price did go up. A lot. Around the same time, SEBI started investigating the company because of all the shady stuff it had done over the years. If the proxy investors were to sell this stock now, SEBI would definitely catch on, it was already investigating them! So instead of selling any shares at crazy high prices, Reddy instead came out with his association with those proxy investors so that the total founder ownership would go back up to the exact amount expected [4] by the public, that is, 18.47%.
It’s possible that Reddy & Friends made some profit but SEBI says it needs more information to be sure about just how much it would be. It would’ve been easier to know had they also run a pump-and-dump for good measure.
Footnotes
[1] Technically, Brightcom got caught earlier when SEBI actually started investigating. But it’s just this month that SEBI put a nice document out with whatever its investigation found.
[2] This “Other Comprehensive Income” should be a small number. If it’s a huge figure more than your actual profit, there’s usually something fishy happening.
[3] Brightcom didn’t directly sell shares to the group of investors. Instead, it issued warrants. What this meant was that the investors had the right, but not the obligation, to buy shares from the company at a fixed price at a later date. This was a good way for these investors (who are now part of the founder group) to not risk too much money buying shares in case the price went down.
[4] Reminder, the reason that the public expected the founder group to own 18.47% was that they hadn’t informed the stock exchanges when they had reduced their stake.
Original Source: https://boringmoney.in/p/brightcom-made-a-profit-by-hiding

Original Source: https://boringmoney.in/p/brightcom-made-a-profit-by-hiding (my newsletter Boring Money. If you like what you read, do visit the link and subscribe to receive future posts directly in your inbox)

The standard way for a company to make a profit is to produce a thing at some cost, then sell that thing at a higher cost, and pocket the difference. Another, if slightly frowned upon, way of making a profit is to not worry too much about what your company is producing or selling. Instead, at the end of the quarter, you can pick up your financial statements, take a pen, put some nice numbers under “revenue” and erase the numbers under “expenses”. On paper, the company’s making a profit either way.
The risk, apart from running out of money, is that the company might get caught. This month, Brightcom Group, an ad-tech company, got caught. [1] Here’s a SEBI enforcement order describing the stuff Brightcom did, and one of the many things it did was to show profits which didn’t exist.
Some intangible assets are under development
If your company buys, say, a truck, the standard way to account for this expense in your books is by dividing the cost of the truck by the number of years you expect this truck to last, and then adding this number to your expenses every year. This is slightly weird because you do pay cash upfront for the truck. But still, it’s useful to not have to call it an expense just for the first year because it is an asset that lasts many, many years.
If you buy a truck, account for it the standard way I described above, but then the truck meets with an accident and gets trashed the next day? Then that’s it. You have to now account for the full expense of the truck in one go and can’t split it into chunks every year.
In short, as long as an asset is “alive,” you can split its expense into chunks and account for each chunk every year. If it’s “dead,” you have to account for it right away.
Modern accounting is surprisingly thoughtful and there’s a weird in-between “alive” and “dead” that it allows for. Instead of buying an asset, if you’re building it, your asset is in some sense neither dead nor alive. So you can just, umm, add nothing to your expenses until you figure if your asset is actually dead or alive.
Brightcom was spending a lot on salaries, marketing, and stuff, but it didn’t want to show these expenses. So it decided that it wasn’t “spending” but instead “investing” in building an asset. From SEBI’s order, here’s Brightcom’s CFO:

Brightcom was building software and this software would eventually be an intangible asset. But, until Brightcom could figure whether this asset would eventually be dead or alive, it didn’t count any of its expenses as expenses, instead put it under an “intangible assets under development” category. This way, the company could show a nice profit because all its expenses were apparently assets. In all, the company hid ₹863 crore ($100 million) and showed a profit of ₹440 crore ($50 million) in 2020. If its expenses had actually been counted as expenses, Brightcom would’ve shown a loss of ₹428 crore.
https://preview.redd.it/a2xn3xc5bb1d1.jpg?width=762&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8b9bfd5cd84b25807c6025ad9a26980abc57d2da
Asset’s dead but it’s not an expense
One problem with showing your expenses as an “asset under development” is that this asset can’t be under development forever. At some point, depending on if this asset is dead or alive, you have to account for your expenses in some way.
… Or not. If your company makes any money, you put those figures in your profit and loss statement. This is simple and straightforward. But accounting isn’t simple and straightforward. If your company makes money, but it’s not a result of your actual business, then you can’t put it under the P&L. Instead, you have to account for it under a separate subheading called “Other Comprehensive Income”.
The idea behind this new sub-head is that the company's P&L is supposed to reflect its actual ability to make money. If you hold a lot of dollars and the price of the dollar goes up (or down), your company didn’t really do anything to make that profit (or loss) so you’d put it under Other Comprehensive Income and not in your P&L. So stuff like this wouldn’t affect your profit, on paper at least. [2]
Yes, of course, Brightcom recognised the ₹863 crore loss that it had hidden under “intangible assets under development” by categorising it as Other Comprehensive Income. SEBI wasn’t excited about it.
Share this post so that Boring Money can move from “asset under development” to P&L
Sell your stake but keep quiet about it
If a company is doing well, its founders don’t usually sell stock. So if a founder sells some shares, they have to tell everyone about it by regulation, because it could be a sign that things aren’t well.
There are three entities that need to know if a founder sells stock:

1. The company itself, via its registrar and transfer agent (RTA)
2. Depositories that hold stock on behalf of investors
3. Stock exchanges

1 and #2 are important, but they’re obvious. The company has to know if its founders sell stock, and so does the depository that actually moves the stock from one account to another. #3 is how the rest of the rest of the world gets to know. A founder sells some stock, files a disclosure in a stock exchange, the exchange updates its records and screams out that this has happened, and that’s how public investors know.

In March 2014, if you had asked Brightcom’s RTA, a depository, or a stock exchange about how much stake its founders owned, they would’ve all said, “about 40%”. If you asked them again in June 2022, the RTA and the depository would say “about 3.5%”, but the stock exchange would scratch its head and say “18.47%”.
That’s because Brightcom’s founders—primarily CEO Suresh Reddy, his friends and family—sold their stock but didn’t inform the stock exchanges. Here’s what they said when SEBI asked what’s up:

Man, I’m just some dumb guy writing about finance every once in a while, and even I know that if you pledge your shares as collateral to get a loan, you don’t transfer ownership. You just inform your depository and investors about it, and you still own the shares. Reddy & Friends transferred some of their shares to someone else (that is, sold them) and decided not to inform the stock exchanges. Then they used pledging as an excuse and everyone had different answers about how much stock they really owned.
How much money they make tho
When a company’s stock price shoots up in a short period of time, and there’s no concrete reason for it to happen, in all likelihood, it’s a scam. The management of the company may or may not be involved, but it definitely helps if they are.
Last month, I wrote about Sadhna, a company that SEBI charged with running a pump-and-dump. The founders owned a lot of shares, they spread some false news, the share price shot up, then happily sold their stock to naive investors, and made a profit. If you see Brightcom’s share price trajectory without knowing any of the company’s other shenanigans, it might seem a similar story. The stock price was around ₹3 in January 2021. By December, it was at ₹117. 40X in a year is definitely not normal.
In a pump-and-dump, it’s important for those running the fraud to own shares before the price goes up. The fraud that Reddy & Friends are accused of, which I described above, was of selling stock and hiding the fact that they sold it. By early 2021, they had in fact sold 80% of their shares and it’s only later that the share price started going up.
But wait, here’s more from SEBI:

In 2020 and 2021, Brightcom sold a large chunk (almost 15% stake) of shares to a group of investors. [3] Later, Suresh Reddy—who had been selling Brightcom shares all these years—became a partner at these entities that had just bought a large chunk of stock.
It’s all a bit confusing but here’s what I think happened. In late 2020 and early 2021, it had become apparent if you called yourself a tech company, investors would push your price up. The finer details didn’t matter. Brightcom, of course, happened to be an “ad-tech” company. So there was a decent chance that its share price would go up (or it could be made to go up, there are ways). But since Reddy & Friends had already sold nearly all of their shares, they needed to buy more shares so that they could sell them when the price went up. But they couldn’t buy them directly—because how would they justify selling shares so soon?—so they got some proxy investors to do so on their behalf.
As expected, the share price did go up. A lot. Around the same time, SEBI started investigating the company because of all the shady stuff it had done over the years. If the proxy investors were to sell this stock now, SEBI would definitely catch on, it was already investigating them! So instead of selling any shares at crazy high prices, Reddy instead came out with his association with those proxy investors so that the total founder ownership would go back up to the exact amount expected [4] by the public, that is, 18.47%.
It’s possible that Reddy & Friends made some profit but SEBI says it needs more information to be sure about just how much it would be. It would’ve been easier to know had they also run a pump-and-dump for good measure.
Footnotes
[1] Technically, Brightcom got caught earlier when SEBI actually started investigating. But it’s just this month that SEBI put a nice document out with whatever its investigation found.
[2] This “Other Comprehensive Income” should be a small number. If it’s a huge figure more than your actual profit, there’s usually something fishy happening.
[3] Brightcom didn’t directly sell shares to the group of investors. Instead, it issued warrants. What this meant was that the investors had the right, but not the obligation, to buy shares from the company at a fixed price at a later date. This was a good way for these investors (who are now part of the founder group) to not risk too much money buying shares in case the price went down.
[4] Reminder, the reason that the public expected the founder group to own 18.47% was that they hadn’t informed the stock exchanges when they had reduced their stake.
Original Source: https://boringmoney.in/p/brightcom-made-a-profit-by-hiding

I did not entirely intend to end up this deep down a rabbit hole, but here we are!

The other night after reading the wonderful The Eras Tour Follies post-GO READ THAT POST, everything in there relates to ALL of this as Loie Fuller was a modernist choreographer and so her art relates strongly to everything I will be discussing. Pretty much everything I present here emphasizes the idea that Taylor is leaning into a very specific type of performance art. Anyway, after reading that, facebook suggested to me a post from a page with follies in the name and between that and the line “my swift imagination”, my attention was captured. From the post-
“‘You shall not prison, shall not grammarise / my swift imagination.’ So declares a poem Nancy Cunard wrote in 1919, at the age of twenty-three. The speaker of “In Answer to a Reproof” casts herself as “the perfect stranger / outcast and outlaw from the rules of life”. Conveying something of Cunard’s defiance of social norms, the poem seems to prophesy her later cutting of ties to both her mother and her country. For Jane Marcus, it constitutes “the declaration of independence of female modernism”.Cunard began her writing career as a poet, and her long poem Parallax was published by Virginia Woolf’s Hogarth Press in 1925.”
Jane Marcus wrote a book called Nancy Cunard: Perfect Strangers which was released in 2020 (post-humuously, the book was finished by her research assistant.) It seems like it was a small university press type deal and not widely available in print, though it seems sites like jstor may have it available in its entirity. The book summary-
“Nancy Cunard: Perfect Stranger reshapes our understanding of a woman whose role in key historical, political, and cultural moments of the 20th century was either dismissed and attacked, or undervalued. Here, Jane Marcus, who was one of the most insightful critics of modernism and a pioneering feminist scholar, is unafraid and unapologetic in addressing and contesting Nancy Cunard’s reputation and reception as a spoiled heiress and “sexually dangerous New Woman.” Instead, with her characteristic provocative and energetic writing style, Marcus insists we reconsider issues of gender, race, and class in relation to the accusations, stereotypes, and scandal, which have dominated, and continue to dominate, our perception of Cunard in the public record. In the wake of inadequate histories of radical writing and activism, Nancy Cunard: Perfect Stranger brings its subject into the 21st century, offering a bold and innovative portrait of a woman we all thought we knew.”
I was mostly going to get into her poem Parallax, but after having looked up the entirety of “In Answer to a Reproof”, I HAVE to bring that up as well. Her work isn’t super widely available online, but I did find this weird little poorly formatted archival site that seems to have the full text of her collected poetry . I haven’t read it all (yet), but to start with I’d direct you towards the poems “Outlaws”, “Monkery” and “The Love Story”, but when I read the opening lines to “In Answer to a Reproof” my jaw DROPPED.
“Let my impatience guide you now, I feel
You have not known that glorious discontent
That leads me on : the wandering after dreams
And the long chasing in the labyrinth
Of fancy, and the reckless flight of moods —
You shall not prison, shall not grammarise
My swift imagination, nor tie down
My laughing words, my serious words, old thoughts
I may have led you on with, baffling you
Into a pompous state of great confusion.”
“The long chasing in the labyrinth” “shall not grammarise my swift imagination” (grammarise or gramarize can mean to analyze or describe), are both lines and ideas resonate a lot with what we know about Taylor and her work. The poem is saying, "you will not hold me to these interpretations you have of me, even if I was the one using my words to lead you on and confuse you.”
“...I have concluded we are justified
Each in his scheming ; is this not a world
Proportioned large enough for enemies
Of our calibre ? Shall we always meet
In endless conflict ? I have realised
That I shall burn in my own hell alone
And solitarily escape from death”
The burning imagery, the implications of a deep emotional rift between enemies who might be lovers? This poem, and honestly a lot of her others, have that sort of vibe. This part is justifying the need of enemies in the world and bringing attention to the role of destiny in the fate of two such adversaries. The poem text is available the collected poems I linked above, there is also this handwritten original from Yale’s archives on Nancy Cunard (had to go to the original to figure out what word she was using for solitarily because the formatting was so wonky on the other, lol)
Let’s move on to Parallax! As mentioned above, the poem was originally published by Virgina Woolf’s literary press. It is a long form poem based on the The Waste Land, also a long form poem by T. S. Eliot. This is from the wiki page on The Waste Land-
“widely regarded as one of the most important English-language poems of the 20th century and a central work of modernist poetry…The Waste Land does not follow a single narrative or feature a consistent style or structure. The poem shifts between voices of satire and prophecy, and features abrupt and unannounced changes of narrator, location and time, conjuring a vast and dissonant range of cultures and literatures.”
These ideas are all VERY important in modernism. And modernism is VERY relevant to the idea of what Taylor does, but ESPECIALLY what she is currently doing with TTPD.
Modernism was about rejecting the old ideas of things, and trying to rebuild, especially in the aftermath of WW1. Artists,writers, and musicians strongly embraced the idea of the visibility of the artist in their work. They no longer felt compelled to uphold the status quo and traditional methods (of poetry, of painting, of music, of literature, of architecture), they experimented with forms and processes that would be visible to the viewer in ways that had not been common or fashionable in the art world in the past.
Stream of consciousness writing, unreliable narrators, and multiple points of views were new things being explored, especially in writing (A Room of One’s Own by Virgina Woolf being a great and relevant example of this, also go check out the first edition cover-Midnights much…). The artists wanted to invite deeper thought about what was being said and by whom.The way modernism referenced the past was also very relevant. Modernism was known for creating entirely new interpretations of traditional works. Rewriting traditional narratives, creating parodies, satire, incorporating aspects from many other sources and being referential to those sources (the idea of artistic collages, and incorporating old media into new works was being heavily explored).
The definition of Parallax is “the apparent displacement or the difference in apparent direction of an object as seen from two different points not on a straight line with the object”especially : the angular difference in direction of a celestial body as measured from two points on the earth's orbit.”
Okay so I honestly have a hard time wrapping my head around this, but…put your finger in front of your eyes, look beyond your finger, and then alternate closing one eye at a time. The way your finger appears to jump? That is an example of parallax. The closer an object is, the more drastically it appears to move when observed from different places. The further the object, the less it moves. (I find it interesting that Taylor’s shows have been speeding up and going faster? Almost like as she gets closer to…whatever she’s heading towards, the faster, the more drastic the change?)
These are typical visual representations of parallax
https://preview.redd.it/qk5mz85a8b1d1.png?width=1141&format=png&auto=webp&s=22232367790ba25ca7bbab72a39fdffe9e96d703
https://preview.redd.it/ry2565v38b1d1.png?width=733&format=png&auto=webp&s=4c820f59ffcf5307910723217a64dd3e54b986a6
Which majorly reminds me of this.
https://preview.redd.it/jzdd6h4e8b1d1.png?width=1892&format=png&auto=webp&s=613b0265f22a95ddbde729ea23907dabd395f3f3
And I know that there’s only so much one can do with lights on a stage, but I find the visual parallels and the different perspectives during the TTPD set interesting.
https://preview.redd.it/hdepna4h8b1d1.png?width=2134&format=png&auto=webp&s=9fcd00f1e7bd6f72918634100b8cf32bd4e7a9a2
https://preview.redd.it/kmedb1di8b1d1.png?width=1793&format=png&auto=webp&s=a03fe6fbb2e238d15c4858f3f797a7602a9d94de
https://preview.redd.it/7zm1varj8b1d1.png?width=2091&format=png&auto=webp&s=1d3797ec39235a046429f5164e7d995af4fe53e5
And from the lyric video of “I Can Do it With a Broken Heart”
https://preview.redd.it/98d87po19b1d1.png?width=1886&format=png&auto=webp&s=43d6f598c1493d88f2a3cf94f30dbb25a15cff21
https://preview.redd.it/ex2ew8349b1d1.png?width=1888&format=png&auto=webp&s=7069f52988b92e60edd03f76ff8ffe812c1ff7c7
Let’s get back to the poem!
Here is Parallax by Nancy Cunard
Scan from google books of the original printing of the book.
A website with an easy to read full text version.
It's long, but it's WELL worth reading. Very very rich imagery and themes which seems to go along with Taylor's use of similar themes and images
“Provisioning of various appetite.
Midnights have heard the wine’s philosophy
Spill from glass he holds, defiant tomorrows
Pushed back.”
\*
“Think now how friends grow old—
Their diverse brains, hearts, faces, modify;
Each candle wasting at both ends, the sly
Disguise of its treacherous flame . . .
Am I the same?”
\*
"Without prompter for the love-scene or the anger-scene.
And . . . You and I,
Propelled, controlled by need only,
Forced by dark appetites;
Lovers, friends, rivals for a time,
thinking to choose,
And having chosen, losing."
Again, long but well worth reading.
For a couple years, Nancy had a relationship with a man named Lois Aragon. I found this research paper about Aragon’s personal interest in fairy tales and in the author Lewis Carol. Cunard was instrumental in assisting Aragon to create a printed French translation of the Lewis Carol nonsense poem The Hunting of the Snark. The paper includes this bit, (part of?) a poem Aragon wrote for Cunard during their first trip together-to London. It is a love poem which uses ideas and imagery from Alice in Wonderland (the pdf of this pastes to nonsense so, screenshot.)
https://preview.redd.it/s2fc5indab1d1.png?width=944&format=png&auto=webp&s=bb1970d7e6a9ae102351ade13bff00e321c9f2b5
So as interesting as I found all of these connections, I did at many points wonder if I was in fact thinking about all of this way too much.
BUT THEN.
BUT THEN.
I decide, I’m just…gonna google Nancy Cunard and Taylor Swift. See if anything, at all, comes up.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-11956353/Taylor-Swift-films-new-bank-robbery-themed-music-video-Cunard-Building-Liverpool.html
The Cunard Building. She filmed the video for I Can See You. In. The. Cunard. Building. The Cunard Building, which was built for the Cunard Steamship Company. Nancy Cunard’s family.
So now I officially feel like I’ve lost my mind, but I am even more interested in…where this is going and what is the POINT of it all? All of this suggests to me that TTPD has been HIGHLY HIGHLY staged and planned and executed in ways which seem to encompass all of the ideas of modernism, while making reference to modernists and their work (Louie Fuller, Virginia Woolf). She is using herself and her life, as well as them and their works, as the references for the writing. Leaning into the unreliability of her narration, the parody, and the multiple points of views from switching narrators.
And that concludes my post on...introducing Nancy Cunard as a highly probable (in my opinion anyway) inspiration for Taylor's work and life, as well as giving even more context and understanding to what we already knew-she's performing. But trying to be sophisticated about it? And trying to point at a lot of references in order to make us think about the deeper meaning.
I'm EXHAUSTED. And so happy I've finished this. Thank you thank you to this sub for the assistance, moral support, brilliant information, and incredible connections that make us all more knowledgable and better critical thinkers. <3 <3 <3

During the end of March/ early April my gf and I went on a 3 week coaster trip throughout China, Japan, and South Korea. I wanted to make this report about China since it's pretty difficult to plan a trip to China with the lack of information available.
Planning started last year in September and we used coast2coaster to map out our trip, then we tried to find any information about the parks we picked which ended up not being much. The Coaster Kings had some great blog posts, and we found a couple YouTube videos from ATLsloan which ended up being super helpful.
I also digged through reddit and reached out to some very helpful Redditors that gave me advice! Thanks u/MrBrightside711 and u/Noxegon
We visited:

• Hong Kong Disneyland
• Ocean Park
• Shanghai Haichang Ocean Park
• Oriental Pearl Tower
• Suzhou Amusement Land Forest World
• Joyland
• China Dinosaurs Park
• Shanghai Disneyland
• Happy Valley Shanghai
• Universal Beijing
• Happy Valley Beijing

The Hong Kong portion of our China trip was super simple. Uber existed and there are no internet complications. I do recommend getting an octopus card and loading it with money, you are able to put it directly on your iphone and you will use it for trains, taxis, checking out of stores, it was even accepted in Disney!

Hong Kong Disneyland:

We flew into Hong Kong from Osaka and landed about 2am. We got a hotel right in the airport, and woke up at 8am to uber over to Disneyland, check into our hotel at the explorers lodge, and rope drop at 10:30am. After getting to the park we realized rope drop wasn't needed.. this park was DEAD. We went right to Mystic Manor and was one of 6 people in the pre-show section. (amazing ride but not a coaster)
Then we went over to Big Grizzly Mountain Runaway Mine Cars. This instantly became my favorite Disney rollercoaster. (at this point we had been to all Disney parks except Shanghai, which only has clones) The fakeout lift, and the launch section were great.
The new Frozen area of the park really was beautiful, and made the visit that much more worth it. Their version of Frozen ever after is a bit more modern, but much the same of the Orlando version. Wandering Oaken's Sliding Sleighs is great to look at, but not that great to ride. It's very short and probably great as a child's first coaster.
Not much to say about RC & Hyperspace Mountain. If you have ridden any of their counter parts, you have already experienced these as well.
Wandering Oakens Sliding Sleighs
Big Grizzly

Ocean Park

This park has 2 areas, the lower entrance area which has a ton of shops, smaller rides, and a aquarium. The upper area on top of the mountain which required a chairlift ride up is home to the larger thrill rides. While the bottom portion still seems fine, the upper portion has about half of it closed including the 2 SBNO coasters still sitting there.
However, their 2 operating coasters were both open. Hair Raiser was a great B&M, and the setting and usage of the terrain only amplifies it. Arctic Blast isn't much to write home about, but it was enjoyable and they sent us around the track multiple times.
Hair raiser from the loading area
SBNO mine train

Mainland China

Once you hit mainland China everything becomes so much more difficult. Thankfully we did plenty of research in advance and downloaded DiDi (taxi app) WeChat, and Alipay (Payment apps) You also need to verify yourself with your passport in these apps DO IT BEFORE you get to China unless you want problems. The language barrier exists much more here than any other country I have visited, Google Translate was needed for EVERY conversation. If you are planning a trip here make sure you download the Chinese Simplified translations in google translate incase your internet gets spotty (it will.)
Call your cell provider to ensure you will have working service in China, it prevents the need for a VPN while out and about.. however still download a VPN for when you are on wifi as the great chinese firewall blocks EVERYTHING. We used LetsVPN and it worked amazingly the whole time in the mainland.
Most places will not want to take your cash. Before you leave make sure that you have a credit card added to both alipay and wechat. There is still a chance your apps wont work! Your hotel can take cash and send you the money on either alipay or wechat. When taking a taxi if your DiDi app isnt working, there is a mini DiDi app in alipay that works as well!

Shanghai Haichang Ocean Park

This park is where all my fears about my trip came true immediately. When you go to parks in China there is absolutely no way to know if coasters will be open or closed, even if you can find a website with posting they are probably not accurate.
We landed in Shanghai at 10:30 am and immediately got a taxi to drop our bags off at the hotel, and they waited for us to take us to Shanghai Haichang Ocean Park. As we arrived we saw Steel Dolphin cycling and I thought to myself how great it was that we would be starting this portion off strong. As we got to the steel dolphin entrance it was blocked off with an employee explaining via google translate that the ride failed a inspection earlier in the month and they were only testing to regain its certification. I asked if there would open anytime in the next week, they said no. We then went over to Family Coaster which was CLOSED. We then decided we would try to salvage the day and ride a couple other rides.. we couldn't find a single one that was open.
Our taxi driver was still outside when we left 30 minutes after he dropped us off and he asked why we were leaving so early. We explained the situation and he took us to guest services and complained for us without us asking for that. They offered us the ability to view a sea lion show which took place in 2 hours which we declined. I highly recommend skipping this park, it was a MESS.
An empty Steel Dolphin train RIP

Oriental Pearl Tower

Immediately upon the horrors of the last park, our taxi driver took us over to The Bund. While we were exploring there we figured out there was a coaster in the Pearl Tower so we headed on over. To get to the coaster you have to go to the top of the tower first, which is similar to every other observation tower experience in the world. Very nice views of the city though.
VR Rollercoaster is a junior coaster which probably isn't worth going out of your way for, but it may of been my favorite VR coaster I have done as it didn't make me sick!
Loading platform for VR Rollercoaster

Suzhou Amusement Land Forest World

On this day we attempted (and succeeded) to visit 3 theme parks in one day. There were too many parks in the Shanghai area I didn't want to miss so we had to hustle all day. For this to work I hired a private Taxi Driver to follow us all day and wait on us at the parks so we didn't have to figure out how to maneuver from park to park.
When we arrived at Suzhou Amusement Land Forest World we were met with another DISASTER.. the sign in front of the park showed that my #1 bucket list China coaster Beyond The Cloud would be closed. Hopeful we still bought tickets and entered the park because we saw the tilt coaster testing.
We ran immediately over to Broken Rail Roller Coaster and got front row on the first train of the day. This was my first Tilt Coaster and man was it awesome! Jinma rides while they may be a copycat company they did a great job on this. It was smooth, thrilling, and could compare to any other big coaster company creation.
While walking over to Beyond the Cloud, we found Roller Coaster a coaster which wasn't on coaster count or RCDB! It was a kids ride but we had to ride it since it was undocumented! Its a Jinma kiddie coaster and could compare to the junior Vekomas you can find in many places in the USA. We also got the ride published on RCDB! We skipped the spinning mouse because we couldn't find it and we were in a rush to get to our next park.
When we did arrive at Beyond the Cloud we were met with another heartbreak as it has a sign explaining it was closed for the day. I was pissed and desperate to ride this coaster so I didn't give up. The day we flew out we woke up at 7 am and risked missing our flight for another shot at riding. When we got there it was drizzling and every ride was closed.. except Beyond the Cloud! I believe we were the only 2 people in the park this 2nd go around and were able to ride 5 times by ourselves before we moved on and headed to the airport. They made us wait 5 mins each ride to see if other riders would show up (they didn't.) It was 100% worth the effort, this was my favorite coaster in China, and my #2 Mack overall behind RtH.
Beyond The Cloud just for us! They never opened any of the back restraints so we had to sit in the front every ride.
Big boi
The Jinma Tilt Coaster

Joyland

After about a hour 1/2 in Suzhou Forest we got back to our taxi and darted for Joyland! Upon arrival we went through the knockoff Dr Seuss area on our way to Starry Sky Ripper my #1 bucket list flyer behind flying dino which we rode a few days prior. I think Sky Ripper edges out my top B&M flyer just over Flying dino. Its smooth, thrilling and most importantly it doesn't have the immense pain pretzel loops bring me.
To our surprise all of the coasters here were open! We ended up going to Dragon Roaring Heaven next. There was a school trip and they all seemed to be waiting to just ride this ride, so it took about 30 minutes to get on. This mine train coaster was decent, and is comparable to some of the great mine trains in the USA, but the theming here makes it a slight step above the rest.
Next was Clouds of Fairyland which seemed to be in a state of despair. The front car of the train was closed, and they had these makeshift restraints behind your head that they made you hold for the duration of the ride which was uncomfortable. The ride itself was okay, I'd like to ride another one that doesn't have the weird behind the head nonsense.
Flying Loop
Mine Train Theming

China Dinosaurs Park

We got to China Dinosaurs Park around 3pm the park closed at 5pm, and stopped letting guests in at 4. We jogged straight to Dinoconda to ensure we got a ride in, and to our surprise it was a WALK ON! As with the other 4d coasters it was very intense, but it was the smoothest by far. I would put it behind Eej as you can't beat that intensity.
Next we went in circles trying to find Dinosaur Mountain it took us about 20-30 mins to actually find it hidden in the mountain side but it was a cool indoor Zamperla motocoaster. The theming was cheesy but it was all still great fun.
Super Roller Coaster went down and stayed closed until park closure.
Dinoconda

Shanghai Disneyland

This is a great Disney park! Pirates and Zootopia made this visit worth it alone. The Pirates here is the best version of the ride, and I'm glad i went in blind. I wasn't expecting what I experienced at all. The zootopia area was really well done and I hope we get some version of it in the US.
All 3 coasters here are clones of coasters I've ridden at other Disney Parks so I'm not going to go into detail about them. They are great, ride them if you get the chance.
Zootopia Ride
Tron but the not Florida one

Happy Valley Shanghai

Unfortunately when we woke up we realized the forecast was rainy and had high winds but we decided to attempt to go get some credits anyway. We knew that it would probably not work out but yolo.
We were greeted with 4 out of 7 coasters closed including Diving Coaster, Mine Train, Wooden Coaster, and Coastal Ant.
We headed straight for Mega-Lite which was good fun, we had ridden its clone Piraten in Denmark back in June of 2023 so we knew what to expect. Still a enjoyable small coaster that packs a punch. Truly is a mini I-305
Next was Crazy Elves which is your basic spinning mouse. Then we got a ride on Family Inverted Coaster which wasn't anything crazy but was fun and will be perfect in BGT as a step-up coaster.
Mega-Lite loading platform
Family inverted coaster

Universal Studios Beijing

After a hectic morning in Shanghai trying to get a ride on Beyond the Cloud we flew to Beijing! We got there late at night and checked into our hotel right outside Universal.
We bought the "Set of all Express Passes" which was good for all the major rides. This ended up being worth it is the park got more and more crowded as the day went on. Upon entering the park we heard an announcement that all rides are open but there is inclement weather which may close outdoor attractions so we headed right to Decepticoaster. Decepticoaster is everything the Hulk retracking should of been. The coaster is glass smooth, the jank is gone, and made for a much better ride experience. Personally, I love Hulk as its at one of my home parks here in Orlando but I find myself riding it less and less due to how I feel after riding.. I didn't have this issue here.
Next we took a wrong turn trying to get to the Jurassic area and ended up going through Kung Fu Panda's area which was really cool, and its boat ride was worth riding once. This path put us in a circle which had us ending up in Harry Potter land so the next coaster was Flight of Hippogriff. This was the same as all its counter parts, nothing special here. We skipped the other rides in this land as we have been to every other universal park (other than Singapore) and didn't need to experience them again.
We finally found the Jurassic area and got on Jurassic Flyers which was not what I expected. I was assuming it would be interactive similar to Arthur at Europa Park, it wasn't. Just did a loop around the mountain and got some great views. While in the area we did arguably the best dark ride in the world Jurassic World Adventure. That ride is INSANE.. nothing we have in the US compares to it.
On our way out we hit Loop-Dee-Doop-Dee which I believe is the only Jinma at a major park? It's a basic family coaster, and worth the credit if you can get on with no line.
Better Hulk
Jurassic Flyers

Happy Valley Beijing

The last park of our trip before we spent our last few days sightseeing! We arrived at opening to a very large crowd (the biggest of the trip.) All of coasters had staggered openings so we tried to strategically plan it out to be at the opening of each one.. which didn't work out at all. Extreme Rusher was closed all day and has been closed for a while due to its sister coaster rolling back and crashing into another train in the station.
We headed to Crystal Wing first for its 10:30 opening. We weren't the only ones with this idea as there was already a decent line formed. We waited bout 30 mins to get on missing the 11am opening for our next coaster. This is a clone of Superman but with some really cool terrain and theming. Worth the ride.
Golden Wings over the Snowfield was stop #2. I'm not a fan of SLC's but this didn't ride like one. It wasn't smooth, but it wasn't painful either. It also has a different layout from the SLC's all over the US which was cool.
Next we went over to Flight of the Himalayan Eagle Music Roller Coaster which had a 11:30am scheduled opening which we missed by 30 mins. The line took about a hour, and we noticed there was a fastpass system that we couldn't figure out because of the language barrier. I used google translate on the signs at the entrance to no luck. The ride is a great mini hyper coaster that blasts music as you ride. Easily the best coaster in the park.
We walked past Family Inverted Coaster which had a hour+ wait which we didn't want to wait for as we just rode the clone the other day with no line. So we headed over to Jungle Racing which had a 45 min wait but we noticed a QR code next to the line which we scanned and ended up being the fast pass system! We bought a fast pass and walked right on. It was a great Mine Train that was very similar to the one in Joyland.
We then bought 2 fastpasses to Family Inverted Coaster just to get the credit.
This park felt a lot more taken care of than its counterpart in Shanghai, and is definitely worth a visit.

The end

We took a couple days to visit all the big sites like the great wall of china, the forbidden city, the temple of heaven, etc. which is a must-do.
Then we flew over to South Korea for our next portion of our mega coaster trip!