I’m shell shocked, not like those brave Ukrainians who literally lost everything to an evil, maybe unstable, or just ruthless Russian dictator. Just figuratively yet I’m waking up in the middle of the night replaying images in my mind from earlier broadcasts on CNN.
Hi and welcome to Thursday’s 1st Episode in Season 4 of “Our Disruptively Resilient Year” on this 3rd day of March in the spring of 2022.
Today ends the three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed — during the “normal” pre-pandemic year compared to the pandemic year, and more recently to the paradoxically normal year.
Season 4 begins now with domestic and global chaos.
Related from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year
S3 E1 — Preview Day One in Season Three of the New Abnormality
Related from Season Two, the Pandemic Year
S2 E1 — Sneak Preview Asking “How Toxic is Your Work Life?”
Related from Season One, the Normal Year
S1 E1 – Day One of My 1-Year Experiment
“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”
“5” Steve Howey, 42: “One opportunity ends; another opens. Stay focused on the big picture and details will sort themselves out. Interesting matches will be made; new relationships will take form.” Cancer
Evidence
How tragic and ironic is it that while I was in the midst of transferring notes from the last three kindle books I read, into new documents, I remembered a passage from “The Last Leonardo: The Secret Lives of the World’s Most Expensive Painting” by Ben Lewis about Dmitry Rybolovlev.
In elaborate detail Lewis tied together Putin’s buddies, with money laundering through offshore art storage like the last painting by Leonardo da Vinci.
“In 2013 Simon, Parish, and Adelson were tipped off that one of Russia’s richest oligarchs Rybolovlev no longer lived in Russia, nor did he run the fertilizer business. He was an art collector, resident in the tax haven of Monaco, and about to become the owner of the Salvator Mundi.”
Lewis says, in 1992 he went to Moscow to study economics, otherwise known as capitalism.
“His timing was good: the post-Communist Russian state, following the advice of the World Bank, just beginning the massive crash program of privatization that would create the class of oligarchs the authoritarian kleptocracy that rule Russia today.”
Around 15,000 companies, amounting to 60 percent of the country’s GDP, were privatized, according to Lewis’ research.
“He benefited from the support of his business partner Yuri Trutnev, at the time the mayor of Perm, who later became a government minister and a senior adviser to Vladimir Putin.”
Rybo’s wife, Elena, filed for divorce in 2008. She wanted $4 billion, half his fortune, to which Swiss law seemed to entitle her.
Her lawyers “claimed that Rybolovlev had a history of secreting and transferring assets in order to avoid his obligations.”
Elena began trying to freeze her husband’s assets, including his yacht in the British Virgin Islands and prohibit him “from removing from Singapore twelve paintings by various artists such as Modigliani, van Gogh, Picasso, Monet, Gauguin, Degas and Rothko.”
“He had been buying a lot of art, and—divorce be damned—he was going to buy much more, including the Salvator Mundi.”
He dealt with Yves Bouvier, a Swiss citizen, whose main business was in the logistics side of the art world, filling the increasing need for art storage.
“His company grew to become the primary renter of space at Geneva Freeport—more the Ports Francs et Entrepôts de Genève SA, a series of warehouses close to Geneva airport, officially in neither France nor Switzerland, meaning that tax and transparency laws do not apply to it.”
Making it a highly attractive location for the rich to store their art collections tax-free.
And, now you have to wonder how much sanctions imposed on Putin and his kleptocracy will disrupt Russia’s barbaric invasion?
Holiday Theme for The Day:
… Focus on creating systems that get results — stark realizations, life-changing declarations and the sort of brilliant planning sessions that culminate with a shift of destiny.
If only I could for the stark realizations Ukrainians must now face under severe life-changing conditions.
“3” Steve Zahn, 51: “Your comic instinct is hot today. You notice what’s funny and call it out. If you have a good audience, you’ll get the laugh. But if you don’t, save the story for later because your people will love it.” Scorpio
Not in the mood, although I might point out that Ukraine’s President Zelenska gave up a comedy career only to be shaken down by our former reality TV “star” and twice impeached President in a quid pro quo demand.
Random ones that make me want change my sign.
“5” Steve Howey, 42: “One opportunity ends; another opens. Stay focused on the big picture and details will sort themselves out. Interesting matches will be made; new relationships will take form.” Cancer
Just a month ago we celebrated with Jazzy and Delta Girl’s closest friends and family in a magical setting for their wedding in Oceanside, California. Not unlike my and Emma the Baroness’ romantic story, Jazzy’s career came to an end at his company weeks before the wedding and just before his side gig was about to launch as a realtor.
“4” Steve Carell, 57; Steve Martin, 74; Steve Wozniak, 69: “Happiness is… an open schedule. You’re already committed today, but you can give yourself a commitment-free day in the future with a little planning. Make no promises about the future. Plan to make no plans.” Leo
Plan to make no plans is like earning moments of time when you can be your Experiencing Self just enjoying your blissful moments.
“4” Steve Aoki, 41; Steven Spielberg, 74: “You’re willing to be inconvenienced for a task of significance. That this is above and beyond what anyone is expecting of you is precisely what makes it the best use of your time.” Sagittarius
I’m guessing you’re referring to what I committed to competing today instead of asking my muse, Leo da V, how I should free up my creative, intuitive, Experiencing Self.
What’s Going On …
Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll
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- @KnowLabs suite of 36 digital magazines according to my analytics, grew from 11945 this week to 12044 organically grown followers.
- Orange County Beach Towns 180 viewers stopped by the week before.
Foresight
Quality-of-Life
Long-Form
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- “The Last Leonardo: The Secret Lives of the World’s Most Expensive Painting” by Ben Lewis. Review: “In 2017, Leonardo da Vinci’s small oil painting the Salvator Mundi was sold at auction. In the words of its discoverer, the image of Christ as savior of the world is “the rarest thing on the planet.” Its $450 million sale price also makes it the world’s most expensive painting. For two centuries, art dealers had searched in vain for the Holy Grail of art history: a portrait of Christ as the Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci. Many similar paintings of greatly varying quality had been executed by Leonardo’s assistants in the early sixteenth century. But where was the original by the master himself? In November 2017, Christie’s auction house announced they had it. But did they?”
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Inspired by Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate
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