"Philosophy," said the caretaker. "Here I am a caretaker, you know. But in my home country I was a great thinker."
He turned and blew the smoke away from me.
"That's the good thing about being an immigrant," he said. "You can always tell people what you were in your home country."
"But you're pulling their legs?" I said.
"Never," he said. "Well, actually, in my home country I was one of the country's greatest leg-pullers. I won a competition. The National Leg-Pulling Championship."
"Philosophy," said the caretaker. "Here I am a caretaker, you know. But in my home country I was a great thinker."
He turned and blew the smoke away from me.
"That's the good thing about being an immigrant," he said. "You can always tell people what you were in your home country."
"But you're pulling their legs?" I said.
"Never," he said. "Well, actually, in my home country I was one of the country's greatest leg-pullers. I won a competition. The National Leg-Pulling Championship."
The S&P 500 fell 1.3% to 4,204.36, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.7% to 32,943.33. The Dow posted a fifth straight weekly loss — its longest losing streak since 2019. The Nasdaq Composite tumbled 2.2% to 12,843.81. Though all three indexes opened in the green, stocks took a turn after a new report showed U.S. consumer sentiment deteriorated more than expected in early March as consumers' inflation expectations soared to the highest since 1981. At this point, however, Durov had already been working on Telegram with his brother, and further planned a mobile-first social network with an explicit focus on anti-censorship. Later in April, he told TechCrunch that he had left Russia and had “no plans to go back,” saying that the nation was currently “incompatible with internet business at the moment.” He added later that he was looking for a country that matched his libertarian ideals to base his next startup. Investors took profits on Friday while they could ahead of the weekend, explained Tom Essaye, founder of Sevens Report Research. Saturday and Sunday could easily bring unfortunate news on the war front—and traders would rather be able to sell any recent winnings at Friday’s earlier prices than wait for a potentially lower price at Monday’s open. That hurt tech stocks. For the past few weeks, the 10-year yield has traded between 1.72% and 2%, as traders moved into the bond for safety when Russia headlines were ugly—and out of it when headlines improved. Now, the yield is touching its pandemic-era high. If the yield breaks above that level, that could signal that it’s on a sustainable path higher. Higher long-dated bond yields make future profits less valuable—and many tech companies are valued on the basis of profits forecast for many years in the future. You may recall that, back when Facebook started changing WhatsApp’s terms of service, a number of news outlets reported on, and even recommended, switching to Telegram. Pavel Durov even said that users should delete WhatsApp “unless you are cool with all of your photos and messages becoming public one day.” But Telegram can’t be described as a more-secure version of WhatsApp.
from cn
