"(Now children) train school: 1 per day this, the following is not."
No, it's not Yoda-speak, but the (rather awkward) translation of a headline for a story from Japanese media outlet Asahi Shimbun. And the first few lines of the article weren't much help in clarifying things, reading something like a haiku:
The end of last year in the Morning. Fine Snow HAD Lasted. Two Rails Extending in a World of silence WAS Silver.
Er, okay. As the story began to make more sense, Business Insider explains, it becomes apparent that traffic to the remote Kyu-Shirataki train station on the island of Hokkaido, Japan, had been on a long steady decline and all but stopped when freight service ended.
Three years ago, local parents asked Japan Railways to keep it open so their kids could get to school, and the company agreed to do so until the last rider, a high-school girl, graduates in March, when it'll shut down for good, reports CCTV News. Until then, the train will continue to make its two stops to the station each weekday, taking the girl to and from school.
Or perhaps not.
"Remote Hokkaido train station stays open for one high-school girl? Perhaps not," suggested a headline in Singapore's Straits Times.
A story in Taiwan's Apple Daily, according to the Times, said the widely circulated CCTV report may have exaggerated things a bit. It claimed that the girl takes the once-daily train from the Kyu-Shirataki station, not the Kami-Shirataki station (Disclosures knew that one sounded fishy). It also said she makes the commute with about 10 classmates.
But Asahi Shimbun's slight exaggerations are understandable: Much more interesting to read the train kept a rollin' for one teenage girl.
Let go my Lego
It was only Tuesday, and already the PR people at Lego were having a bad week. On Tuesday, Lego was taken out to the woodshed by Germany's competition regulator for "enforcing vertical resale price maintenance" – or price fixing, to you and me.
The Danish toy maker was fined €130,000 ($202,000) for demanding that retailers keep a floor under prices or face penalties as severe as being cut off from supply.
Then Lego dealt with another slip on the banana peel by announcing the same day that it was scrapping its policy regarding bulk purchases after Chinese artist Ai Weiwei accused it of censorship, as the BBC reported.
The company has had a policy of rejecting requests for bulk buys if their toy bricks were used to make political statements – which you could argue was sort of a political statement in itself – and refused to sell to Mr. Ai. The artist then made a political statement of the Lego affair on his Instagram account with pictures of a boy gluing toy bricks to his face.
Lego climbed down, and in the "adjusted guidelines for bulk sales" it posted on Tuesday, said "customers will be asked to make it clear – if they intend to display their Lego creations in public – that the Lego Group does not support or endorse the specific projects."
Who knew the plastic-brick-making business could be fraught with so many potential pitfalls?
Now you see it …
A social media company whose signature ability is making things disappear wants to manage your money. Is that ringing alarm bells in your head? Good, so you're not a complete idiot.
Snapchat is a video-messaging app best known for the ephemeral nature of the photos and videos it sends. Recipients can view them for about 10 seconds before they disappear forever. (Unless you take a screen shot, so even complete idiots can get around the time-limit thing.)
And as Reuters reported this week, Snapchat is developing a robo-investing technology that will allow users to click-and-invest through their apps. Other social medium platforms are said to be exploring the idea.
"The opportunity to deliver financial services for social media platforms is amazing and potentially disruptive, especially in its ability to engage a millennial consumer set that's still emerging," said Reginald Browne, head of ETF trading at Cantor Fitzgerald.
Maybe "disruptive" should be considered the key word here. It's far too early to tell, but maybe the algorithms the apps will use to advise investors will have some advantage over human advisers, who aren't without their own ability to vaporize savings, as this scene from South Park attests.
You can't stop the march of technology, but you can demand that a real human financial adviser informs you they've lost all your money rather than getting the news from an impersonal app.
Get naked with Lululemon
Lululemon is now embracing nakedness. That's an about-face from the last time the issue arose, when it was forced to pull its signature stretchy yoga pants because of a design blooper that rendered them see-through.
But the Vancouver-based "athleisure" outfitter won't again be forced to pull up its socks over its pants. This time, it's intentional, as the launch of its "Naked Sensation" line makes clear.
"We engineer our Naked Sensation to give us the feeling of wearing nothing with all the coverage we need when we're moving from Downward Dog to Forward Fold," Lululenon's website says.
The promo added that the new Nulu fabric it uses for the product engenders a "crazy buttery-soft against our legs."
"It's like wearing nothing," it goes on to say.
And in case you're stilling struggling with the concept, the website explains that it creates a "next-to-nothing sensation."
Okay, we get the picture. It's like exercising naked, except you're wearing pants. Pricey ones.
Banking on Bowie
Disclosures was immensely saddened to hear the news of the passing of David Bowie this week. While he was widely lauded as an innovative artist and performer, he was less well known as an innovator in the financial world.
Mr. Bowie was the first celebrity to have his back catalogue packaged up and offered as an asset-backed security. Dubbed the "Bowie bond," it was, strictly speaking, not a bond but a privately-placed securitization of the next 10 years of music royalties.
The deal, which was struck in 1997, gave him an upfront payment of $55-million (U.S.) in exchange for the future revenues of 25 albums. The deal was made possible because, unlike many of his musical peers, he held most of the copyright on his works, according to the Financial Times.
The deal was devised by banker David Pullman, who then struck similar deals with artists such as James Brown and the Isley Brothers, among others.
The "bond" paid a 7.9-per-cent interest rate, higher than the 10-year U.S. Treasury did at the time, and were purchased in their entirety by Prudential Insurance Co. of America.
But the value of the Bowie Bond plummeted as peer-to-peer music sharing expanded to the point that artists were no longer generating the lion's share of their earnings through music sales, but through touring. By 2004, Moody's downgraded their rating on the Bowie bonds to Baa3, a notch above junk status, the Financial Times said.
One would be hard-pressed to think of any other artist in any medium who has ever been so far ahead of the pack in both their creativity and their finances.