The Midnight Hour -- November 2, 2026

Locator: 52078AAPL.  

Apple's earnings -- much, much more here.  

Greed vs fear? Nope. Simple craziness. Here's the headline:

Here's the verbiage in the story:

On the earnings call, Apple said it expects revenue to increase between 7% and 10% on an annual basis in the December quarter, compared to the 6.1% average analyst estimate. Comment: 10% is well ahead of 6% -- and Apple tends to be conservative in its estimates. 

The company’s gross margin forecast for the current quarter is 45% to 46%, trailing the 46.3% average estimate. Comment: 46% estimate vs 46.3% estimate and, again, Apple, tends to be conservative in their estimates.

By the first of December, something else will come along affecting Apple's share price. And so it goes. 

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The Book Page

Re-posting: 

Etty Hillesum

The "adult" Anne Frank.

From an earlier post over at my literature blog: this softcover was packed away some years ago. 

Etty Hillesum: An Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbork, with a foreword by Eva Hoffman, c. 1996. 

---bought another copy at a used bookstore, Portland, OR, October 30, 2026, softcover, $5.

-- Eva Hoffman, born in Poland, 1945, about the time Etty Hillesum died
-- emigrated to Canada at age 13; Harvard graduate; ultimately the pinnacle of American writing. 

More. connecting with Hunter S Thompson -- link here. Link: https://share.google/aimode/9IbLNIIdtt4LVnZaW.  

 

In Etty's Diary and Letters, softcover, page 102:

Slowly but surely I have been soaking Rilke up these last few months: the man, his work, and his life. And that is probably the onlky right way with literature, with study, with people, or with anything dlse: to let it all soak in, to let it mature slowly inside you until it has become a part of yourself That, too, is a growing rocess. Everything is a growing process. And in between, emotions and sensations taht strike uou iek lightning. But still the most imprtant thing is the organis process of growing.

Etty would die in a German-Polish concentration /extermination camp (Auschwitz) within a year or so of writing that in her diary, and she knew it, and yet she remained at peace with circumstances and able to keep writing with an element of optimism, if not for her, for the human race.

 
Meanwhile, my Rilke at about the same age (for me) was Hunter S Thompson who wrote when the hope of the counterculture of 60s died in the early 70s.  

"The Wave Speech" from Hunter S Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, 1971.

"We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . . So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."