03/15/24

Women Athletes Finally Sue the NCAA Over Transgender Athletes

It has taken far too long for female athletes to hold the NCAA accountable for its absurd policies as to transgender men competing in women’s sports as “women.” [That’s sort of an awkward sentence, but I felt like I had to say it that way to be clear.]

This is a class action suit — meaning it is on behalf of all women college athletes — and is centered on Lia Thomas, a mediocre 6’1″ male swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania who transitioned to “womanhood” and then became a champion “female” athlete.

Thomas emerged as a NCAA Women’s Division I Champ in 2022 winning the 500-yard freestyle and named as an All-American in three events (meaning Thomas posted one of the 16 fastest times in those events). Continue reading

03/11/24

College Sports Are On The Road To Ruin

I have always hated the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletics Association) as being a heartless bully and arrogant, arbitrary oppressor of athletic talent that favors the blue blood institutions in every sport. They are also wildly expensive, rake in a ton of money, and have built a financially extorted dynasty that is second only to the British royal family.

The NCAA, however, is not what will exclusively kill college athletics.

There are four things:

 1. The NCAA and its feudal fiefdom;

 2. NIL — name, image, likeness — the ability for a college athlete to be compensated by lending their name, image, likeness to third parties typically in an endorsement marketing capacity;

 3. Unions — there have been a number of unsuccessful and, now, successful attempts to unionize college athletics, typically an entire team, such as the Dartmouth men’s basketball team. Here is that story:

Dartmouth Men’s Basketball Team Votes to Unionize

 4. The transfer portal Continue reading

03/1/24

AI’s Dirty Little Secret

I believe artificial intelligence’s implementation is going to be huuuuuuuuuuuge, but it has a dirty little secret: it crawls the web with impunity and appropriates trillions of nuggets of information, some of which is protected by copyright, and a great percentage of which the owners of the information do not want to freely surrender without compensation.

The creepy crawlers do not ask permission; they just crawl while you are sleeping.

OpenAI ChatGPT crawler closing in on blogger content in Amarillo, Texas this morning.

Continue reading

02/28/24

Fast Food Surge Pricing? Price Gouging? WTF?

There are ideas that sweep through the business world that slowly work there way into every aspect of business though at first they seemed a little odd. It’s like going to the beach and coming home with sand in your shoes — it’s everywhere.

I offer two examples:

 1. Creating a club around a set of benefits such as Prime membership with Amazon; and,

 2. Subscription services such as was copied by Restoration Hardware.

Each of these ideas is related and each results in a true economic benefit to the customer whilst creating a solid, secondary cash flow for the sponsor.

Prime members number 230,000,000 and each will pay $179 for their next renewal. It started out at $79 nineteen years ago in 2005.

Do the math, that’s a lot of money. Continue reading

02/27/24

Pure Philanthropy

In this era of massive self-aggrandizement and virtue signaling, it is heartwarming to relate a tale of pure philanthropy and goodness. We all need a bit of good news, no?

What’s THE STORY, Big Red Car?

The story goes like this:

Sandy and Ruth Gottesman lived happily in Rye, New York. Sandy was a finance professional and a protege of a chap named Warren Buffett who started a company called Berkshire Hathaway.

Sandy got in on the ground floor with his pal Warren and invested in his fledgling conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway, resulting in a highly successful and lucrative fortune that Sandy managed well.

In 2022, Sandy passed away at age 96 leaving his wife Ruth with a fortune and spare instructions:

“Do whatever you think is right with it.”

Continue reading

02/23/24

The Power of Ignorance

There is incredible power in ignorance. Sounds odd, allow me to explain.

When I was a lad, I lived near the Atlantic Ocean and used to take my father’s fishing pole (he was overseas in the Army and, thus, the notion of asking his permission was moot) and walk along the sand and out onto the jetties (I was specifically forbidden to walk out onto the slimy jetties) and hurl a red and white lure (with three sets of hooks I would sharpen with a triangular file) into the water to try to catch gullible striped bass that ran along the shore.

I could really fling that lure. Continue reading

02/19/24

Don’t Cry For Me, Elon Musk

Elon Musk, whose 2012 employment agreement compensation was the largest in US corporate history, is angry that the Delaware Chancery Court invalidated his 2018 employment agreement (also the largest in US business history).

The 2018 agreement is fairly described as being a “performance based, equity compensation plan.” It contained a dozen milestones each of which when attained delivered to Musk approximately 1% of the shares of Tesla.

BTW, Elon Musk does not draw a salary.

Musk enjoying a blunt on Joe Rogan’s pod cast.

In his sophomoric anger, Musk has threatened to move Tesla’s state of incorporation from Delaware to either Nevada or Texas. This would require shareholder approval. Seems wildly childish and small, but, hey, Elon Musk is Elon Musk.

Nevada corporate law is modeled (plagiarized from) on Delaware law and has only a decade of experience whilst Texas has jury trials. You do not want a jury trial if you are a public company.

Continue reading

02/12/24

Paying For The North Atlantic Treaty Organization – NATO

The North Atlantic Treaty Article V requires each member nation to rise to the defense of any other member nation in the event of an attack.

An attack on one is an attack on all.

It is a simple alliance and it is focused on the danger created by Russia — let’s not pretend otherwise. We broke the former USSR in the Cold War and now it is time to deal with China’s gas station, the Russian Federation and its delusional leader, the medieval, brutal, Dark Ages Putin. Continue reading