Monthly Archives: May 2021

05/28/21

Honor and Observe v Celebrate Memorial Day

Monday is Memorial Day, the day upon which we honor and observe, not celebrate, those who lost their lives in service to the Nation in the military during wartime.

Lance Corporal Eric Ward, a fourth-generation U.S. Marine, was killed in Afghanistan on February 21, 2010. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. The United States is commemorating Memorial Day this Monday.

As a Nation, we ponder with solemnity the sacrifice these men and women made in service to the Nation.

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05/27/21

FBI — Tied Up In Knots Over A Noose

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has launched an investigation into the appearance of eight nooses at an Amazon work site in Windsor, Connecticut. Key the threatening background music, please.

The noose is, of course, interpreted as a symbol of racial hatred harkening back to the horrific lynching of black persons with a knotted noose.

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05/26/21

Adapt Or Die — New York Times

Evolution is a real thing. We are seeing companies evolve due to the realities of the Internet and digital everything.

Do you recall just a couple of decades ago when we knew that hard copy, paper newspapers were a “dead man walking?”

You just knew all that content was going digital and that a paper newspaper was a death sentence. Right? Not so fast, amigos.

Remember when everyone said the New York Times — once America’s paper of record — was headed to the dustbin of history?

There is, however, an alternative to the dustbin of history — it is called “adaptation” and the 170-year-old New York Times has successfully undertaken that course of action.

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05/26/21

Space Race — Blue Origin v SpaceX

Do you want to take a ride into outer space? Well, do you?

If you do and you have a bit of ready cash you can hitch a ride on either Blue Origin’s (Jeff Bezos) or SpaceX’s (Elon Musk) rocket and escape the surly bonds of gravity for a few minutes. Today, we talk Blue Origin’s book.

You can put yourself into outer space in less than two months. Hello, America! Here’s how, amigos.

Blue Origin is auctioning off a passenger ticket. [No, Expedia and Priceline are not involved.]

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05/11/21

Military Diversity and Inclusion Is NOT a National Security Issue

Recently the Secretary of Defense Lloyd J Austin III (a former General and West Point gradate) made comments indicating the current status of diversity and inclusion in the American military at the general officer strata rises to the level of a “national security risk.”

In the military when they want to scare the civilians or they want to suggest that something rises to a level such that America might not win a war, they call it a “readiness risk.”

This picture is for all you West Pointers, you ring knockers. Note Sec Def Austin and his WP ring. It is an Army thing.

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05/9/21

CEO Shoptalk — No LSD Before Investor Meetings

Comes now the strange case of Justin Zhu, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Iterable (email marketing firm).

Justin complains of the fact that he believes he was replaced as CEO because he microdosed with LSD before a key investors’ meeting during which he says he saw “numbers and images swelling and shrinking on the screen” and that his body felt like it was melting.

Who really knows?

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