Transcript
Woo. Yeah, you put my heat on today. Yeah. That's right, intro. From Ari loves candy palooza. That's the report I'm getting re really loves candy. It's yeah, another manic Monday edition of business pants. Joined by the Lord of BS. Matt Mascari. And wah. Yeah. Are you gonna say something about Port Fringe up top? Let me finish and you can talk. Yeah. All right. And today's greasy, bro, hug called June 5th, 2023 sexy, story updates, and the return of Sleazy academic papers. Yeah like that how? Yeah you got a report from the field? Matt I do have a report from the field it's hard to call any of this sleazy. Oh okay, but I just assume everything going on in Academia sleazy. Every time I read a book written, you know, fiction literature about Academia. It's always Affairs and things going. As always sleazy, I'm sure that did not pop up in humanity, support that did not pop up in this paper, but before we get rolling, Jesse the money Whisperer Ari the data queen and I yeah, Lord of God in order for cyber metrics. Yeah. Got an electric car. An electric car and we drove from Central Connecticut, home office to Portland. Maine are subsidiary. Watch to watch the business pants corporate theater perform. It's a real thing. The boring boring company play. Which if you haven't seen it, it's 30 minutes. We live streamed it. It's 30 minutes. It's up on YouTube. Our YouTube channel. Just look for free. Float media, not free float LLC because there we have so many subsidiaries really like a international conglomerate. Yeah. Why not? We're like Warner Bros Discovery but I have to say it was hysterical. If? If? You can survive the excruciating pace of it. Yeah, it's a, it's a let me just say that. It's a challenging piece. We picked something that was specifically meant to antagonize the audience, I mean, but if you didn't know, the backstop of it, the backstory of it, right? Like which is the boring company, Elon musk's boring company. It's one of his 30,000 companies that he's founded and he's currently the CEO of the boring company has all, what it does is digs holes in the ground to make its make for traffic, right? Like but not even like super, it's not like the big dig where they submerged a highway beneath like a eight-lane highway. They it's like they basically submerged a lane of traffic. Alright. So what they've managed to accomplish and this is brought up in the piece is they've dug eight holes and only one of them is Operation. There's one working hole. Yeah, we're traffic goes in. It's a one lane road. With no ventilation for no fire suppression. Yeah. And like, and when they opened it, there were traffic jams in the hole like nobody could. So this was meant to like, solve the human crisis of traffic in Las Vegas. Taking you from the strip to the convention center, right? And they've, this company was was created, like, nearly 10 years ago. So in the last 10ish years they've managed to dig one hole successfully in one city. That doesn't work. So the whole act. Yeah. Is a meeting effectively an executive meeting and it's got to be the most boring company ever, wouldn't you think they accomplished nothing? This do. This is the struggle. We have here, not only a business pants, but the business pants corporate theater all of our stupid stories are always based. In fact they're always heavily research. Everything is real. I know people think it's all bunch of nonsense but every character in that play they're all they're all the real Executives. The real people we haven't made up a boring company. We're not we're not doing anything. Like we're just actually reporting about this. Horrible company that Elon Musk has the word nothing ever happened. So, the conceit of the play is really like watching them. Talk about but there it's so disinterring as to be difficult to like, as to be pure comedy. It was I Jesse in the live stream. You can hear Jesse next to me? Laughing maniacally. Like I was crying during parts of it. It was so funny. Wow, like you It was really, I mean look, I am the target audience. I'm a very specific Target. Oh, you're a dumb guy. We're looking to amuse. Basically, I've literally the one guy that this is targeted. Yeah. So I obviously thought it was funny. Yeah. But it was great. So go watch that and if you're in the Portland team shows yeah two more just a couple more shows coming this week, right? So it's Wednesday and Thursday I think right? Yeah. But whatever. Tuesday Wednesday well cares. Go to court for income. Yeah, support the whole fridge. Yeah, and if you don't catch the show, we're gonna be doing more of them. Oh, every time. But this is such a great for. I don't know why someone hasn't done 100 of these before. It's fantastic. All right, let's do the news. Talk more about it. Matt, let me begin with a vow and an apology, all from the same story. Wow, we don't have we don't have a lot of apologies anymore. Something happened, I think like there was so many apologies and everyone made fun of the apologies that people just stopped apologizing. But today, CNN CEO, Chris liked licked, I don't know, licked apologizes to staff during internal Monday Morning. Call, he's apologizing for drawing attention away from the Network's Mission and vowed to earn back. Trust, I love it. Oh, Yeah, that's nice. This is based on a, what is their mission? Yeah, that's all ratings and no question. This is based on a 15,000 word profile out of the Atlantic about. Chris lick. This guy is such a wonderful, beautiful ego that he invited the Atlantic to basically follow him around including going to the gym with him with his crazy personal trainer. Yeah, go ahead. I read some of it. And it was not interesting. You could have shaved off, 12,000 words, and I could have gotten the same amount of information. And just so this is all coming from this horrible, Trump town hall, or where the CEO filled the audience with extra trumpy people and he let Trump do this a day after he was found liable for sexually abusing Gene Carroll. So I'm gonna repeat the board paper metrics data that we have was, this is why nobody should be surprised about this. I looked at Warner Brothers discovery. First of all, a 13-member board, only three women on the board that's low for 13 miles. A 10% power Gap. They control only 13% of the power. And that's because the top four Bros, Warner Brothers Discovery. They all have 15 years. Plus 10 year they control 56% of the influence basically. Nobody else has to say, I'm not bored. And this is a cross the whole corporate structure. It is white men everywhere corporate leadership, only 3 of 15, women top five NEOS, all white men, it's just everywhere. Every leadership position is just an old crusty, bro. So no one should really be surprised by Chris slicked acting like a crusty, bro. I don't know. I mean, I'm just telling you from our data, Matt. I mean this is This is in keeping, right? And this is as Loft higher, right? Yes. Yeah, in fact, David sad. Love his buddy has just been appointed as the new CEO at CNN to kind of Look over Chris lick. So, is that another buddy in, you know how? We know it works when you're first buddy, does a sucky job? You bring in a different buddy to tell that other buddy to stop doing a sucking. And the weird thing is that this sucking his goes up to Zazzle love, right? So it's like he he's doubling down on his own decision-making, thinking that get away with having Trump on air. If David's asked, doesn't say, have Trump on are like, well, it happened according to what a meteor reports. The CNN CEO Chris looked at an audience of one and that is the Warner Brothers Discovery, CEO David zasloff. So that's what his real audience. And again, this the reason why I bring all this up, is that You can see from our data that when the influence is really in the hands of a couple of buddies, this is kind of what happens. The company is you're appealing to the egos of a couple of people. This is the Activision board is what it is? Yes. Oh, right, the next story, Activision Blizzard. Matt you reported about Activision Blizzard on the Friday show, right? Yeah, unfortunately Bobby Kotex said there was no systemic abuse, no systemic, discrimination, whatever going on. The culture was fine going on Activision Blizzard. It's all because of the labor movement. Yeah well my favorite quote was he blames it on the labor movement? My favorite quote is if the basically he says and I'm paraphrasing here but if any of those things were true, the board would have gotten rid of me. And then we looked at the board and the board is like his three. Best friends. He's been on the board with the same people for 20 years. One of them was actually his college roommate, right? Like so write those Are the people who are going to hold you accountable. Well according to reporting at an axios this morning, employee reports of Ms, tongue Miss conduct have gone up, they're going up, 114 reports. According to this article, the company has already taken over three. Dozen corrective actions including terminating terminating workers. For discriminatory language, physical assault, misgendering unwanted advances, blah, blah blah, okay? Physical assault. Yeah non-consensual. Touching those seem like problems. Yeah. And the Activision's board very weird response was even one instance of harassment discrimination retaliation is one too many. This is their, what is that supposed to what? That's like. That's like I don't see color, but 114 reports. So, 114 instances. When does Bobby go take care of that? Because if one instance is one, too many 114 is 114 too many a good. Another good use case Works another good use case for our data. Just saying this thing and soon we uh moving on. You can say the platform's coming soon. Yeah and our team is we will have a platform and our team is expanding. We're going to try to help to sell the state more, right? Is that right here? Human beings, who are going to help us fifth member of the of the impressive free float team. Next story, Twitter, I hate to report on Twitter, but Twitter. Are you kidding me? Blah blah blah, Twitter safety executive exit, Executives Twitter, safety Executives exit. As concerned about policing content grow AJ Brown. Twitter's head of brand safety and add quality has decided to leave the company. His departure comes on the heels of the exit last Thursday of Ella Irwin Twitter's head of trust and safety. What do we Reporting on this. I don't know, I know it's a private company. I guess a question, why? But like, policing content is not what? Twitter's policing content is Elon. Musk, says it should go out or it, shouldn't it's not, there's no other police. Well, unless somebody else what they've done is higher a person. To basically take a phone call that says, hey, don't censor this content or, hey, censor, this content that person writes it down on a sticky note, and puts it on Elon musk's window. And when he looks over and sees the sticky note, he just gives a thumbs up or a thumbs down. That's policing content. Speaking of well, no, you're not speaking of the glass Cliff speaking, but I'm going to say it. Anyway, speaking of the glass, there was a glass window in the glasses, Cliffs CEO higher ever. Originally, reported that CEO Linda yaccarino would take over on June 22nd, but Elon Musk has changed his mind. Now she's starting today. All right, the whole thing is a joke. I know nothing. Come a joke. Moving on. Speaking of Twitter, we have a lot of good Segways today, Jack Dorsey in the news because he is backing Robert F, Kennedy Junior to be the next president of the United States. And I'm gonna remind people, unfortunately, this is like ghosts into our Howard Schultz category. I'm gonna unfortunately remind people that Robert F Kennedy junior said at a rally and 2022. he suggested that having to get a vaccine, During the pandemic was worse. Than having to hide from the Holocaust. Oh, he said this is Jack dorsey's pick. He said, Quote, even in Hitler's Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did. Oh yeah, I love a good. That's it. Anne, Frank had it better? That would be good analogy. That's what I ever the joke around here is that I love Jack Dorsey. I'm not really sure what I thought about Jack Dorsey. But this, this is, this is how you don't get this one at all. I know, only reason why I pointed out this story is because, once again, this is why you should be using our data. There there is an extreme amount of corporate influence in the hands of idiots, just Dopey Dropout white male. Itself. Anti-social weirdoes. Oh, Jack Dorsey said that Elon Musk was our singular. Savior was like, the way back then later being or something. And then said, he wasn't so RFK Jr. Is basically the Elon Musk of the democratic party at a minimum. Can we finally get rid of dual-class, shares, are we ready? America. Oh, that's what a cute idea that is. Can we break down? This way, means of corporate control. It is nonsense. Dorsey doesn't have them. So, just saying neither does Musk. Hollywood directors, reach deal with Studios as writers strike continues. So the I don't know if you knew this but Hollywood is dealing with the with potentially three strikes at once the writers the actors and the directors but they think they have a deal with the directors. So there you go. Okay, you know what? I don't watch television really. Yeah. None of what movies you watch you. I like the occasional movie, but I don't care that much. I hear about it. Like I'm more than happy to just go to business pants. Corporate theater shows with instead of any of this. So Apple. Is on strike or our workers on strike. This should be Apple's expected to unveil Sleek headset, aimed at thrusting, the masses into alternate realities. Okay? The headline should never say thrust. I don't want the thrusting first, major new product in nearly a decade, been working on the headset for seven years expected to cost 3000 dollars, but here's my fear. Matt is that It Apple seems to get things, right? Is this? Are we on the precipice is this? When we start to lose everyone into the meta diaper world, all, and I do mean all of the conversation about this headset is it is destined to be the biggest corporate crop in the last. Oh, okay. That is what I'm hearing. Okay, see, I'm expecting the opposite, where they eventually figured this out and we officially lose people forever. No, they are, they are, first of all, it's costs three times as much as the most expensive version of arrival and okay, time as much but it's good normal retail, but if it's good, I mean, iPhone still retail and like 1000 dollars, so, of course. Sure. Um, but you also have to put basically what is a prophylactic on your face. Okay, nobody wants to have that. I do agree with you, Matt. But what I'm worried about is that they if they get the technology right and the further the, the further, it Is of the product or even better, the retail price starts to come down. Are we fully in dystopia where people are just glued into their meta reality? Yes. And but yes, and yes, or yeah. It all depends on whether or not when this is released. People can have legs in the Apple meters. That's what it's all about. Finally, Oh, that's a nice. That's a Hardy laugh for a Monday morning. And finally, in our alternative democracy, follow-up because the stupid sec's website was down on Friday, and I was trying to do reporting its jerks Dollar General. Remember they had a worker safety and well-being audit in report. They had that shareholder proposal. Yeah. 68% of Charlotte said. Yes, it's almost like they're listening to us, they're listening to businessman's. It's almost like strives vote, doesn't matter. Yeah. Almost as if and Netflix remember, Sam pay rejected, still nothing there. Netflix, the meeting was June 1st. Where is the AKA Netflix? Why are you hiding this? You know, how many stupid shows you put out every day? Why are you hiding this? What are you ashamed of? I'm waiting for alphabet too because alphabet had about 300 proposals. One of which was the national Center for Public Policy research, which is the anti- and, Strive voted against it. The way. What? That's what do they call that right on, right crime. Yeah. It's it's it's anti-walk on anti-crime. Yeah, I think it's when you do do the anti is cancel each other out. Yes. All good questions it's time. We haven't had one in a long time. Yeah. Jesse's gonna be happy because she's been looking for something to put in our newsletter. That goes yeah every week. So here's a nerd alert, we'll keep it relatively quick and painless the paper. The title of the paper is directed departure following political ideology, incongruence within upcoming and incoming CEO. Whoa. Yeah. Buy booze and Bart, Bundy and Chin. It's from 2022. Bundy likes this topic. So here's the simple conceit of the paper. Okay, our directors more likely to leave if the CEO is of a different political persuasion. That's it. Okay, so there's a director, the sitting on the board. The, there's a new CEO coming in, and if that new CEO is a raging liberal, and the director is a conservative. Is the director? Like, no? I'm, I would say to you that this seems like a highly topical, highly pertinent subject, but but I will caution that by saying that the The coverage area for the study is not like in the Trump era though, right? It's not the current ERA of politics. It's kind of it is not the current ERA when it's even more divisive. Yeah, now it's highly divisive. But this way worse than this, now this sample was for S&P 500 companies where there was CEO succession between 2008 and 2012. So that's the first Obama administration. Squarely in the Obama Administration, the beginning of divisiveness but not where we are now. The data is from executive comp, ISS boardex, msci in the SEC data. So we'd expect this to get worse, right? Okay, we'd expect us to whatever I'm going to say, yeah, 1,456 directors covered at 203 firms, and they used political donation data to determine your political ideology, and they use it for factors the percent. You don't donate its Democrats. The percent you donated to Democrats. Like by number and amount. So it's two the number of years, you've donated and the number of different recipients. So they have created a score between 0 and 1 where a high one is super liberal and a 0 is super conservative, and a 0.5 is neutral. Um, and they're only looking at directors, who left before the annual general meeting, they leave basically on their own, the CEO comes in, and they basically leaves very soon thereafter having nothing to do with the general meeting. Got it. Here's the main takeaway. You ready for it? Absolutely. No, we haven't had in a while. A drum roll. Oh, here's the main takeaway. I'm actually excited for this. Takeaway directors who aren't already familiar with the incoming CEO. They are already friends. Yeah, when they have a big ideological difference, they are much more likely to leave. As a result that is correct sense. I don't know. Is that good? I don't know. How do they, how do they, how do they quantify whether they're buddies or not? They could they don't have, they didn't have board super metrics data. Unfortunately, they did. In fact, if they did, they would actually know it way better. But what they uses overlapping 10 year in the places, they had a very small samples. So our data boards, they were the next paper is 10,000 companies over five years. So we have a lot more data. Oh you see an update on this paper. Maybe they can, they can send it to him. I know chin who's one of know, I don't I don't know. Bundy needs work, so yeah. but in fact, what they found was when a political directors politics disagrees with the CEO, They're actually more likely to want to leave then if then they want to stay when the CEOs politics agrees with them as in they have a stronger. The reaction is I want to run away more than I want to fight for my job when it's good, right? Like they're more willing to leave when they hate the CEOs politics and it's funny and it's all over our data. But the reality is that it's not hard for directors to just find new directorships, right? Once you're there, once you're there, it's pretty. But this to me that's part of the problem, right? I mean, is that just all you have to do is become a director and then you can become a director everywhere else. They don't actually have any way of articulating your performance at these boards. Other than, through our data, Boards of my metrics were the first company to ever even begin to articulate performance. That's all they ask. You is, have you been there directors at like Jack, you know, John Deere. And that's did you go to Harvard Stanford or Yale? Yeah. And were you a director before that? No matter like primary. No matter like, what was the effect of earnings during your tenure? Yeah. Like you are an actual question. Yeah, but we have that, we have that boards. We do have that here are the implications of this study. I found that in a survey of 769 directors. In 2015, they found that 50% were Republicans in 24% were Democrats in 26% labeled themselves quote, unquote, independent, which means that they don't know what they were, but they're probably right. Like everyone who's independent is a Libertarian. That's basically what they are last month. Even the Christian monitor claimed that as many as 70% of CEOs, and boards were Republicans in the United States. They're all conservative. So, here's what I might take away was and I leave this with you as a player. I'll play the music out. Is there actually no glass cliff? Or brown cliff. For people of color. Is it really just a political Cliff because people of color are disproportionately Democrats? Yeah. And they're all entering could be Republican. Boards could be hey I have another way to do this study next time too. Why don't we analyze just by what the kind of cars are driving? We do it that way. That might I I still subscribe to your idea that we should analyze them based on comedy shows that they have to give look for sure. Let's try it. Let's do it. All right, that's our show. That's all you're all day. You're off on a conference. I'm going to conference for the rest of this week. I'm going to Los Angeles to the social Innovation Summit. Yeah. So if you're there, say hello to Mama's Garden. Come see me. You're not probably there. No, but you should buy stuff from us. Anyway, that's Damian, Ross. I'm at Scotty, we'll be back tomorrow. I think with some corporate theater, but they might have tomorrow off. Right. Let's see. They're tired, a few things, cooked up. A few things might have nothing. I don't know, until I'm back on Friday till whenever you does this show again.