Business Pants – 2022-05-03

Hey, oh hello. Hey, we're back. Hello. It's all of us from oh, this is my covid. Free Sanctuary is my backyard. I'm thrilled for it today on business pants. It's a riveting things we missed episode. I can't get the energy. What's wrong with me? I'm not getting there. I don't feel it. Might be the covid to say join us always by Emma. Did she or didn't she lurking and Matt aisle or window mascardi? I'm an airport covid testing. As I said, in today's bag of dust, told me 3rd 2022, we talk about stuff. So here, let me just reset the script here. We've kind of been off and on, for like a week. We haven't really been showing up. And basically, yeah, the two of you are a mess. So that's what we think. Emma thinks she had covid last week but can't technically prove it. No, I can't. I did not test positive a single time but I either I was in the business call that. I currently. Yes go ahead. I don't know what to tell you. I thought every single day I woke up and was like are my symptoms fake? Making up my symptoms and then the test said, yes, you are making up your symptoms. And I said okay It still didn't come back to. What? Yeah, you you do know what to tell us. You. You told us you're sick. That's what you told us. Yeah. Yeah. She's so tell us maybe you did have it. Because now my family has it. So two thirds of my home has covid tested positive. I don't like that. I don't think. I don't feel wonderful but I'm here. And Matt. Yeah. Matt already had covid. His I his all 15 of his staff at home. I've had covid, I don't know what's going mad. Yeah, are, he's the only one who hasn't had covid. Yeah, she's a miracle. We don't know. We don't know how we're pretty sure she has and I'm pretty sure she was patient zero. Like I like to play she probably doesn't hasn't had covid because she lives in a frat house and it's just like doused and like vodka and rum and all these. Like, I think Kyle killing alcohol is actually patients 0. You listening Kyle. I hope you're listening Kyle. All right, let's get to it. This is our things we missed show. So again, we've been kind of off for a while and so Emma. And I decided to just poke through the news, all though, it was difficult. I don't know if you had a hard time with this Emma, because the news basically is 98% Elon Musk. Now what this is the world that we know living, I hate it like it's, it's tough going through the news now. Is it's a lot of musk, a lot. Yeah, and time and I want and hopefully the audience will think because I only have one tangential musk storage just to just to prove that you know, all the things we say are accurate. I just threw one in I left Elon off my list. You're welcome. Yeah, Matt isn't are we basically I have that same exhaustion I had when Trump was president and every day, you'd wake up and you'd Wonder like what did he tweet? What world war are? We nearing like what crazy regulation do we just get rid of or add? Like every day. Felt like that I'm getting that feeling from us. It's like there were pictures of him from the Met Gala. Yeah, there's him talking about like his financing situation what he's going to do with Twitter and like and then the Tesla's in the news all the time and it comes up all the time. It's I am. So as today, then we'll move on. Matt, do you think he will actually buy Twitter or not? What do you think? Yes, I do a great idea. I do. Okay, I don't, I think it's enough. I don't think all right. Things we missed. We'll go back and forth. I'm a my first one. I always do these Patrol because he hates these but I'm gonna report on an annual meeting from Johnson. I don't know how to do this, but they had boo. A whopping nine shareholder proposals. Wow. I don't know how to cover this first, it's gonna do a game in and ask you like, Did the shareholders really hate this one? Or do they soft hate it? But I don't know. I'm I think I'll do this. I'm gonna quickly go over them and just tell me which one you think all? I'll tell you one passed one said show said, yes. So which one do you think? I'm gonna quickly ready? Yeah hit them all Report on Public Health costs protecting vaccine technology. Discontinued Global sales of a baby powder. Containing talk request for charitable donation CEO compensation to weigh Work, Force pay and ownership report on government financial support access to covid-19. Third party, racial Justice audit audit policy to include legal, and compliance cost, and incentive compensation metrics. Lobbying for a lobbying activities here, even though, but miraculously one of these past has anyone won? Tell me which one or here's my notes already. I'm on the fence. I'm on the fence between there's been a lot of like their racial Justice audit things that have been passing. But I also recognize the request for charitable donation disclosure, which is the anti-woke. Those are the anti-woke people filing that they're looking for congruence and they've been getting in the 40s percent range so they might have passed. I'm gonna guess that it's Man, I'm gonna go with Charles Donuts. I'm gonna go with the one with the most boring words in it. Yeah, so I think I'm gonna go for adopt policy to include the legal and compliance cost and incentive compensation metric. Oh my god. Well, that is yeah. Close. That was nearly. Yes, which is funny, because there was another one on CEO compensation. That was a big know. So again, I don't know what the hell's going on, BlackRock and Vanguard. I wish he'd call me and tell me what you're drinking. Because why, why do you fluctuate so much? And I have some. All right, so here it is. There was a huge know, a massive know, on a civil rights Equity diversity, inclusion audit, but One in the past. Was a third party racial Justice audit, really understand. Yeah. Nearly Like two to one. Why why? What, why? Why? Somebody please one of our listeners please reach out. Why. So I suppose, this isn't so out of left field, considering the fact that Amazon recently did this, I think that Leticia James is former Attorney General New York. I believe, is conducting a third party, racial audit or Amazon. But I'm confused as to why this past and other ones didn't, like, I just don't let it. Let me ask you. This is there collusion in the corporate annual meeting world? Where our our Vanguard BlackRock they all get together singing. Let's just pass one token. One. Every year to make it seem like we care about something. Is that what's going on? Correct. So there's collusion. Well I actually so here I actually if you just look at who filed Right. So the ncpr which is the Antiques test file, the Civil Rights, they filed the Civil Rights, Equity diversity, inclusion audit proposal, and they're supporting statement. I actually think it was concerning Anti-racism, they wanted to get rid of anti-racists. Like education. Like so they came at it like white people are being discriminated against so do an audio proceed. The Sisters of Mercy, the nuns filed, the other one that basically said you need to do a racial Justice audit because of the gap between what you pay black people and white people at your company and Hispanic you need actual Equity here. There are new ones within the writing of them. And I think they can consider where it comes from God, their way more on board. Yeah. So it's nuns to, to do more than these or at least, like, can we do like, nonetheless on the show you like get in none drag and file some proposals next year, so it works. I think might be offensive, I don't know what he got. All right, I have this is actually two headlines combined under a single header of conflicting Activision news headline, one Activision, Blizzard tells shareholders to vote against proposed harassment and discrimination report. And then number two, Activision boss, Bobby kick. Could see a 500 million dollar windfall from Microsoft deal months after employees, walked out to demand his removal. Oh yeah, right. So the context is this, the shareholder proposal? That is proposing. The harassment and discrimination report was submitted by the New York State Common retirement fund, which owns 121 million dollars of Activision stock. And I was like, oh that's like something and they were asking for the following. They were asking for total number and aggregate dollar amount of dispute settled by Activision, Blizzard related, to sexual abuse, harassment or discrimination reducing the average length of time. It takes to resolve complaints, either internally or through litigation, total number of pending sexual abuse, harassment or discrimination complaint, blah blah. Nobody, yeah. Clearly on paying hours worked and the company said to vote against it because it is a waste of a resources. Oh there's the conflicts got it. I wonder how punch. I wonder how much how many? How much would that actually cost? That's just like one full-time employee for three months. Could probably put that together. I mean, what do we think? They're asking for the number of things that are happening, maybe a month. Do you need a temp? Do you actually just called the lawyer and be like, hey, by the way, can you just like finger count on your Excel sheet? How are, you know, this? That's true. I've the waste of resources would be that one guy, finger Counting. Yeah. Okay. I am I mean none of this is shocking to me but it really I saw these headlines pretty close together and was like, huh? that's really well, then you know who's who's very Pro Activision Blizzard? These days is Warren Buffett. Our guy keeps, he's up to 10%. 10% ownership now. Activision Blizzard keeps going, why? Just because he likes my Microsoft, everyone loves Bobby. Co-tec, he loves world Warcraft. Now I get to move us along Disney. So the executive responsible for the don't say gay. Response has quit after three months, that's Jeff Morrill, the chief corporate Affairs officer who helped Penn Disney's public response. So, He's out. I'm curious. If you guys have any conspiracy theory, why and and I just want to point this out that there's a woman taking over for him. Christina shaky, shake Shockey. I don't know. And her background is she led the national covid-19 vaccine education campaign for the Biden Administration. She was Deputy communications director for Hillary Clinton. In 2016 campaign worked at the Obama White House. A special assistant to the president. Blah blah blah. I think that Christina proves that corporations are essentially government organizations. Like they're small, they're small countries or they're small, something, they're small cities. There's something yep. Yeah morale was. The deputy assistant secretary for defense, right? So, let's so he was already. This is proof that these are actually sovereign states. But anyone want to weigh in here about? Why, why is this person leaving it for just three months, what's going on at Disney? Well, his legacy so far is they don't say anything. The bill passes, they then say something everyone, protests them, they resolved to pause political donations, DeSantis removes, their special tax status, costing Disney some money, but Florida, even more money. Good for you. And that was his three-month. Tenure, that's all he did. That was it? If that was your resume at a company? Do you think he resigned, or do you think it was kind of like, hey, you might stinky are fired. We might feel somebody else. All right, I fell for the resignation thing. You probably, right? Why not, why can't they just why can't Bob just say God, this guy sucks. Why can't we get to that? I would love that. I know what he got headlight. All right. Moving on. Um my second headline Wikipedia doesn't want your crypto donations anymore. So this is a headline that I've been seeing the damn I had my Bitcoin ready to go. Wikipedia is gonna get all my Bitcoin. Hey whenever it does me I just that's not how I sound. yeah, it'd be like it's got to be way more understated, like, I needed. I'm more nasally. I'm more negative. Come on, we Despite my portal, I mean, impression, Wikipedia community members asked the foundation and donations last month. In Wikipedia actually listened the group was mainly concerned with the with cryptos negative environmental impact And Wikipedia wasn't required to respond to them. They weren't bound legally in any way but they did. And I sort of loved it. I mostly did it because I think I love it. You know what, we never talked about Wikipedia, I don't have a reason to hate them. I, I've always liked. Wikipedia, do we have a reason to hate them at? You must know a reason. If I just wait for a flood of anti-woke trolls to change but that's going backwards. Wikipedia has been good at that too. They've been good. They fight their at their trolls pretty Don't they all right? Yeah, I think what Matt is saying is that he's looking forward to Elon Musk buying Wikipedia? Is that what you're saying? Oh my God, I Free Speech forever. That would be truly devastating to me. Wikipedia sort of everything to me, I live and die by Wikipedia. I really do. Is that where you're doing last week while you were? Yeah. It was covid. I was Wikipedia, and it was telling me everything I needed to know about myself. This next one's for you, Matt Snapchat, CEO, Evan, Spiegel. I don't feel like we talked enough about Snapchat and we're so sick of Twitter that maybe, maybe we should spend more time on good old Evan. But he says he's banned the word metaverse that his office Oh says, I like that. He calls it ambiguous and hypothetical and if you just ask a room of people how to find it, and everyone's definition is totally different. It's funny, because I asked, we had a show last week, where we talked to normal people, I talked to someone named Courtney and I asked her to find metaverse. And and of course, every question I asked her, she wanted to punch me. So I don't know, but, but that one, especially she did not want to play with that one. So anyway, that's That's the headline there. So he banned the word metaverse in the office because he's frustrated with its lack of specificity not like I think, yeah. Ethical problems or no? Okay, no. Okay, you know what I mean? So, he, he is on the side of something, he's calling augmented reality. I think he and he's, I think he's calling metaverse. More of a buzzy, bulshit Buzzy marketing bulshit, So I don't know. I I'm team Evan here, I decided I'm team Evans. Yeah, I love another dictator. Evan Spiegel is a dual classic day tomorrow so fun to celebrate. Mary's model dictator today. I'm worse. Yeah, Banning the word metaverse. Is a great start. Benny dual class. We need is what Elon Musk to buy Snapchat because you can't ban Free Speech, right? You love to see metaverse, dammit. I like, my favorite horse to stop making the Elon Musk. He should buy every company. Joe, when do we know? We got a month. Okay, we got a month. No, yeah, that's got way more like yeah, I'm already bored of it. Like my milk delivery was late yesterday. Milk delivered. So, quiet. Look at you. Like living in a Bugs Bunny cartoons over there. I love that. I'm just saying I moved back to the 30th quaint let's talk about male shall we? Okay. I love mail USPS sued by States and environmental groups over purchase of 8.6 Mi per gallon trucks. So Is it 8 weeks? Six miles per gallon, you heard that even though you could do that. Yeah, like an old catalog from 1972. What this is an improvement, the 8.6 Mi per gallon, trucks aren't improvement from the current delivery vehicles by point four percent because they're current ones are 8.2 miles per gallon. All right. Well, something it's well, they argue that with the air conditioning on, it's actually 14.7 miles per gallon. Depending on the crazy, some of the responses, but 16 States and several environmental groups are balking, it USPS decision to purchase tens of thousands anywhere. By the way, this a large range of how many of these vehicles. They might actually be purchasing between 50,000 and 165,000. So, okay? I don't really know what the answer. What happened to the EVS when they purchasing lunch. Oh yes. And people are pissed. Hence why there is now let all the hence. The lawsuit. God yes. Hence the litigation, the You know, if that's like let's say it's like a 30 gallon tank on those. They can only drive that truck, 250 miles before it basically stops running and they have to get so that does not mail truck go really? Isn't it just like around the neighborhood and what are they doing? What are they up to? I don't know. But that that does seem a little bit like not that far. What about in like rural communities where you need to actually World communities? My electric car in my, by my, I mean the one Ari's eventually gonna buy that. I'm going to use, we'll get like 300 miles. Oh, you're such a snowflake, get over. Let me guess. I'm all these states. All blue States is there. Is there a red state in there? Um, it depends on what you count as a red state. Pennsylvania is in there. Well, no, they voted for by Elena. North Carolina is a red. I think they went for Trump. No. I believe so and then there's Delaware which I think went usually goes blue. Like how dare you? How dare you? Joseph Biden's, I don't know. But what is the so what are we trying to say here? What struck you about this? I don't understand what we're doing here. I just felt I almost feel like it's a little unfair to USPS. Maybe this is a hot take but fair. Yeah. But I mean don't get me wrong the improvement over like gas mileage and the fact that they promised to invest in EVs and they aren't and all of them they put in these big orders for gas guzzlers, like I hate it too. But why USPS like a government agency that has been fraught with issues and like budget cuts and all sorts of stuff. Like I love the male, I love the male, I don't know. Yeah, I'll tell you why. It's a political struggle because it's the the Trump appointed had. What are they called? Chief Global postmaster. Chief Master Headmaster. Is a trump Pony. Louis dejoy. So this is like a political. This is just a political struggle with this is because he's trolling the Biden Administration. Remember they slowed down the male during the election and they removed? Yeah, this is just like a big political mess. I think, I think it's purposely Tank. Matt, doesn't own agency. Yeah I love the idea that like the Postmaster. General is trolling and like anybody cares about the post, what? You know what would solve this? What? Elon Musk could buy the US posture is no I'm serious I'm serious time this time I'm serious. All right all right I want to remind everyone that this owner mine every one of the musk Empire here's a recent headline, Tesla recalls nearly 63,000 model 3s Tesla Model 3 drivers are facing a recall it's a software glitch. Could make it hard to tell how fast the cars going that seems important. That's not information. You need to know while you're driving. I think it is. The yeah, this is the genius. This is the genius boy. There we call every day, gets more than 8.6 miles a gallon. That's all I got to believe that story. I mean what's what do you have next billionaire? Jeff Bezos just in case you didn't know he was a billionaire lost. Yeah, 20.5 billion dollars in 24 hours, okay? On the only reason I'm bringing this up is because I'm more or less looking for an explanation mostly from Matt Damon. And I don't think you have Search for me. I know that the Amazon stock went down because of a bad earnings report, but the news won't shut up about it. And I kind of still don't understand why it's that big a deal. It's pretty bad. Wasn't it down a lot? Like they lost their earnings were really fell. Not not great. Yeah, they lost 10% in the last week and they're down 25% in the last month, that's share price, but their earnings that share price unexpectedly tumbled, right? I don't know why anyone cares, but like look, we everybody stop wearing masks. Everyone's going outside, like isn't this, what you would expect that. I don't know why we didn't anticipate this, but mostly I hate the story through the lens of how much a billion. Why am I supposed to be sad? Why is there land like going to understand it? Lady Jeff Bezos lost 20 billion dollars. I don't care. Like, like that's literally nothing to him like and even if it was like 50% of his net worth, he never has to work again. Either his kids or his kids. Why are we talking here? Amazon said it recorded a loss of 3.8 billion during the past quarter compared to a year ago where I had a profit of 8.1 billion dollars. So that's seems significant to me, I suppose The loss. Is it a loss? Or is it like they're investing in the metaverse like a Facebook lost 14 billion dollars because of Apple's Privacy Law. I love it and and where where deeply worried about Jeff bezos's. Billions finally my last thrower that we missed. Okay, here's an article from Business Insider called the seed 100, the best early stage investors. So they put a list together of 100. I already hated 100, the best early stage investors. I just have a pop quiz for both of you. What number are not list? When do we see our first woman? You know, is it one number three? Where does it? Where does she lands modern times? They're gonna put her in number six. He got to have a woman in the top. 100. Where did we see our first one? Yeah, Matt might be right. I might be. I might be trying to trick you. It's it's like they had a list of like 80 people before they got to a woman, then that would be everywhere. On my free speech. I'll give you a hint. I'll give you a hint. Her name is Miriam. She gets 27, I guess 27, but then she's taking my hint joke. He'll give you a hint. Her name is Miriam. Rivera co-founder. CEO managing director at ULU Adventures. Emma, you are so damn close. I'm gonna say you win the show today because she comes in at number 208. There is your fine. Your first woman, she's I ate right? I said I said over, I have oh man I know wait, I have a story but damn, I have one more. This is another multi headline, under an umbrella and that umbrellas name is baby killer helpers headline. Number one, Amazon will pay you. A staff travel expenses for abortions and other treatments and to lift takes stance against Oklahoma Texas, abortion restrictions and we'll do the same. My main takeaways from this are one, the small piece of information. I have about Amazon specifically is that it will pay up to 4,000 dollars for non-life threatening medical conditions without services in your area and two, should we care? Do I care? I don't know. Why wouldn't you care should overturn something that I didn't know. In addition to the Oklahoma, Texas thing I am. He should. Why would you not care? I mean this is this is like one of the few instances where I feel like you'd be Pro Corporation, right? I mean I who else is this? Is even speaking. Okay, here's my messed up thought about it. My thought is the reason that they're doing it is because they can't afford to lose enough of like too much of their female Workforce to maternity leave. So it's really, you know, that's no, no that is deep sit which is why they prefer to kill the babies. Here's yeah. You just how dare you that is that's next level cynicism, that's buzzworthy. I think the real, the Crux of this is the laws are moving in, such a way. Here's, here's my bigger problem with it. It's not that they're Paying to send people to places where they can get an abortion because the leaked memo says Roe v. Wade is basically get gone. So it's going to be state by state and the estimates are half of the states are going to Outlaw abortion. So now you got a real to America's where we have already have an almost to America. Now, we have a very real one. Why are they if we're in an era where DeSantis is like attacking Disney, Ted Cruz is attacking every throw they don't want apparently they're not the big business party in this conservatives aren't in this country anymore. Why are they staying in these states? Why send someone somewhere else just leave? I'll tell you why just you know what? I'll tell you why you know the yeah it's modern day Outsourcing because I think a lot and unfortunately a lot of these red States, the wages are really low. I mean the you know, the standard of living is just not so great. Right. I mean, my wrong about that places like where you find out of your Warehouse like Alabama I mean isn't there a reason why? A lot of these corporations do. Put a lot of these, put a lot of the labor there. I mean, it's Gotta Be Low. Labor costs. Yeah, tax breaks, low labor costs low. Operating costs has to be Totally guess what you're just about to spend 4,000 on a worker. You probably play 25,000 dollars a year to send them across state lines, so they can get an abortion if they need one. Just come to places where it's reasonable. I mean, I agree with that. Yeah. I mean, stop fighting like like having to pay taxes occasionally so that we don't have these problems. So your Workforce is educated. We don't have some of these problems just isn't it again. I mean, Connecticut, you can I got a lake in my backyard. It's still alive. You're going to get movie even creepier. Matt, like, are we too far away from is, you know, is a company like Netflix gonna like not send it signal to Kentucky. If like, you know, are we like getting that close to America's where we're really gonna start separating? yeah, I mean, if you look at The largest company in each state, right? You realize actually all of the largest companies are free float media in Connecticut and Portland Maine I guess and Brooklyn no, no, we're not. Um, if you look at the largest companies in each state, you realize like the largest company in the state of Nevada is like a storage company. Good already comes from from, like the abortion State. Yeah, so get over yourself. I'm confused by that. Yeah, where I say you're using storage is not good. I'm saying, like, they have to get the good stuff, right? They get like Amazon, they've got their Netflix and like, Nevada and whatever, but what they have native is a storage space, but everything they use to and enjoy is basically build, and made in an important question. Matt, ask you an important question? You have you been in Nevada. Yeah. So you so basically, Nevada is from what I've seen, it's Las Vegas and then you drive up a few miles and there's nothing, it's just desert. So, why does a storage facility? Why they're so much, why, why? Just throw your thing out the car window? And like, what can you throw in the desert? Throwing some sand? Why do you need a building for that? There's no, there's nothing there. Well, I don't understand. Oh, you want to air conditioning building? Yeah, keep your junk. All right Matt that's it. I got one thing we missed this week and that's from Charles Chuckie hunger. I want, um, I want to give you his hot take on robinhood's, business model. Oh we've heard this before but go ahead. This update. This is from this year's. Old man, a palooza that is Berkshire Hathaways and meeting. He says about Robin Hood's business model quote Was. Displaying God is getting just, okay, it's okay, I didn't realize Munger okay, I was actually with him until that. Yeah. But you neglected, this is the second time he's invoked, our Holy Father, and his involvement in Robin Hood. Yeah, it's because from the 2021 Berkshire annual meeting quote. It's just God awful, that's something like. That would draw investment from civilized men. And decent citizens. I guess Emma you're just decent that you're a decent. I'm civilized, man, it's deeply wrong. We don't want to make our money selling things that are bad for people. This is where mostly civilizing where it's tough. I'm sorry a lot of the junk and here and here's a tease it tomorrow because we're gonna actually have some Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger games tomorrow on the show businessman, but here's where it's troubling with these. Two chuckleheads is a lot of the stuff. I tend to agree with I think. Robinhood, is it God awful, something or other? And Warren Buffett was yelling at Wall Street today, for turning it into a gambling parlor. It's kind of hard to disagree with statements like that. I don't disagree Jesus agrees, right? I don't disagree with you, this was Jewish. Yeah. But where I get hung up is the we don't want to make our money selling things that are bad for people part. That's clearly. I do know. Like there might be a little bit of hypocrisy in there. That's just me and you and you'll see. Yeah. But that's just That's just because you're like you're like someone who would go to swathmore and we know how Munger feels about. Oh, I would go to swathmore. Yeah, you'd probably read Virginia, Woolf and actually like get something out when I tell you that I am currently Reading Virginia. Well, if I'm not kidding. Yeah, because you're in a fever dream. All week, that, that's when people tend to read. He wasn't. Oh, that's what put you in the fever. That's, that's got that's actually why she was Wikipedia that right away from any rivers, there's no rivers in New York, know I love. That's all right. That is all we've got for today. Tomorrow, we've got a whole bunch of hunger nuggets, perfect game, which Sounds less delicious than they actually are. Well, we'll be back tomorrow with more of whatever that is good.