Transcript
Oh whoa. Hey, come in hot. Come on live live from every single headline. Allergic to the phrase. Lip boutan. Wait. We're not allergic to it liputan. It's a businessman's Friday show here at August 8th Studios. Featuring analyst whole Matt mascardi. And I like the disappointment at the I'm trying to not misspeak. I've been missing a lot this summer. I'm trying to enunciate perfectly on today's weekly wrap-up. Headline dualities. Hello, Alice fights back and stinky, man, babies. I don't know what any of this means. Well, that's good because you started with lip Boot tan, which I'm pretty sure, no one knows what that is. Either named him, he's the Intel CEO. They refused to his name. It's too scary. I guess our show today is being sponsored by free floats analytics.com. The only platform measuring board power connections before performance for free and As a special incentive, if you get on that platform now, sign up like right now. Get your friend to sign up. You will eventually get our new beautifully crummy, awesome. Lee horrible scene, we're making it. You know it's disgustingly amazing. We did a we did like a Alpha version last week. And I did, here's what we did actually liked it. I hate most of the stuff you'd come up with you hate everything. Forget me. It doesn't have to be no but especially if you've created here's what we did. We made a white paper about Wells Fargo. That means it's just a professional most people in white and it's and it's the papers mostly white. That's really all it white paper about Wells, Fargo CEO and his giant Equity. Grant the implications for to keep working to keep working, and the kind of Rise of the retention bonus. Like we, so we did a white paper on that. We put that out and we did a Zine like a classic. 90 80s 90s underground, Punk fanzine like you could print it out, you can fold it up, you can do whatever you want with it. It's called boardroom design official Zayn, and we did a story about the same thing and I handed both out and it turns out like, people like design better. Yeah. If you didn't like the white paper, if you're going to on into Franco tonight, which I know you are. She's playing all over the country. So just go. And bring like a handful of scenes and leave them at the hand them out. Yeah, hand them out outside of the awning. DiFranco concert, Liz bear, wherever you're going. I don't know, I'm dating myself, but I don't really care. Come on and, and you can get the first official version because we did the beta version just by being on the email list for free flow analytics. All right, there's too much. No we haven't talked too much, people need to know it's coming and they need to celebrate. Somebody needs to celebrate something. Let's do story of the weekend. Let's celebrate. Celebrate anything. I got a lot so I know I got a lot too. Give me a room for a long haul. I'm gonna try to rush through a bit of mine. So what I've done this week are headlined due out, these it just, it's just happened. It just happen to occur this week that I would see one headline, you'll see. As I go on what it all means. I'd see when I think quickly. Let's see another headline from about the same company or situation and I'll just like, what? Like wait, this is the same company. What's going on here? All right, let's start with the big news and I say, big news only because so I called through headlines in our Feedly account, which looks at hundreds of different news sources. And this story just popped like, I don't know why. Like, everywhere it was everywhere is all over our feet. I don't actually even know why I don't understand how the algorithm works. But oftentimes like one story like this will have like a hundred and fifty separate, you know, headlines about it. So let's just start with this maybe because you don't see you also just don't see the the president and a democratically elected country that purports to be super into things like free market capitalism. You don't usually see presidents calling on CEOs to resign like Fortune 500 CEOs. It's just Not he didn't used to be a thing. You know, we didn't have that kind of cancel culture like at the top like that, but the headline is Trump demands Intel CEOs? Resignation says he's highly conflicted. Okay. Okay. And then The Duality, the other part of the, the other headline is Eric and Donald Trump Jr to own millions of shares in new US manufacturing. SPAC Which also seems like a fun little conflict. But, you know, whatever. Well, they did amend. Yeah, the filing at the SPAC, because the original filing of the SPAC they that way they worded it. They basically said, we are going, I mean, they didn't say it like I'm about to say it, but this is what it affectively said, like, at least they said, we are going to Target Investments using our inside knowledge of who's getting grants from the government, right? Like, I mean, it's, you know, it's he basically was saying like we're going to invest in things that the government invests in because we know where the government's going to invest, then they changed it to be like we're going to invest in manufacturing and we might also look at government like investment. It was like, they changed to soften it, so it didn't sound entirely conflicted. Just all conflicted. You know what I mean? Yeah, and we've been talking about this since we started this show. This is the This is like the modern day, Cold War, the nonsense cold war with China. This is all about, if you're Chinese, if your skin color is a little less white, I guess, because we just keep seeing this, right? Like, it's okay, unless China's involved, I suppose or sometimes China is, okay, I don't get when China is okay, and when it's not okay, but when it when it's when it's food, it's definitely. Okay. And this is the other part of the story that I love. And by the way, that's the joke. The liputan joke is that none of the headlines. Dare to say his name, is it just too much? Like is it too overwhelming for you any letters? It's just there is. It's on Anglo for you to like, get your wrap your head around, like it's just like it's shocked. You made your grandmother run away and fear. I don't know what, but here's the other part of the story I love is that this is all about good old fashioned ESG analysis because and I could have picked two stories from the South about this Duality too because this this comes from Arkansas, Senator, Tom Cotton. And of course, all those states in the South are now, they're trying to forbid anyone from doing ESG. But Matt, let me read you this, this is ESG analysis, I love it. It's the article says that Tom Cotton flag Tans prior investments in Chinese companies and his previous leadership at Cadence Design Systems publicly traded company, which recently pleaded guilty to unlawfully selling his Tech to a blacklisted Military University in China, blah, blah blah blah. But this is just good old fashion ESG. I mean, this is playing, but this is why it's important work. And in this case, it's very political but it doesn't always have to be political it just, you just kind of, it's just citing potential risks, you know. Maybe you don't want your CEO's dealing with China or Ukraine, or I don't know. I don't know what you care about. But anyway, this is the big story Trump wants. Intel CEO to resign this. And ironically we used to have an inside joke here. That if we make fun of you, something else is gonna happen. Last week, we were making fun of the Intel CEO because Jim Cramer the genius over at CNBC was saying that the Intel CEO totally understands everything everything. Yeah, I thought that was just a silly and then the next week and now he's being the. They're trying to get him to step down. Remember we also reported earlier this year that he got a golden hello it Intel that might be worth up to 400 million dollars. So those are just a lot going on with until this year. More than that. Yeah, one of the things that there is a lot going on with Intel, but I like that, this the kickoff too focus on Intel by Trump was a letter Tom Cotton Arkansas, Senator, Tom Cotton? Yeah, sent one of your Heroes. What? Yeah, long time. I have a plaque. The scent to Intel flagging. You know, his leadership of cadence doing ESG analysis, Arkansas has banned ESG and else's. So it's pretty sure, right? That Tom Cotton, she'd go to jail. Yeah. Like he should jail or censured because he just did, he is she announces? So, adding to the confusion here, Is the method that Trump and Tom Cotton have used to call out Intel CEO. Awful has been banned by Trump and Arkansas. I feel dirty about what they've done and where were you before? Tom what took you so long? He was hired in the winter, they already had a meeting in. May what took you so long to dig this stuff up and you know and you know what also maybe Chuckles I used to, when I used to work for GMI, right? Ratings before msci bought it. I used to post articles on Business Insider. And I remember one of my articles being about Cadence Design Systems first. I don't remember exactly what it was about, but it was some kind of related party transaction like this. And that's why I felt proud of Tom Cotton. He's just doing, he's knee, is she analysts now? We're both, we're both in the New England and I can't be arrested for doing. Yes, she but he should be not yet. That's the top story. Huh. Number two, another one. Which I didn't want to talk about, but I feel I'm not gonna talk. I just had to because it again, this, this other story, I don't know. Because, you know, so a sexy lady was involved or because it was about woke culture or because Trump was involved. But these are all the things that people love, right? These are the three things that our culture can't quit. So this is all been a huge story in our feed this week and we both of us, we happily avoided it on Tuesday but here I am capturing it. Shares of American Eagle, surged 20%. After Trump calls, Sydney Sweeney campaign hottest ad out there. Yeah. And The Duality headline is, this Epstein victims are growing political threat to Trump. Now, what's crazy about this story is that it's about, like a scantly clad young blonde woman. Sure. He's saying how hot she is. He loves her, because she's in the Republican. Because the ad is, here's, here's the ad that's pissing people off. She says, in the jeans jeans jeans, you know, like jeans, you know that you learn in genetics, you know, I got there. You went to biology class. Jeans are passed down from parents to offspring often determining traits like hair color, my jeans. Oh, thank God. You gave a n s. Anyway, it's like a Nazi Gene pun. People are getting mad at it. But yeah, that's the, but again, but the whole up scene story, which is all, so going on, It's all about, you know, sickeningly all about young blonde, women that Epstein was like selling to, to CEOs and billionaires. So, anyway, I thought that was a crazy Duality headline right there. And here's the reason why I wanted to talk about this is that As I was thinking about American Eagle, we don't talk about American Eagle a lot, but my hunch was just like your hunch when we covered fig the figma IPO earlier. This week. Your hunch. Was that it was basically a Dopey College Dropout? Yeah, there's already a billionaire for creating a company that doesn't benefit Humanity at. All my sense about American Eagle was like this is probably some kind of a dick Tater ship and I say that D. I C. K dick yeah, we should coin that. By the way, we already did my daughter brought a sign to a rally that good at and I was right. Let me tell you a little bit about American Eagle because I'm doing my Tom Cotton. Yes, she analysis right here. American Eagle's gender influence. Gap is minus 36%, which is massive that's because it's controlled by Jay Schottenstein. Matt J has been CEO of this company, at least three times, dating back to 1992. He's Boomerang back. A couple of times. He's been the chair since he's been a director since the 80s. He also has a, I'm giving all the Hallmarks now of a dictatorship that we like to cover. He also has a creeping nepo, baby son. I was reading in the New York Post about there's a headline about how the girl the grown son of an Ohio. Billionaire is a hooker, loving drug addict who threatened to destroy a Stanford educated Manhattan's psychiatrist. He also said that the nepo baby was gambling away millions of dollars during trips to Las Vegas. Anyway, you know, Napa a creepy nepo, baby is all part. Oh, he's got good. Yes, exactly. That's a great jeans. And let me tell you about these jeans, these jeans control the the holding company. The owns American eagle called SB, 3660 Capital Partners. I went to their website This is owned by J and his three sons. Sorry wife mother she's not a part of this on a ship. It's just J and the Three Sons. This again this is the CEO and chair of American Eagle that put out the Sydney Sweeney add. I looked at all the listed Executives at sb360, Matt, it's 13 listed Executives, they're all white men. You don't see that that's refreshing, you know, see that much these days, finally, what culture is dead, other Hallmarks of the dictatorship that we love you. Can't you have, you couldn't even vote the last time you can vote on CEO. Jay was 2023 because they have a stupid classified board. Structure. Of course he has. He's a CEO and he's the chair. I already said that he gets 300,000 dollars and Security benefits because you know, they love being you know they feel like the world's out to get them. I don't even know who would recognize this guy. I don't know why he needs security. Matt he is a 2011 to one CEO pay ratio that's one of the highest we've ever seen. Behind this Starbucks, CEO. That's a great America. Yeah, that's a great dictatorship. Moment right there. He owns 7% of companies shares which is pretty massive for a company. This big He has 71% of board influence according to freefall analytics.com, there's a bunch of other stuff. He's also surrounded by long tenured directors. I'm sure in leadership position to do all his young for him. Anyway, that's the dictatorship that controls American Eagle that's putting out ads of Sydney, Sweeney give, like, doing kind of corny, like not digenic jokes. So yes. So there was a New York Times article. Yes. Okay, about the, the calls of the ad campaign being like Nazi dog. With all that stuff was actually like three people on tiktok saying like hey I don't like this. It's kind of Nazi. Yeah and that's how that's now. There was like a collective eye-roll from every like nobody cares and the it turns out the conservatives in the United States were here, they were arguing that there was this big backlash and Against a beautiful woman making, you know, a pun and that it was liberal extremists and whatever it was an American Idol. Is yeah, it was like three, guys. Yeah, and the second big thing to mention is, does anyone shop at American Eagle? I don't even, I barely know what American Eagle is. I don't even and I again, I don't want the President says, weighing in a young blonde model, the whole thing, it's creepy. Which gets you back to the Epstein thing, right? Like, well and everything you American Eagle? Yeah, anytime you post about someone young who looks underage being hot, And you're in the Epstein files is probably not a good look. It's just generally not a good look generally. And the other reason why I see is on this is that he was he's you know he's all like he's all happy because Sydney Sweeney's a registered Republican in Florida and he's for some reason. He also has to get into his like misogynistic rant and he was calling out. Taylor Swift for sucking and I would just laughing myself of like having nothing to do. I can't think of a single like music, you know, a pop star since the Beatles who sucks less than Taylor Swift. I'm not talking about the music. I'm talking about a business Empire that even still blows my mind like they have done. Yeah. Actual economic studies. That show that she by herself moved GDP. Yes. So I'm just like, wait, what are we doing here? Like I don't know. Anyway, I don't want to get too much into the mind of Donald Trump, but that's the second story of the week. I sure I'm not using it as a story of the week. I don't know about it. Speaking of New York Times, he's another dwelling headline story of the week. This is kind of a good old-fashioned won. First in New York Times. This, I saw these two headlines like almost back to back first in New York Times, had a horrible article, Ubers sexual assault problem, that's been. Okay, ten years. There's new reporting is a New York Times investigation from 2017 to 2022. The company received over 400,000 reports of sexual assault, or misconduct just in the United States, which averages to about one incident every eight minutes, according to the New York Times. Uber, studied the issue and even develop potential safety features. Like in car cameras and a feature to match, female drivers with female passengers, but the company chose not to implement these safeguards because they were concerned about their bottom line and potential lawsuits. A few moments later, I see this headline. Matt, Uber beats on rev, you announces 20 billion dollar stock buyback. Finally, 20 billion dollars. They're spending that buy their own shares instead of implementing safety features to deal with Ubers sexual assault problem. They they can't do the safety features. You don't understand, they have to spend money somehow. And they can't, they can't do the safety features because if they did, they would have to ask their workers who are contract, they're independent contract, they're not even really they're not actually, they're not, they don't even work for them. They would have to demand that those workers that aren't their workers. Do something, which looks a lot like they're your employees. So that would be a problem because then they'd have to recognize that they actually work as workers for Uber, which she they're not going to do, so if you're not going to spend the money on that, Then let the sexual assault happen and just buy back some shares and no one will notice 20. I don't 20 billion dollars that they could, they could be investing in their employees. They could be making these drivers workers that your headlines today. I don't I'm just I'm just following the news. And finally, this is kind of a good old-fashioned one because we cover of course we cover Elon Musk a lot. It's kind of hard, not to, but the big story at the beginning of the week. Which we again, I think skipped over in our Tuesday show because I think we're just sick of this Maniac. Tesla Grant musk, 29 billion dollars in stock to keep elon's energies focused. Maybe you did actually, we did cover this already. Yeah, I think we mentioned it on that was earlier, this week, 29 billion dollars to one individual and now let's play The Duality game with this headline. Although, it's harder for me, I couldn't just pick one headline to offset this headlines. So I picked a few of the headlines, the parked in our feet, popper feet, just this week, remember, all of these Friday shows that we cover only cover the calendar week from the previous Friday. We're not digging back to try to make these stories. Look different. We're just covering current news. And I will say, unlike every other ESG research company on the planet. I think we're Matt. We are the only ones to cover news as it happens day by day week by week, wouldn't you say? We're the only ones committed to consistently covering news as it breaks. We don't have a legal department that makes us wait for six months before we weigh in on something because it might offend someone somewhere. Yeah. You know why I would say that because that's why people don't buy anything from us, right? Because I know that because we comment on stuff because we say too hard we say we say things out loud based on evidence and data. Yeah so here's a duality headline. For Tesla's for Elon musk's 29 billion dollar, PayPal package, these are just headlines from this week. Elon Musk accused of stiffening small businesses for millions of dollars causing some to file for bankruptcy. Elon Musk shares. Shockingly sexist, tweet about women being property. This one's disgraceful. Even from musk. This will open the floodgates Tesla in trouble as jury orders. It's it to pay 329. After autopilot death Tesla, withheld data, lied and misdirected police, and plaintiffs to avoid blame, and autopilot crash, and finally, Elon Musk appears to now be the most hated person in America. According to new research, I could have told you that one. Yeah, I like that last one. I like that. I love you. Needed research a headline. I didn't go looking for this is just a headline that was tagged in our Feedly This is your CEO people. This is your congratulations board at Tesla. This is the guy that's correct. This is the board. So you're saying my options for the story of the week this week. Are Trump. He wanted to see your design while being involved in a obvious naked conflict of interest himself saying that guy has a conflict but not I have a conflict. Don't you love that? We're all we're also all the college dropouts in Silicon Valley are super concerned dude that that the AI and Tech they're working on is going to destroy the planet and instead of working with other countries like China, right? And the EU were busy fighting them and a capitalistic urge to get more wealthy and buy more property property and Hawaii, that's what we're doing. And why are we competing if we're worried that the tech is going to destroy the Earth? Why aren't we working together to? Why is China? What are we? I just don't get the whole China thing. I don't get I think that's why we're threatened by China. I don't get it at all. I think everybody who threatened by China needs to get like really good session on everything. The Fortune 500 so To China about this country, why can we sell to them? Why, why are they manufacturing most of our Goods? Why do we? I just anyway my my second option is. Sorry, American Eagle ad versus Epstein victims. Look like this is the news. Uber sexual assault versus Uber's. Share BuyBacks. I don't like that one. That one and Tesla is 29 billion. Drop on Elon versus basically, everything Elon does wrong at every moment. We'll just end with. He's the most hated person in America and Rich shows and the richest person in the world. That means. We're like 25 minutes in. I'm already I have some news weeks are just a bit more you know plump. I'm gonna go with the Intel. Yeah. And yeah I mean that that seems obviously a US president is calling for you to resign. It's a little weird. No. It's the hypocrisy of saying that that guy is conflicted when he literally the most conflicted person we've ever had in government, ever in history, he's launching crypto tokens and memes. He's, he's got his own life. He's true socially. He's got, he just in the government Gathering data from, you know, for God and government data for his own purposes. How is that now conflict? He's Trump, the Intel CEO has passed all the proper mechanisms, the board, supports him, his shareholders, support him. So what we call him out, right? I'm saying, And you juxtapose that against his sons. Basically benefiting directly from us grants to manufacturers, right? Like that personally benefiting with shares, there's nothing more conflicted than that. That's got to be the easy, but the other ones. Yeah, I can't choose the other ones mostly, because they make me angry look, can we do something good? Let's do something good list. Oh my God. Sorry, I have two old-fashioned ones here. That'll make you feel better. Maybe I'll go quickly. And then hand it up to you. Because I have some, like, old-fashioned goodly waste This is ice cream waste. I didn't know there was ice cream. Waste ice cream. Waste From Ben and Jerry's ice cream factories in Vermont. And now powering the Vermont grid. They're, they're taking ice cream place and they're turning an energy. Okay, can you back up and explain? Yeah. What they're turning into energy. I don't have any idea. So I, I guess what happens when they this article was claiming that when they have a new flavor, they need to, they need to like, Pump out, all the old ice cream juice from the vat. No, I'm serious. They got to get rid of all of it to clean it out so it doesn't wreck the new flavor and that becomes waste. And that waist is directly. They have a new pipes on on-prem the premises and it goes to a company that turns into biogas, which is so, which is also saving the environment a little bit because that that weighs used to get loaded into these huge trucks and it was trucked away somewhere and put in some weird Vermont like ice cream landfill, but now it's actually being turned into fuel. So we're talking about chunky, shity milk. Yes, with probably some Reese's Pieces, bits and stuff. Wow, yeah, I like that one. No, I want to be one of the Vermont houses that is getting powered by that ice. I want that just to come just to my house. So all my power to be from chunky milk and then the other one, the other old fashioned goodly is the Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation is giving 2.5 billion. Dollars. So this is a way to to spend money. Not just give it to Elon Musk, or to buy back. Your shares is giving two-point billion dollars to fund. Women's health research Women's Health. I hate this. Well I don't think it's the purview of billionaires to choose what gets researched here. Doesn't I hear? I this is a social good again. The only reason why we like this is because our government has decided to offer zero social don't crap on my I don't like this. I don't like it. And this Administration, this is an important headline. Go ahead here are my two. Yeah. Um, the headline for this one is musk Bezos and Zucker going, full alpha male, America's girl bosses are fed up. Good. Now, why I love doing this show? We like to highlight female leadership. Yeah, no. I know, I know it's not like a good thing happened per se, but here's why I like it. So back. We've got basically companies are all doing return to office. No more work from home policies. Here's some quotes. From here's here's the quote that I like this is the greatest backlash. It's because you know, work the flexibility that parents had to work from home is being taken away. The article suggests that people are being more entrepreneurial. So the greatest backlash here is if every woman who's in like a company, that's got this new masculine default, founder mode, 13 year old man baby culture where there's like we're Jamie Diamond says, and John Stanky. Writes a memo about how you gotta go back to the office, which will get to. And as holy is he got to go back to the office or you're out. the article points out that Women are basically starting their own companies. They're like, fuck you, right? It's just I'm just gonna start a company. So to me it's not them. Going out in the mail, the men are doing the consequence. Yeah, of going like intensity founder mode. Alpha male is women are like we are going to literally build our way out of this. Look, I mean this is why I love it. This is why I say the dick dick Tater ship in American Eagle. I mean, this is a, it's run by a holding company that is run by a man and at least one of his horror three horrible sons and it's all the executives are men. So it's like yeah I love this and this side note because in this article there's a quote, from a January ft article that we didn't, I didn't see it, maybe we hit it, but we didn't cover it, but it was posted on Joe Rogan talking about masculine and energy companies. Need to reclaim their masculine energy. They quoted a banker in it, this is anonymous Banker top. Anchor. It says a top. What does that mean a top Banker? I tell you know, somebody who's on top of the bank? Good at Connect. Four, like what is that? What makes them tough? Yeah. He said quote, I feel liberated. This is it has to be the asshole. Yes, quote of decades. So he okay. So let's just can we just start breaking it down from that first part of that phrase. So he so he he was feeling better before he was feeling tied up in jail for this moment. Yeah, the top Banker a male topping in America was feeling making top money as feeling. Banker tied down, was feeling tied down. Yeah. Now, he's liberated and, and he's anonymous. So that that comes in to like he's, he feels liberated. Now, he knows that his children might read this and he doesn't want to anonymously. Yeah, like, I feel liberated set of top Banker quote, we can say, retard and pussy without the fear of getting canceled, it's a new dawn. Who first of all don't say we just say, I cause I'm not party. I'm not part of your Wii, your Collective. We is there any more like that might be the asshole? I'd say. And pussy. Second of all, and third of all, whoever got canceled, what? Matt find me a top Banker. Anywhere in America, find me a single board director, whoever got canceled for for saying retard or pussy. Wait, where is this cancel culture that people talk about who has been canceled? All I know is I love the juxtaposition of this guy, so like Jamie dimon says no more working from home, you're all lazy ass holes, come back to the office and the women in the office are like you're taking away flexibility that we already are the primary, you know, caregivers at home and we're working full-time jobs because of stagnant wages for, you know, the last 50 years in this country, our Liberation is actually put us in Chains where we now all have to work. And I have to do all the work at home too. They're like, fuck you. I'm gonna go start my own company so that the liberated top Banker. Can't call me a pussy at the office without getting fired, but little world. I love it. I love that. And my second option here. I got a second one. Yeah. And this one's She's easy. I already talked about it on Tuesday. The headline was a long-running anti Dei lawsuit, could help companies defend themselves from Reverse Racism claims it's about hello Alice the company there they are fighting back against Stephen Miller's, Law Firm, Elizabeth Gore is her name. Elizabeth Gore is one of the co-founders of the company. She's quoted in the article and she's fighting against fake Nazi man. Boys, who are basically claiming that a white guy is not getting the opportunity because they gave a 25,000 dollar Grant to a black entrepreneur program through Progressive. She thought that when they got that she got that loss in her email she thought it was, she rightfully thought it was spam. She was like just a joke. So the good list thing here is hello. Alice is winning their setting a template for people to win against these ridiculous reverse. I don't know if how do we do we vote on this one? I would vote for that one. A fighting back. And this realm, I mean, Right? I mean we got a supporting back, both are effective versions of fighting back where the, if we're leaving their toxic masculine places and started their own companies as a backlash. And hello Alice is saying, you can't sue me for bulshit. I will fight you till the end. I'm I congratulations to all of them. All everybody doing it. I love it. Yeah. All right now we got to do assholes though. Okay, I'm gonna show I'm gonna shut my mic off. You might want to shut your brain on my turn. My shut. My headphones off. All right, I'm gonna give you the three options up up top and I'm then we can go into details so that made might make it go faster. Number one option. Alex karp. Yeah, I'm here in nuggets this week. We joked about him. Alex, karp, and all of the men who went to Elite University. Yeah, and say Elite universities are bulshit that my favorite recently was Ron DeSantis, the horrible governor of Florida who he went to like a couple of ivy league and he's all set. He hates them. Yeah. John Stankey. Okay. Yo of 1818, that's a great name. I love that name. He he's the real it's the rewrites of the Jack Welch. Like hate your employees, fire the ball, man. Directive man babies. He wrote a memo to his employees, which I have all these translations for, in the, in the, in the doc that we can go through. Maybe I'll just do a highlight one, but he basically tells his employees that you had an engagement survey, you said, That we suck. It's your fault. We suck show up or get out. Like is that's the short version of like his 1200 word memo or whatever. And number three, Lewis Vaughn on. I don't know who that is. He's the CEO of Duolingo. Really, you know, the app you're learning languages. Are they traded company? I might even know they're not. I don't believe they are. And he's, he's, he did a classic man, baby. Sorry, not sorry. We were just being edgy. No, seriously, I know it's best for you man. Baby version of an apology. Wait, this is a new story. I thought this happened like, a few months ago, the he just came out and said he, the headline was Duolingo CEO says, he learned a hard lesson about edgy posts and going viral. Otherwise say you learned a lesson about what he said. He said I learned edgy pose that go viral can be damaging but that's we framed it do a lingo is in fact in the database free flow and look on the other so it is publicly traded. Yeah, good. Then he's so those are going to be your three options. Now, I'll tell you a little bit why and you already know a little bit Alex karp, the headline for Alex karp is palantir. CEO says working at his 403 billion dollar. Software company is better than a degree from Harvard or Yale. No one cares about the other stuff. Yeah, I don't really, I don't even really follow what that means. Carp went to how to fight better anyway. Yeah, have referred Haverford College, which is a private expensive Elite institutions not Harvard, have afford tuition and fees as close to 100,000 dollars a year. Then he went to Stanford to get his JD which is really get, I will. Okay, Alex Carr. Here's what you Technically, Stanford is not Harvard or Yale. Yeah, that's your, he has, but there, but I think you're technically referring to the elite universities in America, which includes of course Stamper, which is Stanford off, 100% off listed as maybe the best. So, in Peter Thiel who went to Stanford is the like, one of the It techno man-baby backers everywhere. He's like the thing, right? The guy remember that. You had a metaphor, an analogy. You gave back in the day. That didn't you call Zach his incubated Goose or something? Yeah, because he's implant on the first person. Like when they hit like, you know, when they're born they implant on the first thing that they meet not their parent, right? And Peter Thiel was the first VC you told Zuck. He was a future God and that was it for Zuck. You know, he was, he was basically the mentor forever but just to be clear, carp introduced at palantir, something called the meritocracy Fellowship, which is a paid internship for high school graduates. Who don't necessarily want to go right to college. The program is supposed to be just about Merit, but just in case you were worried Merit is they needed ivy league level test scores, including more than a 1460 on the SAT or 33 on the ACT and they had to be in the 98th percentile of all test, takers, sound Elite like, literally you turn palantir into an Ivy League institution. You're like, you did the same thing. That's all. That's what you're supposed to hate about them. The good news is, as parents know the modern generation of parenting met, is that you can game the system anyway, you can pay your way to basically High test scores. Maybe that's what he's referring to, it just kind of pay your way. Look, there are a million shortcomings with like Elite colleges mostly it's like exude this exclusivity as a commodity, it's mostly talk parents of the show to go there. It's it's not real. The income inequalities are vast the whole thing but it's pretty rich for a guy who went to Stanford to and the reason why he's a Founder today is because he met the guy who eventually funded him at the place the elite institution, he went to For him to talk about how bulshit Elites reminds me of get over yourself. Reminds me of a US president, Donald Trump yelling at liputan, the CEO of Intel, for being conflicted. Yeah, it's yeah. It feels a little like that. The other one was John Stankey, CEO of AT&T. Let me ask you something. When you think of tech Innovation 18t is top three. Right? Yeah. Definitely. They get they make a really amazing and greasy phone pay phone right now, they make Payphone, they make pay phones where usually and motels a little like urine dial-up modems. They're really good at that too. Right. I mean do they AT&T wire I in 100 years? No, like, of course not. Um, but yeah. John Stankey wrote a memo to his employees responding after they had any internal engagement survey, which very ESG thing to do doing engagement survey, figure out what your employees problems are and what they like when they don't like, right. And at least try to, at least try to interpret all the kiss ass lying that comes back in this because they're afraid you're gonna get fired if you actually say your point of view. But yeah, sure, it's supposed to be anonymous. Oh, someone says like whenever corporate tells Do something's Anonymous. The first reaction is, of course, this is not. That's if you said it's Anonymous that I know it's not Anonymous. He said he was encouraged at 73% of the employees. Took the time to respond 79% felt committed and engaged at their work. It was a drop from the last time they did the survey. And he says, quote, it wasn't a surprise to me that we fell short of our engagement goal, which is a truant. If I'm Translating that is just I'm not surprised. You think we suck more, right? Like he's been there for five years and they suck more now than when he started. Oh really. Is that right? That is correct. Yeah, but then he goes on to basically, he said he wants you to hold your breath because he's going to tell you why. It's you that suck, it's your fault, not his fault. He says quote this note may also help you identify areas where your professional expectations. Yeah. Might be misaligned with the Strategic direction of this company. He says, we didn't hit our engagement, we dropped out on our engagement, but this is where your exploitations are wrong, and that's why we dropped. It's your fault that we dropped. I have never. It's really, it's really fabulous. Yeah, anytime you get a chance to basically say, I hear you loud and clear. You said I suck. But really, it's you that sucks. And let me tell you how you're off to a good start in your memo. This is the guy who it says so much control. That not only is he the CEO but he chairs the his oversight board that looks at his work. He's the chair of the board. So yeah, but the fuk doesn't stop with him. It's but it's not his fault stops with their with their Linda and Gus who work on the like, 12th floor. He goes on to basically, say, the old company was rooted in a quote employment deal, which focused on loyalty, and tenure and conformance there they yeah. And the new company we've shifted away from is a quote, Market based culture focused on rewarding capability contribution and commitment. So, loyalty and commitment are the exact same thing. I just want to we're so deep into like corporate gobbledygook here that I'm starting to like glazed over with this guy. He basically said we're a meritocracy now so we're a manly Maritime. So but what I am hearing is he kind of floundering because it's as you said the company is not. doing as well and he's looking for a scapegoat Yes. Well, he has escaped everybody else. Yeah, that's the scapegoat. So he's not really looking This is the this is the cherry on the top of this memo where he says, quote, I'm going to read this full section. Quote, I understand that many may find the demands of your daily lives, challenging and difficult. Elder Care, job stress, child rearing challenges. Okay, so elder, care and child, rearing challenges, who does those things primarily women? It's just women, it's just women, right? Economic uncertainty Community, unrest, technological technology anxiety. The list can get long. We run a dynamic customer-facing business. Tackling large-scale challenging initiatives. If the requirements dictated by this Dynamic, this Dynamic do not align to your personal desires. You have every right to find a career opportunity. That is suitable or aspirations and love it or leave it. I love this. That said yeah if a self-directed virtual or hybrid work schedule is essential for you to manage your career aspirations in life challenges ladies You will have a difficult time aligning, your priorities with those of the company and the culture we aim to establish he translation. Yeah. We know your life is hard ladies but shut the fuk up and show up because I don't care. Wow, this is really nice, this is some tough talk. Yeah this is some good Maga. Tough talk, it's man talk. Yes man, time baby, this is three time. This is retarded pussy talk. This is real talk banker, man. Talk top Banker retard, pussy talk. Let me tell you something, remember? We are talking about 18t. Yeah, I don't even really know what AT&T does, I mean, cell phone company where you get the shittiest reception everywhere. You know, I was just thinking, like whenever like it comes up like, you know, your friends are like which cell phone carried, you know, even mentioned AT&T anymore. I kind of forget that they even exist. Who would want to who would want to use AT&T. Anyways, here outside of horrible? Stinky yah, Where is the Fucking bored. Well, Bill canards the lead independent director. He's got 13 connection Loops to other directors. There, he's been there for 11 years. He's an undergraduate Communications from Stanford. He worked at the FCC and he's been a US ambassador. How is it that John Stankey cannot communicate to his employees without offending? Every one of them but you have someone on the board who's job is communication, but here's where AT&T here's where they're a winner because they have like my new favorite. Like one of my new favorite like retread directors. It's Marissa Mayer. You know? She's yeah. She's now on some of the biggest and greatest board. She's on AT&T Hilton Walmart and Starbucks my favorite. So if she's involved there's good things. Maybe this thing isn't for you Melissa. Maybe it's time for you to call it a career Marissa. Come on Marissa. Sorry but look you have you have luminary supposedly luminaries including Mike McAllister, who was the Humana CEO? The Life Care, the health insurance, Company, who was investigated for duping, elderly people into thinking, Obamacare would cut Medicare that. You have Scott Ford, who his prior job was leading the biggest landline company in the United States, he pivoted out of that individually. Personally into selling coffee, that's your future Tech guy on the board. That's a smart thing. People love coffee, man. That's true too bad. You can't deliver it via a landline because I love that, they even have two people from the Ford board. They have the independently director, Bill, Kennard, and Beth Mooney. They got, they got two people from Ford. Yeah, well, I mean, because Ford has been in Innovation here for the last 30 years, whenever we think there's your talking about from 1962. I'm just saying John Stanky. What if fucking asshole shove your? That's pretty bad. It's pretty bad man. Talk up your ass hole. Yeah. Every one of you women who got this memo at AT&T just quit on masks. Go start a company. Start a fucking wireless carrier to challenge AT&T, you know how it works. Start another wireless carrier, it cannot be worse. Right on AT&T does write a section for our Zayn art. Come on. Who else he got? This is getting slow. Finally Lewis Vaughn on the Duolingo CEO, which I already said he learned a hard lesson about edgy posts. Here's what he actually posted first. He said dueling go. This is an app for learning languages would be an AI first company. Then he said, they're not hiring people anymore because they think everything can be done by AI. Then he went on to say that schools. Will be converted to just child care centers with AI teachers. I remember this. Yeah and said that the teachers will just quote take care of the children. Yeah and that We wouldn't need the school to be anything except a building for childcare and then in his apology for saying that because there was back, you know, this is a learning app who shiting on teachers the backlash was immediate of course and he his apology was sorry for being edgy and they pulled down all their social media accounts. It wasn't you being edgy, it was you being an asshole, you're an asshole. At least, he did graduate from college, he did graduate from duke. I let me just say this though, this guy is so is so strong in his convictions as being a strong, man, that his shares at Duolingo are worth 20 votes per share. Wow, this is how tough he is. He's so tough that he doesn't even let his own board or his own investors, have a say in how we run this company because he's fairly amazing, you know? And and Lewis found on for tough, guys. He's talking about, shity Elite colleges, and your shity problems, and you should do what we say. And they did manage to insulate themselves. Pretty well with dual class shares they can't get to post one sidebar on Duolingo. Because I hate this guy and I hate Duolingo is a and I hate his fight against teachers. So in seventh grade, we lived in the country of France. We enrolled our in a small town of mind. You not like an elite like place with the I was just say, you start a little elitist. Yeah, we sent our daughter to the public school, seventh grade, she did not know a single word of French. She was, you know, rightfully a little bit terrified. And without the help of Duolingo at all when she for that one year, she became fluent in the language of France, French because of her great teachers. And because again, this is just a teacher school. So do a lingo is a joke. If you want to learn the language, go go. Speak to people who speak that language. It turns out, I don't like crummy app. Believe, my daughter spent like four months on duol. Go before going to Spain where she is. Now, it sounds elitist but she's with a like, friends of ours that we've known 30 years and she got there and she was like, I don't know any fucking Spanish, Matt. She was better off like turning on her her interweb machine and and like, finding a friend on Zoom, who speaks Spanish who's just an hour a day together. Yeah, that's all you Lewis Vaughn on for anything on us. So Alex, karp John stinky, Lewis fun on those are your options. This is an easy one for me. Do you know where I'm going? On this one? I mean I think we've already talked about stinky and I so I don't I don't I think he's the he should be it but I'm gonna choose really don't think I'm gonna choose. What do you think? I'm not Alex karp. I think he's very good boring. Yeah he's been saying this stuff all the time. These are three Lewis fine on. I feel like triggered you in a real way because he shit on teachers and you're my mom's a teacher. Her parents are teacher Librarians, right? That's true. Yeah, yeah. But So I would have guessed and he's and he's one of these 20 votes per share. Yeah, everything deal. But here's the only problem with that though, is that the Duolingo story has been lingering for a while? Yeah, it happened over some of the stuff. You reported happened, a few weeks, a few months ago, and but the John Stankey thing is fresh, and I love his name. I love that it's AT&T. There's so many corporate governance threads for us to to look at with AT&T, they have such a great Network board. It's a bunch of bulshit. And, and that memo is, I'm you rightfully kind of focused on the the attack, on gender in that moment. That, that's the important takeaway. So I, I have to say, John stinky. I have that, that's probably true. We don't need this type of leadership, John's taking. And if you're maybe if you're born, actually had a chair that wasn't all sick, he maybe they'd fight back and be like, you're embarrassing us. This is an embarrassing memo, it makes us look like gaming. He's got a lead, independent directors. Independent finish. This Show headlines, winners prediction. We might get out of here under an hour. Let's get out of here. I wouldn't move fast. Now. I'll go first headline into the week shareholders. Judge, directors by their faces. I like that true. That's true mine. I wish it was just Headline, but it was more what it made me think. And it was Trump calls for Intel CEO to resign immediately. And I picked it because it is the headline of the week. Like, there's no, it's everywhere, it's everywhere. And but I, I did realize there's more ESG analysis there that can be done because nobody recognized that like black rocks ex founder is on the board of Intel, don't they hate BlackRock? Like everyone? There's all sorts of like there's Jack Dorsey square. Like we don't like Jack Dorsey because he's like a yogi. Who was ruining Twitter before Elon took it over, right? Like wasn't so do more ESG analysis on it, but that's definitely the headline of the week. Who's your right? My winner is a little bit odd, but this is what, you know, I've talked about her before. She. One of my favorite talk about effective, female leadership, the great city of Boston, Massachusetts. Their mayor is Michelle Wu. There's a article in the Boston Globe. She's calling out the billionaire Kraft, family. Regarding the new stadium proposed for the soccer team and the New England Revolution. And she says, to this day, the Kraft group has provided the city, no meaningful. A technical information. What we've heard has stayed at a conceptual level and is insufficient for any serious negotiation. So that the craft group is offering a 750,000 dollar mitigation fee to deal with the nightmare of infrastructure. That happens when you build a big Stadium 750,000 dollars. Yes. And this and the package offered when they build the casino and Everett was 68, million dollar, mitigation package was to the city of Boston. The billionaire craft family, which does dopey things like have football teams where they're just giving people CTA CTA is offering 750,000 dollars. So she rightly called them out went right to. It said this is UN an unserious proposal which I love but then she also took a shot at the Suns. Speaking of nepo babies, the son of Robert Kraft. Josh Kraft who happens to be running against her because, you know, he's the son of a billionaire so he must not run a City, so he's running. Against the mayor and she's referencing. This this horribly low mitigation fee of 750,000 saying quote 750,000 dollars is just one and a half months of a billionaire son's allowance. It is nowhere near the scale of what we need to address the plans, you know, to deal with, you know, the residents traffic, all kinds of stuff. So, my winner is Michelle Wu. I just like how she went right after the dumb Dopey crap, she doesn't care. How many Super Bowls they have won. She went right after she. Just speaking hard truth, I just love you know what? She's actually doing it the right moment too because the craft family is out of favor because people like Belichick more than Kraft I think after really even though he's like a creepy like dating like a 20 year old from Maine, he's if you're like my buddy Sully and Sally you're like good for fucking him. He can get us. Four year old good friend, who cares? I love Michelle, that's my winner. What do you got? Oh I like that. That proposed figure 75000 dollars, barely covers the median cost of a single house. For the casino 750. I mean these billionaires there it's outrageous. I mean and you know, they're just playing this a long protracted negotiations, that say to save the money that they can, they should be giving back to the area. Just pay the fucking money. That's the point. All right, my winner is Jamie Smith at the hell is, why aren't you know, for writing the only other Proxy review of 2025, released the 2025 us proxy review on Harvard's corporate gov law website. That included an entire section on director vote because it's still matters because apparently one other person thought to the directors might matter. I'll just so I'll have to look at that Jamie Smith. Thank you. I was a weird nerdy winner. I was I thought I thought it was gonna make it like an asshole candidate or like, you know, like a joke candidate. And I was like, thank God. She wrote a whole section about directors. I love it. I love it. Jamie Smith. You why? Thank you? What's your prediction? My prediction. I don't know why I was thinking about this Trump thing. The Sydney Sweeney the jeans and I just started thinking about OJ for some reason. So I was thinking of Epstein and got me this weird dumb prediction Trump. He tries to fit into a pair of Sydney Sweeney's Jean to kind of like OJ. Tried to put the glove on. Yeah to prove that he did definitely Did not know Jeffrey, Epstein. That's his proof because he can't fit into her jeans. And then because of this, the American Eagle, stock surges, Hey, what's your prediction is Duolingo? Will release a new language Choice called man, bro, return. Which is you how to apologize? How to be more intense and why you should bow to your AI. Overlords the apologies range from really. This is your fault, the engagement survey dropped and I was just being edgy. I'm sorry, you didn't get it, but will it free that Banker from Greenwich Connecticut? And let him say retard and pussy will free him finally? Well, finally, he'll be liberated. Actually what I think it will do is it will allow you to speak to that Banker. Because you will understand his language. And then you could go up and be like, man, that company is such a pussy, right? Am I right my retired, right? Like, when a whole company is a pussy, That's all we got. That's okay, we are free. Oh, we got was way too much. It's a lot, if you like that, come back next week. We're gonna have two more shows next week. I think Cheryl, we're Primacy is on one more break week dad. Well, this week though, where they talked about elon's giant 29 billion dollars, but there's more to come until then, goodbye.