DonkeyCigars

I generally agree but don’t think it’s so obvious there couldn’t have been benefits at the right price. paypal is on a quest to become an all-in-one “super app” like China’s Alipay, so it’s looking to tack on more services, like product discovery, to its current menu. Plus, it’s got money to play with. Thanks to all those orders during the pandemic, PayPal’s stock has more than doubled since January 2020.

There are absolutely lessons to be learned from all this. I think of a piece I read recently on ancient Greeks like Socrates and such and how performative they had to be, and ultimately it's always been showmanship and large platforms (cults of personalities) that activate and amplify messages. Trump is the ultimate personification of a begged question. He will fail forward simply because he is Trump, at this point, and a good 30-35% of America rides with him. "If [Trump] didn't exist, we'd have to invent him."

Paternity leave (for a lot of organizations that pay well and have great benefits, at least, as my experience informs) is paid and for up to 6 months IF you, the father, are a primary caregiver. So for gay dads, one of them can be designated the primary caregiver (Pete B., in this case I'm guessing) which then affords him all the rights and privileges set about in whatever his benefits plan allows. So basically, the term Paternity/Maternity in the leave isn't important, it's more about who is the primary caregiver. And from guy friends who have taken 6 months off at full pay, I can tell you that there is no real investigation into whether the wife/mom isn't also taking time off or they are in fact doing the heavy lifting as the primary caregiver. I would never game the system like that due to ethics but there are those who take advantage of culture like that, believe it or not.

Just goes to show how fall we've fallen (collectively, as a nation). You didn't have F Dubya Bush or F Obama or whatever, even if you didn't like them. Trump has broken the dam of social mores that held back lower-middle class vulgarity. It's unbecoming, but here we are.

In the rich part of town?

At Friday's $94.20 close those restricted shares are worth about $14 million for each fund. Of course they can't realize that value now, and it’s possible that, six months after the merger closes, TMTG won’t have built a social network, everyone will be bored with this as a meme stock, and the price will have collapsed. I would not bet on that though.[3]) Also, I have to say, if I’m Donald Trump right now, I’m thinking about retrading. He sold something like 21% of his company for $293 million.[4] That 21% is now worth something like $3.4 billion.[5] None of that extra value is going to Donald Trump,[6] though of course if he owns the other 79% (who knows?) that’s now worth something like $12 billion. Some will go to the SPAC’s sponsors, and to the hedge funds who dumped the stock last week. Most of it will go to people — WallStreetBets retail investors, hedge-fund opportunists, etc. — who bought the stock shortly after the announcement and then watched it zoom up. To be clear, that value is based on nothing, literally nothing at all; Trump Media & Technology Group’s assets appear to consist of a website and some plagiarized code that isn’t supposed to be live yet. Still Trump seems to have sold $3.4 billion of stock for $293 million and that’s gotta sting. Bloomberg News notes: With the new media company’s valuation dwarfing the $875 million enterprise value agreed to by Trump, he may have been able to negotiate a sweeter deal. Terms of the agreement will need to be more fully disclosed and could still change before an agreement gets voted on by shareholders, an event that is probably months away.

"i want a 4 day work week but that means we have to demand a 3 day work week to get that compromise or else we’ll end up with “you can leave at 4:45 on friday”

I mean, I can see the merit. I read this interesting stat: I could see where if you are the board/shareholders, you are looking at making a big bet and getting some drags off the cigar.

I read that Pinterest was game for this but PayPal board was never bought in and quickly cooled and this was all rumor and won't happen. $45bn is expensive.

Also this is Donald Trump we are talking about. His ego and narcissism is such that as long as Forbes or whomever is having to recognize his huge wealth, it doesn’t matter if he can liquidate it. He’s like Kylie Jenner in that regard, I guess.

Are people really suggesting that this media company isn't a good idea, from a business perspective? Two points: 1) Those who were saying back when he was on twitter, if he would just create his own "twitter" and get all his followers to join because they are sheep; y'all were right. 2) This guy can't lose. He has to be the luckiest guy in the world. He's going to live to be 120 years old and succeed where he should fail at every turn. He's obviously made a Faustian deal with the devil, right?

I thought this was great:

What is that?

I respect and appreciate your honesty, in all matters and at all times, it seems. I might not be an ally to your community on the macro level, but I am on a micro level a troph fan-- rock on out there in the free world.

Yes, now. Just like there was a time being gay or flaming gay or whatever (is that okay to say? Mean to say the gays who don't pass as straight or are obvious and not stealth) was a death sentence, pre-societal acceptance and normalization. Again, DC's fear it seems is that he foresees a time sooner than later that Trans women who are not stealth will leapfrog black folks by virtue of being white (and potentially rich), because at the end of the day, having black skin in America is the worst disability you can have. Being black and poor is the worst thing a person can be in America; that seems to be his fear from what I can tell, at least.

I think this is the heart of it: “Gay people are minorities until they need to be white again.” Because I think the core fear or what makes DC so funny and good is his ability to see ahead and be prescient, I think what he's seeing is that EVEN Trans white people are even going to leapfrog black people in American society sooner than later. You already kinda see it happening with Caitlyn Jenner who is ridiculed and mocked until she starts politically aligning like a typical rich white person, and then doors of acceptance somewhat open.

It’s exhausting being right about obvious things all the time. I’m exhausted.

Donda mostly sucked IMO, but he's not even a musician anymore than he is a billionaire fashion designer. His "red octobers" or whatever the foam yeezys are again the hottest drop and Yeezy's brand is one of the most hot/topical in fashion right now. But nobody can ever take a handful of some of the most beautiful albums from him, so idk. Read this on highsnobiety today for those unfamiliar with the weezy foam runner lore:

I think you missed my point. Not "cancel culture" directed to DC but rather to the NFLX CEO, who I said has come out and apologized for his defense of the special as it pertains to both media and internally with his employees and actions, etc. Again, the point you seemed to miss was, it is much easier to cancel the non-celebrity CEO for optics and hot-button/social/political issues than it is DC, was my point, but for NFLX having a great Q3 earnings report and bounce back growth which insulates him from this latest stir. Regardless, if I'm the Netflix CEO I apologize as he did for the optics and to get over this mess and then advertise my direct influence and impact to bring Squid Game to life even though depending on who you listen to, Squid Game as a sleeper hit and phenom hasn't been factored into the numbers and wasn't part of the Q3 earnings.

Pretty impressive numbers for a show we all generally think was creative and interesting but not amazing and probably a 7/10 or a B-/B+ review:

Yea i just thought it was interesting how two (zillow offers and opendoor) SEEMINGLY similar business motions (iBuying) are actually much different.

Please let this be a normal legislative session With the Friz? NO WAY!

Netflix management is just fine because $$ talks and BS walks and their earnings were good with a growth bounce back Q3 earnings report yesterday. Everyone is happy with management right now except a small group of people.

Netflix CEO is crawdadding a bit and apologizing for how he handled the defense of the Chappelle special, so that's at least something. Whether you think it is good or bad or kowtowing to cancel culture I think depends on which side of the divide you sit.

Opendoor was set up from the very beginning to be good at one thing: accurately evaluating the worth of a home, purchasing it, getting it ready for sale, and selling it. Customer acquisition was outsourced to advertising, which is expensive: Opendoor spent $96.5 million in sales, marketing, and operations last quarter (as compared to $158.8 million in gross profits), an increase of $49.3 million over the year prior; $33.4 million of that increase went towards customer acquisition. It also worked: Opendoor bought around 8,500 homes in the second quarter, more than double the amount that Zillow bought. More importantly, Opendoor, at least according to its public pronouncements this week, isn’t having any trouble turning its houses around, and is eager to buy more. It certainly appears for now that focusing on the core competency of acquiring and selling homes outweighs any advantage that comes from easily acquiring customers.