Sorry Jack, but I'm not sure anymore if I come here for your articles, or for the comments. Both are incredibly educational and entertaining. Best $10 a month I've ever spent.
After what they did to Kyle Rittenhouse, I'll eat dirt out of the ground before I buy "Black Rifle" FUD Boomer coffee. The raw cowardice of being unwilling to associate with a guy who cleaned the streets with... you guessed, a BLACK RIFLE... beggars belief.
They were cowards, but the CEO later admitted they handled it poorly and didn't have all the information before he made his statement. It's still no excuse. Some of their coffee is ok, but too damn expensive for what it is.
!0:1 ratio of comments to likes!! You get your money's worth. Since Jack told Black Rifle to pound sand, is there any other company that needs 40 customers they don't already have?
I never in a million years would have guessed you are into power metal...
As to "a 50’s Tribute Les Paul that’s gotten a couple grand worth of boutique improvements"... I really hope that one bests your Epi or it's gonna be embarassing.
I'd argue there are few genres with more women kicking ass than extreme metal.
Something a little heavier - Myrkur. It's the nom de guerre of Amelie Brun, a Danish atmospheric black metal singer. Truly beautiful voice that alternates between angelic and demonic, often in the same song. This is from her debut album.
In the same vein, Sylvaine, which is the solo project of Swedish extreme metal singer Kathrine Shepherd. I really need to delve into her catalog, because I do love atmospheric black metal. One sample of her work. https://youtu.be/QAj5IS_wrtU?feature=shared
Jinjer, led by Tatiana Shmayluk, blends a variety of genres. "Pisces" has a jazzy feel until about 1:10, when she busts out some guttural singing that guys like Tom Arraya only ever aspire to. another band I'd like to explore further.
SubRosa is now defunct, but it was a remarkable doom metal band from Salt Lake City. Three women - two of them playing violin. Not for those who don't appreciate songs with a slow, almost dirgelike feel that build to a crescendo over the course of seven or more minutes, but amazing if you're into that type of thing. "The Usher" gives a sense of that.
Yeah, that video is compressed to hell. I think the tracks on Bandcamp are of higher quality. Alas, extreme metal as a rule isn't recorded with a lot of dynamic range, which is a shame because the best of it can be meticulously arranged with a lot of dynamics. It all gets lost when they squash it to a DR4 or 5 rating. For that reason, quality headphones are a big help.
Everything is recorded with dynamic range, it is mixed these days to win the loudness wars, and you can't get there without HEAVY compression. In the hands of the pros it is damage limitation, anyone else typically botches it. That first song simply sounds like a bad mix.
Sorry I am speaking out of turn, and the music is really not to my liking, but I may or may not have produced music professionally in the past... so I thought I'd chime in.
you definitely are not speaking out of turn, and I should have said it was mixed / mastered with too much compression. thank you for the clarification.
Jesus Christ, someone else has actually listened to SubRosa? I’d go with Borrowed Time, Borrowed Eyes as an example song, but man were they something else.
Myrkur is great, makes me think of Zola Jesus, but metal.
Zola Jesus! Yes! Nice analogy. Been awhile since I’ve listened to Myrkur, but I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve heard.
I do love doom of the sort SubRosa played and blackened doom of the sort served up by the likes of Dead to a Dying World (more women and strings). I really ought to return to extreme metal, as it’s been a few years since I followed it.
No women, but I highly recommend Panopticon to anyone into innovative black metal. Austin Lunn is a crazily talented multi-instrumentalist. “Kentucky” remains a favorite - it’s about the impact of coal mining on his home state. It incorporates bluegrass, roots music, and historic spoken word into something remarkable and unlike most black metal.
I was just listening the most recent Myrkur album the other day, and then had to go back and listen to the album Taiga, which is an underrated banger that I hadn't heard in years.
I like some doom or doom adjacent, but I'm finicky on it. I love Pallbearer, and I want to like Ahab, but the latter is just too slow.
Panopticon? Now you're really speaking my language. Panopticon has to be one of my favorite bands, metal or not. The combination of acoustic bluegrass on the same album or sometimes in the same song as pounding black metal is jarring at first (and a lot of fun to have people unfamiliar with it listen to), but ends up melding together shockingly well. And then you get stuff like Scars Pt. II which is all acoustic americana. The album that got me into them is Autumn Eternal, and although I love Kentucky, Roads to the North might be my beginning to end favorite.
I was lucky enough to see them play a rare live show this past fall at a (not very good) brewery in Mechanicsburg, PA, with Nechochwen and a bunch of even more obscure bands, and I can report they put on a good show, and that the touring violin player who was also working the merch table is a really nice guy. Would recommend.
I've heard a lot of good things about Pallbearer but for some reason haven't checked them out. Any recommendations on where to start?
I'll go back through Myrkur's catalog - it's been awhile since I've listened to her, and about as long since I've listened to any Panopticon beyond Kentucky. Really ought to give Roads to the North a closer listen; I think I've been so enamored of Kentucky that I haven't given anything else a fair shot. I just keep going back to Kentucky when I'm in the mood for Panopticon.
Doom-adjacent. Two bands you might like: Solstafir and King Goat.
Solstafir is Icelandic and the lyrics are all in Icelandic, but I just think of it as another instrument as opposed to words to understand. The album Otta is fantastic. Sample track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8n8Uy5KmvU
King Goat is a British doom band with some prog tendencies. Haven't heard anything from them I didn't like, but might as well start with the self-titled debut if you're new. It was on a bunch of 10-best lists at the end of the year it came out. I played this song on a loop for days on end:
And for something completely different in metal: Fair to Midland. I am evangelical about these guys. Very hard to describe - very melodic but hard, with killer riffs and a lot of fun wordplay in the vocals. They're usually labelled "alt metal," whatever that means. They've got a wild story, too - they started in Sulphur Springs, Texas in 1998 and migrated to the Deep Ellum music scene of Dallas and slogged it out playing clubs and self-publishing and EPs and two albums. Built a loyal following, won a few awards in the local alternative press, then got discovered by Serj Tarkanian of System of a Down. Serj signs them to his label, they release the absolutely brilliant "Fables from A Mayfly: What I tell You Three Times Is True" in 2007. That gets them a bigger audience and they start playing gigs like Coachella and opening for bands like Rage Against the Machine and Queens of the Stone Age. They split with Serj, record Arrows & Anchors in 2011, embark on another successful tour, then announce plans for their next album. And then...
Nothing. The band vanished. No goodbye, no announcement, just gone. All their social media went dark in 2013. The word is the band was broke and deeply in debt. A photo purportedly showing vocalist Darroh Sudderth playing bass in a wedding gig surfaced a few years ago, and there's since been word that he's a music teacher working with kids. So far as I know, none of the guys in the band ever played professionally again.
I learned of the band maybe six years ago reading the comments thread of a review over at Angry Metal Guy that mentioned Fair to Midland in passing. A commenter mentioned still needing "a trigger warning" before reading anything about the band b/c he was so big a fan. That started a thread about how great the band was. Curious, I went to Youtube, and was hooked the moment I heard "Musical Chairs":
Their live shows were absolutely insane - the energy and intensity that they put into performance, especially Darroh, is dizzying. Live at the Machine Shop in 2011:
I always felt their stuff was the closest to "grunge" for a chick led band. It seems like most either fall into the rock/pop sound, or more just into the straight rock/ballad stuff (Lzzy Hale).
I really like their song "Only Love Can Save Me Now." They feature Soundgarden's drummer and guitarist and a lot of it is written in a very grunge-y 7/4 time signature.
Most of the chick bands I listen to are Japanese. I like hard rock more than metal, so BAND-MAID is my favorite of that bunch. For a more alternative sound I love Tokyo Jihen and the singer, Shiina Ringo, has an incredibly interesting and eclectic solo career spanning back to the 90s.
I've heard great things about Courtney, and usually from people who speak highly of the likes of Mykur. Will definitely check out Spiritbox. Thank you!
I am genuinely, and pleasantly, surprised by the knowledgable discussion of extreme metal - and some relatively obscure bands at that.
I can't stomach power or symphonic metal, as I can't listen to it without stifling giggles. It sounds to me like really earnest hair metal (and I do love me some old-school hair metal). Although a band like Dragonforce or Unleash the Archers does nothing for me, I respect the musicianship (Herman Li definitely knows his way around a fretboard) and won't fault anyone for their taste.
Never had an interaction with a woman who wasn't a stripper? I assume then he is a big fan of Whitesnake?
I'd have to disagree with your assessment of the NFL. While the whole taylor swift thing is certainly annoying, nothing about it is "last gasp." The NFL is more popular that ever, both from my personal experience and objectively by viewership. It is leagues ahead of every other professional sport in America. Maybe the enlightened comment board feels differently but I doubt that we are an appropriate sample of America either. That doesn't mean F1 won't grow or catch hold, I don't think it will be at the expense of the NFL though,.
"The NFL is more popular that ever, both from my personal experience and objectively by viewership."
Everything I can access suggests that this is true by absolute numbers but not true by percentage; yes, more people are watching the NFL, but not at the rate that America is expanding. It's also an aging demographic. Young people who are likely to make money from a demographic perspective don't care about the NFL; it doesn't represent what they look like or who they are.
Let's see how the sport does when all the Boomers clock out and the 55-year-old white men who make up much of the viewership today don't have the money or interest to watch any more. It's a hideously expensive sport to operate compared to basketball. The Packers reported $420 million in expenses against revenue of $454M. That feels thin to me.
All I now is I paid $275 dollars a seat for to see the Dolphins beat the Steelers in 2022. And the beer was $13 a can. How the fuck they fill those stadiums at those prices is beyond me.
Go watch a NHL hockey game, in Canada. That is way more exciting, the prices for regular seasons aren’t bad and the (at least in Vancouver and Edmonton), the drinks are reasonable.
Way more fun than any other stick/ball game I’ve been too.
Was in Edmonton last month for a game and those fans are RABID! So much energy in the stadium.
As a Canadian, I'm in the minority that really couldn't give a shit. The act of paying money to go to a crowded stadium to overpay for beer to stupid rich assholes that will never know my name infuriates me. I feel the same way about F1, NFL, the Kentucky Derby, FIFA or whatever. It does nothing for me, and obviously makes water cooler talk hard.
My 22 year old son is more into it than I (55 yo white man) am, as are all his friends. Part of it is he has the time, so he is also interested in Premier League Soccer, F1, college basketball, etc. It is a way for he and his friends to have a common bond for conversations as their lives after college change and grow in different ways with different interests, careers, and locations around the country. It also starts conversations with my son and many other parent/child relationships that I see.
I see that value of sports continuing throughout generations as long as the leagues pull back from the political bullshit that has been prevalent since 2020 which Seems to be starting to happen. It is a common language that spans generations.
My coworkers and some strange cousins of mine were all excited about whatever soccer match it was where the US played England. It ended in a 0-0 tie. I don't watch sports anyway, but a 0-0 tie? BORING, and I fucking hate the fact that I know the final score to that game.
Never understood the allure of soccer either. No knock on the athletes, they're obviously extremely talented and well conditioned. But the matches themselves are like watching paint dry
To the extent that I can mute the politics, to include the military recruiting flyovers and whatnot at the NFL games I enjoy the various sports as a way to avoid thinking about WWIII. One thing I absolutely loathe though is the sudden and complete pervasiveness of gambling. As if we were not all well aware that we are in a handbasket, surely that must be one of the harbingers of the fall.
I'm not sure where you get the information that younger viewers aren't interested. From what I could find, 25-34 is still the age group with the most viewership. And personally, as a "young person likely to make money" with social circles that are the same, the most common sport watched is by far the NFL.
But even within those verticals, there is even more choice.
If you and I are on a screen all day, it’s likely that our content experience were entirely different. Forty years ago it was a handful of channels, Readers Digest, the library, or your imagination.
Agreed. Packers are a very famous and successful franchise but still small market. It's like looking at the Royals and saying you don't see much money in baseball.
IDK. Ten years ago, I'd come into work on Monday and everyone would be talking about whatever game played over the weekend. I was never interested in sports watching (I played a little in school, but not enough to care to watch others play). So it was especially annoying to have to listen to it for most of Monday morning.
Now? Not a single discussion. Not one. No one talks football or baseball. About the only thing you'll hear is if someone's kid is playing in a high school game, otherwise nothing.
Anecdotally, most of the grown men I know no longer care about sportsball stuff outside of the occasional college game.
Rejecting Andretti F1 is so apropos for the piece of shit management of F1. They just do their best to throw the entire sport away. I can’t even continue my rant because it’s not worth getting angry over a poor decision in F1. If I got mad every time they made a poor decision I’d have died of cardiac arrest by now.
Why do most top echelon Motorsport series suck now? I’ve been getting way more into off-roading (Dakar, Baja, KOH) and it’s been a breath of fresh air.
I may walk away from F1. My F1 TV runs out mid season. It's not even because "Andretti". F1 didn't like the idea that Caddy couldn't hit the ground running and Andretti would probably have to take the Renault for 2025 and a couple of years after. No fucking shit. Really? F1 ran the clock out on purpose and then blames Andretti for not having everything in place. I guess Andretti was supposed to have everything and I mean everything in place and Caddy a working new reg engine today and an existing reg engine for next year.
Lucy and the football. Same crap happens in 2028.
So, what do you think of all the new blood in the driver lineup this year? </sarc>
F1 doesn't want GM involved. Looking at what GM does everywhere else, which is either embarrass themselves or act like tyrants (cf. IMSA, NASCAR), can you blame them?
Fair, but at the moment this is a very bad look for F1. The blowback on Twitter has been a sight to behold (not necessarily a representative sample of F1 fans I grant you).
Well, Michael has form there. I do think it sends a mixed message though. “We’ll give America three races to relieve Americans of their money, but we won’t let them have a team to root for”.
"USA!!!!! USA!!!!! USA!!!!" is for chumps when it comes to "Sports" that are businesses. The Olympics is a business that preys on people's patriotism (whatever the country) in order to make a buck/ruble/yen/euro...
But it's not all bad. The USA has Haas and Williams (a team owned by a US outfit). And that great American hope Sargeant. "Make us proud!!!!!"
I see nothing wrong with having another USA player potentially embarrassing themselves.
Where was Andretti going to hire the 1,000+ people they would need to staff an F1 team? The labor force is in the UK, near Oxford, where 7/10 teams are headquartered or have significant facilities.
How was Andretti going to get them to move to the UK and pay them competitive wages in the US within the budget cap?
Where was the factory that Andretti was going to use to build the car? The windtunnel? The driver-in-loop simulator?
What kind of F1 Driver Academy does Andretti have?
What would be worse for F1 (and Andretti) - no entry or getting lapped (potentially twice) in a race by the existing backmarkers?
Feb 1·edited Feb 1Liked by Sherman McCoy, Jack Baruth
Yep all of this. Even Ferrari F1 cars were designed and built in the UK for a few years, at the Guildford Technical Office because John Barnard wouldn’t relocate to Italy. Obviously the US has the technical ability, but the experience and personnel are another matter entirely. It would be like Williams building a NASCAR. Could they do it? In theory, of course they could. But could they really operate a competitive team without being in the south?
NASA crashed a Mars orbiter (burned up in the Martian atmosphere) in the late 90s because of a metric vs imperial mistake. That feels like a slightly bigger boo-boo than McLaren's, although it was only a $125 million probe so maybe McLaren's was the bigger mistake...
I remember reading about that after the fact. As I recall, the McLaren team was getting data from, of all people, the *Andretti* team as to suspension settings, and botched the metric/imperial conversion, such that Alonso, who'd qualified in the top third the year before, failed to even make the grid.
The very same Andretti team run by Michael Andretti who failed spectacularly in F1, whose teams have fared poorly in the spec series that is Indycar, but whose team DID beat the Porsche factory boys in Formula E last year.
Ok. Then who? There was more than one applicant. They made the initial cut. The others were found more wanting. Does this mean that only large corporations in the business that rubs shoulders with F1 already has any chance of getting in? Audi is buying their way in.
What does Stake, Williams and Haas bring to the table currently, other than existing?
VCARB maybe should be in that club. Someone is going to be last. Why not a new team? I already said that "Andretti" because it's "Andretti" isn't my reason for thinking their decision is ridiculous. Also, dragging things out so far that there's very little chance to gather the resources, ON PURPOSE, is slimy.
I guess having all those missing components and still sucking is different somehow.
The cars are so complex, so sophisticated, there is so much domain expertise now that it’s a closed shop in a de facto sense as much as a de jure sense. Do you remember when Toyota showed up with a blank check and spent billions of dollars and never won a race? Imagine how much harder it is now.
Audi is BUYING a team. Andretti TRIED to buy that team and FAILED. They have had EVERY opportunity to get into the sport, but not in the way they wanted to. Now they’ll be watching it on TV.
Stake, WIlliams, Haas, VCARB, etc. are already in the sport goes the argument. So they are effectively grandfathered.
I'd suggest that motorsport has always provided more bad viewing than good. The "purest" seasons and sanctions have massive gaps in performance, exacerbated nowadays by the fact that everything is more reliable than it was in 1990. The "managed" series are too obviously managed.
As far as Andretti in F1, I wonder how much of it was justified concern about the team EVER being able to qualify well. People don't understand what a massive and professional shop Williams is, or CashApp Street Trash RB Visa BullCucks, compared to even Audi's golden era prototype teams. I can't imagine Andretti would have done much better than Minardi for YEARS.
People like to point and laugh at the stragglers, but they are … about 1% off of the best car ever made, driven by the best driver ever, designed by the greatest designer ever, operated by the most crisp, polished team ever. And they do so with fewer resources and other structural disadvantages (like being in Hinwil, Switzerland where wages are much higher).
The Williams of today would probably crush the elite, dynastic teams of the past like McLaren Honda in the 80s, Ferrari in the 00s, and even Red Bull in the Vettel pomp.
That’s the thing about F1 - all of the teams are elite and moving forward as quickly as possible.
James Vowles made a podcast appearance this week in which he said he basically had no life at all outside of F1 for years and years, to the detriment of everything else.
I am by no means an automotive expert, nor do I profess to know anything about the industry as a whole, but I did follow the first-gen Volt's development closely for the online arm of a tech magazine. I thought the series hybrid design was very smart, and to my mind (and limited expertise with automotive engineering), the car was a technological marvel. The drivetrain worked seamlessly, and delivered everything GM promised.
The car was meant to be a halo - Bob Lutz personally championed it, and wanted to show the world that Toyota did not have a lock on technological innovation. To that end, I think it was a great car - and light years ahead of the Leaf, which was Nissan's attempt to make the same point.
I'll confess to having lost a lot of this knowledge to time, but didn't the engine drive the car only in very specific circumstances, and not as often as, say, the Prius?
It was indeed a money loser. If I recall correctly, so too was the Prius until the second generation, and then Toyota was just over breaking even for several more years. I'm not suggesting the Volt would have been the next Prius, but I do wonder what its trajectory might have been had GM stuck with it.
RE: the CEO question, I think it’s as simple as the skills required to get promoted to the executive level (or for that matter, to succeed in politics) are not the same as the ones required to make successful decisions.
An alarming number of senior promotions seem to be about how well you can BS the company line or about how well you can communicate/shake hands/play golf, vs any track record of being successful at a lower level. Not exactly the Peter principle, but not *not* it, either.
Lots of carpetbaggers/sociopaths get hired in management positions. People look at the large resume and think— wow, look at all that great experience! What they should wonder is why they can’t hold a job. Then it becomes apparent.
Don’t forget D&I. I always figured Barra was in that category. Hell of a price to pay for being stylish.
CEOs are politicians. Rising through an enormous corporation is a special kind of skill for sociopath/psychopath/lizard people types.
One thing I noticed is how focused they are on their boss, and the relationship they have with them. They are generally neglecting their relationships with their subordinates for this.
I am reminded of something Tom Kratman wrote (or quoted).
“People are either active or lazy, smart or stupid. The smart and lazy are good commanders, the smart and active are good staff, the stupid and lazy are good subordinates, and the stupid and active should be shot for the betterment of the species.”
-I have it on good authority that a further 3 of the top 100 were college football games (semifinals and championship)
-Football is the only thing keeping the cable bundle and ESPN alive, obviously. The much-maligned move by Comcast / NBCU to put a playoff game exclusively on Peacock was rather canny. For the $110MM outlay they paid the NFL, they received over 20MM viewers. Peacock costs $5.99 to $11.99 per month dependent on the plan; there are some bundles and subsidies available for certain customers. Some of those viewers were existing happy Peacock customers; some churned immediately after the game; some will churn in the future or have simply forgotten to cancel; others will be happy Peacock customers going forward. Every single one of them now has the app downloaded and an active card on file, however.
-The biggest “sports” media news this year is the Netflix-WWE deal. For $5BN (!) over a decade, Netflix has a rabid fanbase that has new, live content to watch each week of the year. This should strike mortal fear in the heart of anyone who works anywhere else in sports media.
-Finally, the NFL did $18.6BN of revenue for ‘22 and has very ambitious future growth targets. Liberty’s F1 figures are a pittance in comparison, despite the face that each and every F1 race draws a typical audience of ~73MM global viewers versus ~55MM (in the US) for a conference championship game this past weekend. So each F1 race has an audience only exceeded by the Super Bowl but F1 fails to capitalize to the degree the NFL does.
You’d be interested to talk to a guy I deal with on occasion in WV. Brokered the NASCAR syndication deal in the 90s, made a small mountain of money, came back and plays politics as a “Citizen Volunteer” for Gov. Justice. Has a lot of interesting stories about sports broadcasting from the business/banking perspective. He’s really the Governor’s Chief of Staff, but if he had a real government gig he’d have to give up a bunch of lucrative board seats.
I think he stills owns some newspapers and TV stations, at least as a majority shareholder in an investment group. He’s also been shoring up Justice’s personal finances with some 10M loans lately.
So the biggest news is about a sport that's not a sport. People care more about being entertained with fake drama because real drama often contains no drama at all. Why would real sports, or major auto racing for that matter, feel the need to maintain purity when fans demand to be entertained? Will we know when it's kayfabe? Will we care?
Drive to Survive is compelling to diehard traditionalists fans who watch every single race (as I have done since I was a child) AND to people who know nothing about the sport.
I am not gatekeeping; more fans, particularly women and young people, is better for F1.
Longtime F1 fan and I love D2S. It’s a great recap of the preceding season released a couple of weeks before the new season, and IMO is well done. Can’t stand Will Buxton, though….
What gets me, I just realized, is that probably the same people bitching to high heaven about the cost of cable, and who cut the cord, now are probably paying just as much if not more for the same type of stuff with all the streaming garbage!
You used to see WWF for FREE on Sunday afternoons on the 2nd-tier UHF channels in most TV markets. You mean to tell me that you’ll no longer be able to see any of that “wrestling” without a(mother) monthly charge on your credit card?!
Do I hear violin music while I’m watching stuff burning?!
Nah, the NFL is fine and healthy. But, I never watch it and could care less about it. Actually, that's not quite true. I'm kind of embarassed what professional team sports says about us as human beings, observing my friends and others go on about it. Dressing up in team jerseys the day of the "big game". For what it's worth, I'm fine with the comradery and good natured fun that goes with it. However, much of it is just a slice of tribalism. "My city/state is better than yours". Some people's ego is so tied up in their team's performance that their entire psyche goes up and down as does the team's record during the season. I've also observed regular hate and vitriol directed at opposing teams with which "our" team has a bad history with. The funny thing is, some members of the team are simply mercenaries, going to where the money is (as they should), and perhaps share absolutely no values with the local public that idolizes them. As someone disinterested in stick and ball sports, standing back and looking at it objectively, it just seems silly that so much money, cultural interest, and demagoguery is involved on things that mean so very little in the grand scheme of things. However, I recognize that I'm an outlier with this point of view. Rant/observation over.
I could go on about grown men who simp for sports zillionaires, but it's not worth doing and some people would take it as a personal attack, even when it isn't.
The only time I'll wear another man's name on my clothing is if that name is Richard Anderson -- and his name only appears on the daily-driver off-the-rack stuff, my bespoke has no name on it but mine.
My ex got me a Red Wings practice jersey because I didn't want to wear the game jerseys that everyone else had.
A few years ago I noticed that there was a guy named John Schreiber (no relation) who was from the Detroit area and drafted in like the 15th round by the Tigers after bouncing around small college baseball. He had really good stats and I decide, since it isn't a common surname, that if he made it to the Tigers I'd get an official jersey. A combination of great minor league stats and the Tigers being terrible meant he got called up in September. He hung around for a while, then got waived. Boston picked him up and in the Red Sox farm system he worked on his mechanics and now he's a stalwart of their bullpen with great stats.
Well, us poor Europeans have to wear stuff with other men's names on it. My shirts and jackets tend to have names of Charles Tyrwhitt or Thomas Mayes Lewin on them :))
Actually, Lewin did not survive the Covid, but its operations here have been taken over by "Anthony's London", founded by some former TM Lewin manager – they have some of their own stuff and also resell CT stuff and some remnants of TML stuff.
However, I just checked my shirts, jackets and a suit and most of them are from China/India/Vietnam, except for one Anthony's from Northern Macedonia. I'm afraid that the only European made stuff I have (besides that one shirt) are the shoes, as some higher model lines from Loake are still made in England.
When I started buying Tyrwhitt they were UK made. They then moved to Croatia, I believe. Guess they went ahead and followed the rabbit hole all the way down.
Yeah, even most of Czech companies in this business went to China. It's just hard to compete any other way. There's one I forgot in the previous comment, called Vasky, which makes shoes in Zlín, the home of famous Baťa shoemaking company (one of the most successful businesses in Czechoslovakia before WW2 – Tomáš Baťa was basically our Henry Ford). But for clothes, anything that's not bespoke is hard to make here anymore – it's just too expensive and, what's worse, there is no workforce.
There are small companies making really high-level stuff, but even those are having hard time expanding, because no one wants to do this stuff, unless they are HANDSOMELY paid. I know guys who will make you a suit, a pair of shoes or a traveller's bag. Fantastic quality, first-grade materials. But a pair of shoes will cost you a thousand bucks. A good bag probably the same.
And the problem of those guys is they can't find people to expand the business. It's not that they offer you a pair of shoes for the half of average monthly wage in CZ and they have to have salesmen. They don't give a fuck about sales, because they're booked for next two years.
A fairly good solution is a company we buy our bags from, called Bagind. They hire guys in India – not factories, but guys. They have their photos on the walls of their showroom, their names on their website and so on. And you know that when you buy the bag, you are not giving money to some coporation giving most of it to CEO and a little portion to a sweatshop, but giving some to a Czech guy who sells you the bag and some to Indian guy called Deepesh who will probably buy a home for his family, a car and food and shit.
I do enjoy watching the local nfl team, but with much less enthusiasm than in my 20s. I have some clothes with team logos, but I can't remember ever owning a named shirt. Even as I child, I thought wearing someone else's name was strange and uncomfortable.
You might have simply had a stronger sense of self-image than most -- when you dreamed as a child, you dreamed of being on the team yourself, not of "being" Joe Montana or Michael Jordan.
I actually watched playoff football this year. 5, maybe 10 minutes of it, but I did see it. I'd have watched a Bills vs. Lions super bowl beginning to end, too. But neither team made it and I don't care again.
They should have taken the points on one of those 4th down plays, the defense could have made a stop, the 49ers got a very lucky bounce, and the Lions still ended up beating the spread.
One reason why people play and watch sports is to learn how to deal with failure and disappointment.
I'll also point out that it took years for the Pistons to get past the Celtics in the East. The same with the Red Wings getting to the Stanley Cup.
The Lions should be fairly intact for the next few years. They managed to keep their offensive and defensive coordinators and have a relatively young team. Yeah, they'll have a tougher schedule next year but I have no reason to think that Holmes won't be able to keep them a playoff contender for a while.
While I think its fine that you aren't interested in it, tribalism is inherent to humanity so I don't think it is embarrassing (within reasonable limits). Having common interests and groups is a core part of the human experience.
It would seem to me, that boardrooms across the country are married to ESG and DEI, and any pretense of doing what is right for the companies and their customers is optical at best, it’s like the ceo’s are being paid to run it into the ground.
If someone is neither a relative nor a friend, then all they want from you is your money, or for you to be a foot soldier in the march to their paradise, or both.
Hi Jack, unfortunately you have the same misunderstanding about Mary Barra that I had to unlearn the hard way. It's this: at Fortune 1000 companies what's good for the company has no relationship to what's good for the executives. I was once at a meeting where it became a running joke that every operating unit head had just flown in from their villa in Tuscany. Then the assembled group voted to lay off 1,000 staffers to get everyone's stock options above water. Lot's of talk about the stock price, and how to move it. Zero talk about why we'd hired 1,000 people we didn't need, or, conversely, what we were going to do without 1,000 people we did need.
The iron law of management is you get more of what you measure and reward. Executives are measured and rewarded based on stock price and government incentives such as tax breaks.
You have to know the rules before you can understand which players are performing.
I was responsible for Beatrice Foods budgeting and SEC reporting in the mid-80’s so I had a first hand view of the whole Beatrice/Esmark/KKR dick measuring debacle. The outright greed, pettiness, and real disregard for shareholder value was sickening to witness and put me off pursuing any corporate career track forever.
"It's this: at Fortune 1000 companies what's good for the company has no relationship to what's good for the executives"
Oh, I agree for the most part -- but that can't explain ALL of it, can it? General Motors isn't a tech company. They don't operate on the "bigger fool" theory that drives dot-coms and startups. At the core of it they have to keep people employed lest they be wiped out by government fiat -- and that involves, however peripherally, satisfying the market. They're not Pets.com.
It explains pretty much all of it, IMHO. That's why I specified it was at an old-school Fortune 1000 company. At a certain point they are so big that they think they can ignore the market, and focus on lobbying the government and such. Then the market leaves them, and the two big to fail companies go ahead and fail anyway. Remember the original AT&T? Compaq? DEC?
My old company was worth multiple billions. It's all gone now...
I’ve long held the belief that all car companies took one look at people buying new $1000+ smartphones every year or two, and thought: “How can *we* get in on some of that action?”
Small turbo engines that readily blow up? Check.
Lots of on-board tech that obsoletes “overnight”, and/or is prohibitively expensive to repair? Check.
I think you're spot on -- but most people feel comfortable making a $50-60 monthly payment on a $1000 Apple iPhone that lasts two years. When you multiply that by thirty or forty, the situation changes.
Thankfully I’m blessed to be able to put down the whole enchilada and pay for it at the next CC statement, every three years.
I can’t imagine making monthly payments on a phone, much less a plan with interest!
I’m sure there’s a good chunk of the populace that would sign their children away at the dealer in their haste to get home and show off their new GigrundoHoeBurbanSlade, and then can’t for the life of them figure out why they just watched their most prized possession get taken away on the back of a hook eight months later!
I think it's interesting that a Judge decided that, a board who's sole purpose is to keep stock prices up, paid Elon Musk too much money, even though he met the metrics to receive such money. I wonder if this will ever happen to the likes of Bara, or nah?
I think it is perfectly fine for the judge to do this, as long as he also buys with his own money at face value all the worthless stock from failed startups. Have to treat the winners and losers the same way, no?
As far as I can tell this is absolutely true in HCA. There is a remarkable amount of ‘penny wise, pound foolish’ or even outright chaotic operational decision making, especially regarding staffing levels, that is only rational in the context of quarterly share price optimization.
I mentioned this to a previous local hospital COO with a weakness for being occasionally honest, and he confirmed it, letting it slip that his comp was based as much on the corporate share price than the performance of the hospital he was running.
As an employed MD I have the option for a modest discount on HCA shares. I’ll never buy any.
interesting, I'm curious what would be the best way to incentivize executives then, since that will obviously be more important than a altruistic mindset
There isn't a silver bullet, alas. It's inherent to the situation. No matter what controls are put in place, the executives are there working on them every day, and you are not. It's instructive to remember that this setup -- tying executive compensation to the stock performance -- was a reform of the old system where executives had no skin in the game and got paid cash. Giving them stock options supposedly tied their compensation directly to the market performance of the company, putting them in the same boat with shareholders. Of course execs everywhere then began developing ways to game the option system, as I described above.
Re: Frozen Crown. Bit stodgy I thought, and this kind of symphonic metal could be any one of a hundred European bands doing this stuff, at least this one doesn’t have the stereotypical ‘big guy with a beard’ shouting fill in vocals. In my limited opinion Within Temptation are the best at this sort of thing (I’ve seen them live a few times, and my god Sharon Van Adel can SING).
Ms Etro has been added to my Future Wives list though. As one of my old bosses used to say when someone caught his eye “that’s very me”.
I have this great picture of what I can only assume to be safety precautions taken by some concerned citizen, consisting of a mattress thoughfully wrapped around a phone booth.
I'm a casual motorsports fan these days, and I enjoyed what I did watch of the Daytona 24. A large reason for this was the world feed broadcast which I watched. I found the story that the Audi TCR driver told on the world feed about having to procure an ECU from a wrecked Seat TCR car in Mexico far more compelling than the human interest junk that NBC peddled. https://audiclubna.org/unitronic-rs3-makes-hail-mary-recovery-for-tcr-win-at-daytona/
Assorted thoughts on the actual racing: I thought it was a shame that the Cadillac ran out of time and luck with traffic at the end. The Corvette GT3 effort seems like it's got a long ways to go.
GM’s former “Chief Economist,” now at Harvard, came to my hometown to sell our local Chamber of Commerce on EVs yesterday. Wasn’t much of a receptive audience, though the fact that she’s a WV 9 helped her avoid getting the dinner rolls lobbed at her.
It was a group of 50% contractors or owners of similarly blue collar businesses. Average age of probably 65. Absolutely nobody bought it; even the wealthy excavator (had some exclusive Walmart contract, owns an SLR McLaren, a Veyron and three Ford GTs [two ‘05 models and one new]) who dailies a Tesla Model X thought it was stupid.
I’m not a chamber member (allegedly there are networking opportunities, but I see the same crowd at work events and the rest are pretty insignificant), but if I were I’d be calling for the ouster of whoever thought paying her for that speech was a good idea.
She had a few very pointed questions. Deflected them moderately well; if she didn’t look like a soccer MILF and instead looked like me, I imagine the whole “sell your truck; buy an EV” pitch could’ve gone much worse.
Sorry Jack, but I'm not sure anymore if I come here for your articles, or for the comments. Both are incredibly educational and entertaining. Best $10 a month I've ever spent.
Sir, you can come here for the banner ads*, as long as I get your money!
* there are no banner ads**
** but there could be***
*** if I could figure it out
Who would be brave enough to buy the space? All Black Rifle Coffee all the time?
God, I hope not. All the various gun coffee companies are aggressively lame
I am just glad I live in a world where I have my choice of political messages from my gun coffee companies.
After what they did to Kyle Rittenhouse, I'll eat dirt out of the ground before I buy "Black Rifle" FUD Boomer coffee. The raw cowardice of being unwilling to associate with a guy who cleaned the streets with... you guessed, a BLACK RIFLE... beggars belief.
Is that why he wanted to destroy his AR?
Cause the proper thing to do would be to come back next riot with more ammo.
^^^100%^^^
They were cowards, but the CEO later admitted they handled it poorly and didn't have all the information before he made his statement. It's still no excuse. Some of their coffee is ok, but too damn expensive for what it is.
That’s why I cancelled my subscription.
PRS Guitars and Radical race cars. And maybe Hoosier?
We could all use some deals on "My Pillow" products too!
Black rifle is not above board. Run by grifters.
DissidentSoaps.com
Thank you for not bombarding us with banner ads, here's hoping you never figure out how to add them.
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I'm here for the articles because Jack has thought though both sides of the argument. Comments, including Jack's, tend to be off the cuff.
After reading the comments, I often have to go back and read the article again to clear my head!
!0:1 ratio of comments to likes!! You get your money's worth. Since Jack told Black Rifle to pound sand, is there any other company that needs 40 customers they don't already have?
I never in a million years would have guessed you are into power metal...
As to "a 50’s Tribute Les Paul that’s gotten a couple grand worth of boutique improvements"... I really hope that one bests your Epi or it's gonna be embarassing.
I found them by mistyping my daily search engine inquiry:
"dutch and swedish women naked"
but somehow it auto-corrected to whatever brought me there!
Actually, I found them while reading about modern prog rock.
As for that Tribute... it's certainly seen some changes in its life, hasn't it?
I'd argue there are few genres with more women kicking ass than extreme metal.
Something a little heavier - Myrkur. It's the nom de guerre of Amelie Brun, a Danish atmospheric black metal singer. Truly beautiful voice that alternates between angelic and demonic, often in the same song. This is from her debut album.
https://youtu.be/LaX-xAhTIcY?feature=shared
In the same vein, Sylvaine, which is the solo project of Swedish extreme metal singer Kathrine Shepherd. I really need to delve into her catalog, because I do love atmospheric black metal. One sample of her work. https://youtu.be/QAj5IS_wrtU?feature=shared
Jinjer, led by Tatiana Shmayluk, blends a variety of genres. "Pisces" has a jazzy feel until about 1:10, when she busts out some guttural singing that guys like Tom Arraya only ever aspire to. another band I'd like to explore further.
https://youtu.be/SQNtGoM3FVU?feature=shared
SubRosa is now defunct, but it was a remarkable doom metal band from Salt Lake City. Three women - two of them playing violin. Not for those who don't appreciate songs with a slow, almost dirgelike feel that build to a crescendo over the course of seven or more minutes, but amazing if you're into that type of thing. "The Usher" gives a sense of that.
https://youtu.be/mA1zBs3vIMI?feature=shared
Yeah, that Tribute has seen some changes...
First one is too compressed-sounding for me but the talent is obvious.
Second one feels like it owes as much to Cocteau Twins as to any metal band; recommended.
Third one, the bass player should be beaten in public for tapping. Why does that pretty girl want to sing like that?
Fourth one I'll give a full audit when I'm on the road later this week. The concept is interesting -- and yeah, it's a bit draggy to start.
Yeah, that video is compressed to hell. I think the tracks on Bandcamp are of higher quality. Alas, extreme metal as a rule isn't recorded with a lot of dynamic range, which is a shame because the best of it can be meticulously arranged with a lot of dynamics. It all gets lost when they squash it to a DR4 or 5 rating. For that reason, quality headphones are a big help.
Everything is recorded with dynamic range, it is mixed these days to win the loudness wars, and you can't get there without HEAVY compression. In the hands of the pros it is damage limitation, anyone else typically botches it. That first song simply sounds like a bad mix.
Sorry I am speaking out of turn, and the music is really not to my liking, but I may or may not have produced music professionally in the past... so I thought I'd chime in.
you definitely are not speaking out of turn, and I should have said it was mixed / mastered with too much compression. thank you for the clarification.
Jesus Christ, someone else has actually listened to SubRosa? I’d go with Borrowed Time, Borrowed Eyes as an example song, but man were they something else.
Myrkur is great, makes me think of Zola Jesus, but metal.
Zola Jesus! Yes! Nice analogy. Been awhile since I’ve listened to Myrkur, but I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve heard.
I do love doom of the sort SubRosa played and blackened doom of the sort served up by the likes of Dead to a Dying World (more women and strings). I really ought to return to extreme metal, as it’s been a few years since I followed it.
No women, but I highly recommend Panopticon to anyone into innovative black metal. Austin Lunn is a crazily talented multi-instrumentalist. “Kentucky” remains a favorite - it’s about the impact of coal mining on his home state. It incorporates bluegrass, roots music, and historic spoken word into something remarkable and unlike most black metal.
I was just listening the most recent Myrkur album the other day, and then had to go back and listen to the album Taiga, which is an underrated banger that I hadn't heard in years.
I like some doom or doom adjacent, but I'm finicky on it. I love Pallbearer, and I want to like Ahab, but the latter is just too slow.
Panopticon? Now you're really speaking my language. Panopticon has to be one of my favorite bands, metal or not. The combination of acoustic bluegrass on the same album or sometimes in the same song as pounding black metal is jarring at first (and a lot of fun to have people unfamiliar with it listen to), but ends up melding together shockingly well. And then you get stuff like Scars Pt. II which is all acoustic americana. The album that got me into them is Autumn Eternal, and although I love Kentucky, Roads to the North might be my beginning to end favorite.
I was lucky enough to see them play a rare live show this past fall at a (not very good) brewery in Mechanicsburg, PA, with Nechochwen and a bunch of even more obscure bands, and I can report they put on a good show, and that the touring violin player who was also working the merch table is a really nice guy. Would recommend.
I've heard a lot of good things about Pallbearer but for some reason haven't checked them out. Any recommendations on where to start?
I'll go back through Myrkur's catalog - it's been awhile since I've listened to her, and about as long since I've listened to any Panopticon beyond Kentucky. Really ought to give Roads to the North a closer listen; I think I've been so enamored of Kentucky that I haven't given anything else a fair shot. I just keep going back to Kentucky when I'm in the mood for Panopticon.
Doom-adjacent. Two bands you might like: Solstafir and King Goat.
Solstafir is Icelandic and the lyrics are all in Icelandic, but I just think of it as another instrument as opposed to words to understand. The album Otta is fantastic. Sample track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8n8Uy5KmvU
King Goat is a British doom band with some prog tendencies. Haven't heard anything from them I didn't like, but might as well start with the self-titled debut if you're new. It was on a bunch of 10-best lists at the end of the year it came out. I played this song on a loop for days on end:
https://youtu.be/SjX66T22NCg?feature=shared
And for something completely different in metal: Fair to Midland. I am evangelical about these guys. Very hard to describe - very melodic but hard, with killer riffs and a lot of fun wordplay in the vocals. They're usually labelled "alt metal," whatever that means. They've got a wild story, too - they started in Sulphur Springs, Texas in 1998 and migrated to the Deep Ellum music scene of Dallas and slogged it out playing clubs and self-publishing and EPs and two albums. Built a loyal following, won a few awards in the local alternative press, then got discovered by Serj Tarkanian of System of a Down. Serj signs them to his label, they release the absolutely brilliant "Fables from A Mayfly: What I tell You Three Times Is True" in 2007. That gets them a bigger audience and they start playing gigs like Coachella and opening for bands like Rage Against the Machine and Queens of the Stone Age. They split with Serj, record Arrows & Anchors in 2011, embark on another successful tour, then announce plans for their next album. And then...
Nothing. The band vanished. No goodbye, no announcement, just gone. All their social media went dark in 2013. The word is the band was broke and deeply in debt. A photo purportedly showing vocalist Darroh Sudderth playing bass in a wedding gig surfaced a few years ago, and there's since been word that he's a music teacher working with kids. So far as I know, none of the guys in the band ever played professionally again.
I learned of the band maybe six years ago reading the comments thread of a review over at Angry Metal Guy that mentioned Fair to Midland in passing. A commenter mentioned still needing "a trigger warning" before reading anything about the band b/c he was so big a fan. That started a thread about how great the band was. Curious, I went to Youtube, and was hooked the moment I heard "Musical Chairs":
https://youtu.be/hnyK2mI6wDQ?feature=shared
As good as Arrows & Anchors is, Fables from a Mayfly is even better. Dance of the Manatee: https://youtu.be/wjW-j2PAv-I?feature=shared
Their live shows were absolutely insane - the energy and intensity that they put into performance, especially Darroh, is dizzying. Live at the Machine Shop in 2011:
https://youtu.be/-sEChbWZyhk?feature=shared
And to bring it back to female metal vocalists, I've been digging Strega Nona, although that's more towards the post-rock, blackgaze side of things.
Interesting. I'm more of a Dorothy/Taylor Momsen fan.
Speaking of angelic, as an avid listener of various types of EDM for over 25 years, many of those female singers crush what passes today for singing.
Some of the Pretty Wreckless stuff sounds a little generic to me, but I'll always watch their videos.
Aside, the best motorsports music video ever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU7-sdJARLo
I always felt their stuff was the closest to "grunge" for a chick led band. It seems like most either fall into the rock/pop sound, or more just into the straight rock/ballad stuff (Lzzy Hale).
I really like their song "Only Love Can Save Me Now." They feature Soundgarden's drummer and guitarist and a lot of it is written in a very grunge-y 7/4 time signature.
Most of the chick bands I listen to are Japanese. I like hard rock more than metal, so BAND-MAID is my favorite of that bunch. For a more alternative sound I love Tokyo Jihen and the singer, Shiina Ringo, has an incredibly interesting and eclectic solo career spanning back to the 90s.
Check out Spiritbox. Definitely worth a listen. Courtney LaPlamte does a great job of blending guttural and melodic.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=spiritbox
I've heard great things about Courtney, and usually from people who speak highly of the likes of Mykur. Will definitely check out Spiritbox. Thank you!
I doubt you will be disappointed.
Spiritbox is great, and their new EP is fantastic.
They've been growing on me.
Power metal is about the last thing I expected to be discussed around here, full stop.
I can't think of power metal without thinking of my college buddy who loves it. He's never had an interaction with a woman who wasn't a stripper.
I am genuinely, and pleasantly, surprised by the knowledgable discussion of extreme metal - and some relatively obscure bands at that.
I can't stomach power or symphonic metal, as I can't listen to it without stifling giggles. It sounds to me like really earnest hair metal (and I do love me some old-school hair metal). Although a band like Dragonforce or Unleash the Archers does nothing for me, I respect the musicianship (Herman Li definitely knows his way around a fretboard) and won't fault anyone for their taste.
Never had an interaction with a woman who wasn't a stripper? I assume then he is a big fan of Whitesnake?
This is not the greatest [guitar] in the world
No, this is just a Tribute
Just a matter of opinion...
I'd have to disagree with your assessment of the NFL. While the whole taylor swift thing is certainly annoying, nothing about it is "last gasp." The NFL is more popular that ever, both from my personal experience and objectively by viewership. It is leagues ahead of every other professional sport in America. Maybe the enlightened comment board feels differently but I doubt that we are an appropriate sample of America either. That doesn't mean F1 won't grow or catch hold, I don't think it will be at the expense of the NFL though,.
"The NFL is more popular that ever, both from my personal experience and objectively by viewership."
Everything I can access suggests that this is true by absolute numbers but not true by percentage; yes, more people are watching the NFL, but not at the rate that America is expanding. It's also an aging demographic. Young people who are likely to make money from a demographic perspective don't care about the NFL; it doesn't represent what they look like or who they are.
Let's see how the sport does when all the Boomers clock out and the 55-year-old white men who make up much of the viewership today don't have the money or interest to watch any more. It's a hideously expensive sport to operate compared to basketball. The Packers reported $420 million in expenses against revenue of $454M. That feels thin to me.
All I now is I paid $275 dollars a seat for to see the Dolphins beat the Steelers in 2022. And the beer was $13 a can. How the fuck they fill those stadiums at those prices is beyond me.
American credit card debt is now one trillion dollars. We didn’t get to that number by making good decisions.
might as well see how high it can go now
Go watch a NHL hockey game, in Canada. That is way more exciting, the prices for regular seasons aren’t bad and the (at least in Vancouver and Edmonton), the drinks are reasonable.
Way more fun than any other stick/ball game I’ve been too.
Was in Edmonton last month for a game and those fans are RABID! So much energy in the stadium.
NHL game in Canada is on my bucket list
Go ‘Nucks
Love the national anthem in Edmonton. Gives you chills.
As a Canadian, I'm in the minority that really couldn't give a shit. The act of paying money to go to a crowded stadium to overpay for beer to stupid rich assholes that will never know my name infuriates me. I feel the same way about F1, NFL, the Kentucky Derby, FIFA or whatever. It does nothing for me, and obviously makes water cooler talk hard.
There, I said it.
My 22 year old son is more into it than I (55 yo white man) am, as are all his friends. Part of it is he has the time, so he is also interested in Premier League Soccer, F1, college basketball, etc. It is a way for he and his friends to have a common bond for conversations as their lives after college change and grow in different ways with different interests, careers, and locations around the country. It also starts conversations with my son and many other parent/child relationships that I see.
I see that value of sports continuing throughout generations as long as the leagues pull back from the political bullshit that has been prevalent since 2020 which Seems to be starting to happen. It is a common language that spans generations.
I tried watching Premier League - ONCE.
Fifteen minutes in and I was literally begging for the Red Army to level the place.
"Halfback passes to center, back to wing, back to center. Center holds it
holds it
HOLDS IT!!!"
Compare a 1-0 hockey game to a 1-0 soccer game. Even in a low scoring hockey game there are dozens of shots on goal and multiple scoring chances.
My nephew is 31 and follows it. Also plays Irish Hurling in the DC area.
I sent him this. He thought it was funny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oquT3moST8c
I supposed I'd think it was funny too if I knew anything about soccer.
Irish Hurling sounds like something you would do after a few too many Jameson's.
After the correct # of Jameson's
Hurling is awesome. Baseball/hockey with no pads.
My coworkers and some strange cousins of mine were all excited about whatever soccer match it was where the US played England. It ended in a 0-0 tie. I don't watch sports anyway, but a 0-0 tie? BORING, and I fucking hate the fact that I know the final score to that game.
Never understood the allure of soccer either. No knock on the athletes, they're obviously extremely talented and well conditioned. But the matches themselves are like watching paint dry
You could write computer code with soccer scores.
1-1, 0-0, 1-0, 0-1...
To the extent that I can mute the politics, to include the military recruiting flyovers and whatnot at the NFL games I enjoy the various sports as a way to avoid thinking about WWIII. One thing I absolutely loathe though is the sudden and complete pervasiveness of gambling. As if we were not all well aware that we are in a handbasket, surely that must be one of the harbingers of the fall.
>>>The Packers reported […]
Wonder if my ex uses the same accountant.
They are a non-profit corporation.
I'm not sure where you get the information that younger viewers aren't interested. From what I could find, 25-34 is still the age group with the most viewership. And personally, as a "young person likely to make money" with social circles that are the same, the most common sport watched is by far the NFL.
I think you'd have had to have been alive 30 years ago to understand how pervasive pro sports were in everyday life compared to now.
And the kids who will make money in the future are Chinese and Indian; they don't have any representation in the NFL.
Sports ball ticket prices are like the Chevy Suburban price escalation from yesterday’s post.
There is nothing today that is pervasive as it once was, because there are so many other ways to spend idle time - the long tail of everything.
"There is nothing today that is pervasive as it once was,"
Porn and media consumption. They're far more so.
Looking at screens in general.
And gambling. Still hoping you, or Bark, will take a swing at that one.
But even within those verticals, there is even more choice.
If you and I are on a screen all day, it’s likely that our content experience were entirely different. Forty years ago it was a handful of channels, Readers Digest, the library, or your imagination.
So now everywhere is the LA sports market.
Jack, 30 years ago I was 45 and I disagree. With the Internet, much less sports betting and Taylor Swift I think it's much more pervasive today.
It's entirely possible I'm wrong about this.
All the Norwegians walking across the Southern border will soon be rabid NFL fans.
“All the [God-only-knows-whats] walking across the Southern border will soon be new Democrats.”
Fixed it for you.
Jack, I don't see the Packers as a representative example because they are a grandfathered in non-profit corporation and not run by a meglamaniac, which per league rules is virtually required of every other team (tongue in cheek; I'm sure one of the teams must be able owned by a decent human being). See https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/dallas-cowboys-top-forbes-list-of-most-profitable-sports-teams-after-making-1-2-billion-in-three-years/
Agreed. Packers are a very famous and successful franchise but still small market. It's like looking at the Royals and saying you don't see much money in baseball.
IDK. Ten years ago, I'd come into work on Monday and everyone would be talking about whatever game played over the weekend. I was never interested in sports watching (I played a little in school, but not enough to care to watch others play). So it was especially annoying to have to listen to it for most of Monday morning.
Now? Not a single discussion. Not one. No one talks football or baseball. About the only thing you'll hear is if someone's kid is playing in a high school game, otherwise nothing.
Anecdotally, most of the grown men I know no longer care about sportsball stuff outside of the occasional college game.
Rejecting Andretti F1 is so apropos for the piece of shit management of F1. They just do their best to throw the entire sport away. I can’t even continue my rant because it’s not worth getting angry over a poor decision in F1. If I got mad every time they made a poor decision I’d have died of cardiac arrest by now.
Why do most top echelon Motorsport series suck now? I’ve been getting way more into off-roading (Dakar, Baja, KOH) and it’s been a breath of fresh air.
I may walk away from F1. My F1 TV runs out mid season. It's not even because "Andretti". F1 didn't like the idea that Caddy couldn't hit the ground running and Andretti would probably have to take the Renault for 2025 and a couple of years after. No fucking shit. Really? F1 ran the clock out on purpose and then blames Andretti for not having everything in place. I guess Andretti was supposed to have everything and I mean everything in place and Caddy a working new reg engine today and an existing reg engine for next year.
Lucy and the football. Same crap happens in 2028.
So, what do you think of all the new blood in the driver lineup this year? </sarc>
The power move now by GM would be to back up the money truck and buy an existing team.
Meanwhile, Ford will reap the benefits of their association with Red Bull for only $30MM / year.
Also, what could GM buy?
-Ferrari - Lol
-Red Bull - Nope
-Mercedes - No; but curiously Merc only owns 1/3 of the team
-McLaren - Conceivable, but improbable; what to do with the automotive division?
-Aston Martin - Conceivable, but what about the contracted Honda PU for ‘26?
-Alpine - Conceivable, but what about building a team in the US? Also, lots of rot in management.
-Williams - On the upswing, owned by Dorilton on behalf of the Mathews family; is it for sale?
-Visa Cash App RB - The time to sell it has passed; expected to be a midfield team this year
-Haas - Apparently not for sale, per Gene; also, what’s the team worth if the Ferrari contracts are invalidated by a change in control?
-Sauber / Stake - Audi, so no
F1 doesn't want GM involved. Looking at what GM does everywhere else, which is either embarrass themselves or act like tyrants (cf. IMSA, NASCAR), can you blame them?
Fair, but at the moment this is a very bad look for F1. The blowback on Twitter has been a sight to behold (not necessarily a representative sample of F1 fans I grant you).
It's a representative sample of people who masturbate into their own mouths, at most.
The average F1 TV customer, such as yours truly, is glad to have them not on the grid. They'd have embarrassed themselves and this country.
Well, Michael has form there. I do think it sends a mixed message though. “We’ll give America three races to relieve Americans of their money, but we won’t let them have a team to root for”.
"USA!!!!! USA!!!!! USA!!!!" is for chumps when it comes to "Sports" that are businesses. The Olympics is a business that preys on people's patriotism (whatever the country) in order to make a buck/ruble/yen/euro...
But it's not all bad. The USA has Haas and Williams (a team owned by a US outfit). And that great American hope Sargeant. "Make us proud!!!!!"
I see nothing wrong with having another USA player potentially embarrassing themselves.
Don't forget crashing pace cars.
I don't intend to ever forget that, nor do I plan to let anyone else forget.
I still marvel at the hubris AFTER doing such an incompetent, boneheaded, embarrassing move like that.
Or put $2 billion in escrow: “FI use only”
History of fickle hands in Detroit backing Motorsport.
Where was Andretti going to hire the 1,000+ people they would need to staff an F1 team? The labor force is in the UK, near Oxford, where 7/10 teams are headquartered or have significant facilities.
How was Andretti going to get them to move to the UK and pay them competitive wages in the US within the budget cap?
Where was the factory that Andretti was going to use to build the car? The windtunnel? The driver-in-loop simulator?
What kind of F1 Driver Academy does Andretti have?
What would be worse for F1 (and Andretti) - no entry or getting lapped (potentially twice) in a race by the existing backmarkers?
Lapped twice in a race? If they're LUCKY.
That means lapped thrice by Verstappen.
Yep all of this. Even Ferrari F1 cars were designed and built in the UK for a few years, at the Guildford Technical Office because John Barnard wouldn’t relocate to Italy. Obviously the US has the technical ability, but the experience and personnel are another matter entirely. It would be like Williams building a NASCAR. Could they do it? In theory, of course they could. But could they really operate a competitive team without being in the south?
Or … McLaren trying to get Alonso into the Indy 500 and messing up because of metric / imperial discrepancies in the setup sheet.
Yes, that really happened.
bro there is no way
Yes, really.
NASA crashed a Mars orbiter (burned up in the Martian atmosphere) in the late 90s because of a metric vs imperial mistake. That feels like a slightly bigger boo-boo than McLaren's, although it was only a $125 million probe so maybe McLaren's was the bigger mistake...
I remember reading about that after the fact. As I recall, the McLaren team was getting data from, of all people, the *Andretti* team as to suspension settings, and botched the metric/imperial conversion, such that Alonso, who'd qualified in the top third the year before, failed to even make the grid.
The very same Andretti team run by Michael Andretti who failed spectacularly in F1, whose teams have fared poorly in the spec series that is Indycar, but whose team DID beat the Porsche factory boys in Formula E last year.
Let’s not forget the steering wheel debacle
Ok. Then who? There was more than one applicant. They made the initial cut. The others were found more wanting. Does this mean that only large corporations in the business that rubs shoulders with F1 already has any chance of getting in? Audi is buying their way in.
What does Stake, Williams and Haas bring to the table currently, other than existing?
VCARB maybe should be in that club. Someone is going to be last. Why not a new team? I already said that "Andretti" because it's "Andretti" isn't my reason for thinking their decision is ridiculous. Also, dragging things out so far that there's very little chance to gather the resources, ON PURPOSE, is slimy.
I guess having all those missing components and still sucking is different somehow.
Why anyone?
The cars are so complex, so sophisticated, there is so much domain expertise now that it’s a closed shop in a de facto sense as much as a de jure sense. Do you remember when Toyota showed up with a blank check and spent billions of dollars and never won a race? Imagine how much harder it is now.
Audi is BUYING a team. Andretti TRIED to buy that team and FAILED. They have had EVERY opportunity to get into the sport, but not in the way they wanted to. Now they’ll be watching it on TV.
Stake, WIlliams, Haas, VCARB, etc. are already in the sport goes the argument. So they are effectively grandfathered.
I'd suggest that motorsport has always provided more bad viewing than good. The "purest" seasons and sanctions have massive gaps in performance, exacerbated nowadays by the fact that everything is more reliable than it was in 1990. The "managed" series are too obviously managed.
As far as Andretti in F1, I wonder how much of it was justified concern about the team EVER being able to qualify well. People don't understand what a massive and professional shop Williams is, or CashApp Street Trash RB Visa BullCucks, compared to even Audi's golden era prototype teams. I can't imagine Andretti would have done much better than Minardi for YEARS.
People like to point and laugh at the stragglers, but they are … about 1% off of the best car ever made, driven by the best driver ever, designed by the greatest designer ever, operated by the most crisp, polished team ever. And they do so with fewer resources and other structural disadvantages (like being in Hinwil, Switzerland where wages are much higher).
The Williams of today would probably crush the elite, dynastic teams of the past like McLaren Honda in the 80s, Ferrari in the 00s, and even Red Bull in the Vettel pomp.
That’s the thing about F1 - all of the teams are elite and moving forward as quickly as possible.
James Vowles made a podcast appearance this week in which he said he basically had no life at all outside of F1 for years and years, to the detriment of everything else.
Was the volt any good? I thought it was a handsome car.
I think it was pretty good, maybe comparable to the Prius with better styling.
I liked it a lot from the passenger seat. Can’t speak as a driver.
I'd say it was, yeah, and improving rapidly when it was cut off. The only thing wrong with it was the way the first gen looked.
If you want a great looking Volt, get a Cadillac ELR.
If you want a great looking Volt that is practical, get the exceedingly rare CT6 Plug-In Hybrid.
GM tends to kill the car as soon as they get it right.
See: Fiero, Bolt, even arguably the Cimarron.
Volt, CTS, ATS, Saab 9-5, Impala, Malibu, XTS, Regal, Lacrosse.
Corvair
Even the Vega, arguably.
I really went blank when writing the original comment!
I am by no means an automotive expert, nor do I profess to know anything about the industry as a whole, but I did follow the first-gen Volt's development closely for the online arm of a tech magazine. I thought the series hybrid design was very smart, and to my mind (and limited expertise with automotive engineering), the car was a technological marvel. The drivetrain worked seamlessly, and delivered everything GM promised.
The car was meant to be a halo - Bob Lutz personally championed it, and wanted to show the world that Toyota did not have a lock on technological innovation. To that end, I think it was a great car - and light years ahead of the Leaf, which was Nissan's attempt to make the same point.
I think GM made a big mistake killing it.
It didn't help that they lost their nerve and went to parallel hybrid at the eleventh hour.
I'll confess to having lost a lot of this knowledge to time, but didn't the engine drive the car only in very specific circumstances, and not as often as, say, the Prius?
and what was the argument for the switch?
The Volt was a series hybrid.
It was also a money loser, but the tech could have potentially been applied to something that wouldn't be.
It was indeed a money loser. If I recall correctly, so too was the Prius until the second generation, and then Toyota was just over breaking even for several more years. I'm not suggesting the Volt would have been the next Prius, but I do wonder what its trajectory might have been had GM stuck with it.
RE: the CEO question, I think it’s as simple as the skills required to get promoted to the executive level (or for that matter, to succeed in politics) are not the same as the ones required to make successful decisions.
An alarming number of senior promotions seem to be about how well you can BS the company line or about how well you can communicate/shake hands/play golf, vs any track record of being successful at a lower level. Not exactly the Peter principle, but not *not* it, either.
Lots of carpetbaggers/sociopaths get hired in management positions. People look at the large resume and think— wow, look at all that great experience! What they should wonder is why they can’t hold a job. Then it becomes apparent.
Don’t forget D&I. I always figured Barra was in that category. Hell of a price to pay for being stylish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rcIJIWqYmo&pp=ygULZGlydHkgaGFycnk%3D
Knew what the clip was gonna be before I even clicked.
"I'm just trying to find out if anybody in this room knows what the hell law's being broken, besides cruelty to animals."
Glad you recognized the quote.
Eastwood movies are loaded with great lines like the “cruelty to animals” you reference.
“Dying ain’t much of a living, boy.”
How odd that the man who made this role so great ended up with the storyline of Gran Torino.
There’s some “retired Dirty Harry” vibe in that one.
Yeah, but the idea of hating the family you raised and giving all your stuff to immigrants?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjSrBmlCwrg&pp=ygUnam9zZXkgd2FsZXMgZHlpbiBhaW4ndCBtdWNoIG9mIGEgbGl2aW5n
“Right turn, Clyde.”
Shetland pony...Ha!
CEOs are politicians. Rising through an enormous corporation is a special kind of skill for sociopath/psychopath/lizard people types.
One thing I noticed is how focused they are on their boss, and the relationship they have with them. They are generally neglecting their relationships with their subordinates for this.
I am reminded of something Tom Kratman wrote (or quoted).
“People are either active or lazy, smart or stupid. The smart and lazy are good commanders, the smart and active are good staff, the stupid and lazy are good subordinates, and the stupid and active should be shot for the betterment of the species.”
Depends on if you get hired as a wartime or peacetime CEO.
That’s a pretty good deal on those pickups and good to upgrade the wiring.
I have a 50s Tribute LP and really like it.
On Sports Media:
-93 of the top 100 broadcasts in the country for 2023 were NFL games - https://www.axios.com/2024/01/07/nfl-tv-ratings-live-events-viewership#
-I have it on good authority that a further 3 of the top 100 were college football games (semifinals and championship)
-Football is the only thing keeping the cable bundle and ESPN alive, obviously. The much-maligned move by Comcast / NBCU to put a playoff game exclusively on Peacock was rather canny. For the $110MM outlay they paid the NFL, they received over 20MM viewers. Peacock costs $5.99 to $11.99 per month dependent on the plan; there are some bundles and subsidies available for certain customers. Some of those viewers were existing happy Peacock customers; some churned immediately after the game; some will churn in the future or have simply forgotten to cancel; others will be happy Peacock customers going forward. Every single one of them now has the app downloaded and an active card on file, however.
-The biggest “sports” media news this year is the Netflix-WWE deal. For $5BN (!) over a decade, Netflix has a rabid fanbase that has new, live content to watch each week of the year. This should strike mortal fear in the heart of anyone who works anywhere else in sports media.
-Finally, the NFL did $18.6BN of revenue for ‘22 and has very ambitious future growth targets. Liberty’s F1 figures are a pittance in comparison, despite the face that each and every F1 race draws a typical audience of ~73MM global viewers versus ~55MM (in the US) for a conference championship game this past weekend. So each F1 race has an audience only exceeded by the Super Bowl but F1 fails to capitalize to the degree the NFL does.
You’d be interested to talk to a guy I deal with on occasion in WV. Brokered the NASCAR syndication deal in the 90s, made a small mountain of money, came back and plays politics as a “Citizen Volunteer” for Gov. Justice. Has a lot of interesting stories about sports broadcasting from the business/banking perspective. He’s really the Governor’s Chief of Staff, but if he had a real government gig he’d have to give up a bunch of lucrative board seats.
Appreciate it; can talk offline but would appreciate the intro.
I think he stills owns some newspapers and TV stations, at least as a majority shareholder in an investment group. He’s also been shoring up Justice’s personal finances with some 10M loans lately.
The “72 year old multimillionaire intern” bit garners some punchlines in WV Politics.
So the biggest news is about a sport that's not a sport. People care more about being entertained with fake drama because real drama often contains no drama at all. Why would real sports, or major auto racing for that matter, feel the need to maintain purity when fans demand to be entertained? Will we know when it's kayfabe? Will we care?
It’s “sports entertainment,” which is exactly what all BOP racing is. I watched 18 of the 24 hours of “sports entertainment” at Daytona this weekend.
There are many people who are F1 “fans” but primarily watch Drive to Survive.
So you have met my wife. To her it's the same as real housewives.
That’s the genius of it.
Drive to Survive is compelling to diehard traditionalists fans who watch every single race (as I have done since I was a child) AND to people who know nothing about the sport.
I am not gatekeeping; more fans, particularly women and young people, is better for F1.
"Cosmically speaking, the more cocks that get sucked in the world, the better"
Sorry. It's been awhile since we've had a Treme reference and I saw the opportunity.
Straight ahead, and strive for tone.
Longtime F1 fan and I love D2S. It’s a great recap of the preceding season released a couple of weeks before the new season, and IMO is well done. Can’t stand Will Buxton, though….
you really think that major auto racing is a "pure" sport? F1 has more than enough corruption and drama to go around.
Even Ivory Snow could only manage 99.44%. Beyond team orders, which I can accept, there are too many variables for it to be scripted.
The current leadership is lame compared to Bernie, Flavio, Ron and Eddie. We didn't need fake Netflix drama.
I never said it was a pure sport; the drama and intrigue are why people tune in for F1 news every single day of the year.
F1 is a (1) sport, (2) entertainment, and (3) big business. In no particular order.
That wasn't a response to you, I agree. My comment was for Moss
What gets me, I just realized, is that probably the same people bitching to high heaven about the cost of cable, and who cut the cord, now are probably paying just as much if not more for the same type of stuff with all the streaming garbage!
You used to see WWF for FREE on Sunday afternoons on the 2nd-tier UHF channels in most TV markets. You mean to tell me that you’ll no longer be able to see any of that “wrestling” without a(mother) monthly charge on your credit card?!
Do I hear violin music while I’m watching stuff burning?!
Nah, the NFL is fine and healthy. But, I never watch it and could care less about it. Actually, that's not quite true. I'm kind of embarassed what professional team sports says about us as human beings, observing my friends and others go on about it. Dressing up in team jerseys the day of the "big game". For what it's worth, I'm fine with the comradery and good natured fun that goes with it. However, much of it is just a slice of tribalism. "My city/state is better than yours". Some people's ego is so tied up in their team's performance that their entire psyche goes up and down as does the team's record during the season. I've also observed regular hate and vitriol directed at opposing teams with which "our" team has a bad history with. The funny thing is, some members of the team are simply mercenaries, going to where the money is (as they should), and perhaps share absolutely no values with the local public that idolizes them. As someone disinterested in stick and ball sports, standing back and looking at it objectively, it just seems silly that so much money, cultural interest, and demagoguery is involved on things that mean so very little in the grand scheme of things. However, I recognize that I'm an outlier with this point of view. Rant/observation over.
I could go on about grown men who simp for sports zillionaires, but it's not worth doing and some people would take it as a personal attack, even when it isn't.
The only time I'll wear another man's name on my clothing is if that name is Richard Anderson -- and his name only appears on the daily-driver off-the-rack stuff, my bespoke has no name on it but mine.
Jesus wept, but I guffawed.
I enjoy the local teams but stopped wearing jerseys over ten years ago.
My ex got me a Red Wings practice jersey because I didn't want to wear the game jerseys that everyone else had.
A few years ago I noticed that there was a guy named John Schreiber (no relation) who was from the Detroit area and drafted in like the 15th round by the Tigers after bouncing around small college baseball. He had really good stats and I decide, since it isn't a common surname, that if he made it to the Tigers I'd get an official jersey. A combination of great minor league stats and the Tigers being terrible meant he got called up in September. He hung around for a while, then got waived. Boston picked him up and in the Red Sox farm system he worked on his mechanics and now he's a stalwart of their bullpen with great stats.
Well...there is Orville Gibson but maybe you meant living.
True -- but if he'd been just a mandolin player that wouldn't be worth a shirt!
Well, us poor Europeans have to wear stuff with other men's names on it. My shirts and jackets tend to have names of Charles Tyrwhitt or Thomas Mayes Lewin on them :))
Tyrwhitt and Lewin do almost all their manufacturing in Eastern Europe, so you're supporting neighbors!
Actually, Lewin did not survive the Covid, but its operations here have been taken over by "Anthony's London", founded by some former TM Lewin manager – they have some of their own stuff and also resell CT stuff and some remnants of TML stuff.
However, I just checked my shirts, jackets and a suit and most of them are from China/India/Vietnam, except for one Anthony's from Northern Macedonia. I'm afraid that the only European made stuff I have (besides that one shirt) are the shoes, as some higher model lines from Loake are still made in England.
When I started buying Tyrwhitt they were UK made. They then moved to Croatia, I believe. Guess they went ahead and followed the rabbit hole all the way down.
Yeah, even most of Czech companies in this business went to China. It's just hard to compete any other way. There's one I forgot in the previous comment, called Vasky, which makes shoes in Zlín, the home of famous Baťa shoemaking company (one of the most successful businesses in Czechoslovakia before WW2 – Tomáš Baťa was basically our Henry Ford). But for clothes, anything that's not bespoke is hard to make here anymore – it's just too expensive and, what's worse, there is no workforce.
There are small companies making really high-level stuff, but even those are having hard time expanding, because no one wants to do this stuff, unless they are HANDSOMELY paid. I know guys who will make you a suit, a pair of shoes or a traveller's bag. Fantastic quality, first-grade materials. But a pair of shoes will cost you a thousand bucks. A good bag probably the same.
And the problem of those guys is they can't find people to expand the business. It's not that they offer you a pair of shoes for the half of average monthly wage in CZ and they have to have salesmen. They don't give a fuck about sales, because they're booked for next two years.
A fairly good solution is a company we buy our bags from, called Bagind. They hire guys in India – not factories, but guys. They have their photos on the walls of their showroom, their names on their website and so on. And you know that when you buy the bag, you are not giving money to some coporation giving most of it to CEO and a little portion to a sweatshop, but giving some to a Czech guy who sells you the bag and some to Indian guy called Deepesh who will probably buy a home for his family, a car and food and shit.
I do enjoy watching the local nfl team, but with much less enthusiasm than in my 20s. I have some clothes with team logos, but I can't remember ever owning a named shirt. Even as I child, I thought wearing someone else's name was strange and uncomfortable.
You might have simply had a stronger sense of self-image than most -- when you dreamed as a child, you dreamed of being on the team yourself, not of "being" Joe Montana or Michael Jordan.
Everything you say is true, but the collective vibe around Michigan with the Lions making an actual playoff run was kind of cool.
I actually watched playoff football this year. 5, maybe 10 minutes of it, but I did see it. I'd have watched a Bills vs. Lions super bowl beginning to end, too. But neither team made it and I don't care again.
And of course, they became the same old Lions when it mattered most.
At least there’s one consolation that I may still be around in thirty years when they hopefully succeed.
They should have taken the points on one of those 4th down plays, the defense could have made a stop, the 49ers got a very lucky bounce, and the Lions still ended up beating the spread.
One reason why people play and watch sports is to learn how to deal with failure and disappointment.
I'll also point out that it took years for the Pistons to get past the Celtics in the East. The same with the Red Wings getting to the Stanley Cup.
The Lions should be fairly intact for the next few years. They managed to keep their offensive and defensive coordinators and have a relatively young team. Yeah, they'll have a tougher schedule next year but I have no reason to think that Holmes won't be able to keep them a playoff contender for a while.
Both the Pistons and Wings hit their strides, but what a turnaround. The Pistons, in particular, haven’t been this bad since the 1970s.
They were pretty good in the early '70s with Bing and Lanier but couldn't get over the hump in the playoffs.
The Wings seem to have turned the season around and played very well in January. I expect them to have eventual success under Yzerman.
The Pistons have an uninvolved owner who doesn't even live in Michigan. There's a big difference between Gores and the late Bill Davidson.
While I think its fine that you aren't interested in it, tribalism is inherent to humanity so I don't think it is embarrassing (within reasonable limits). Having common interests and groups is a core part of the human experience.
For sure. If you want to wear a "Williams F1" shirt or watch, that's one thing.
To be 40 years old and have "LATIFI 6" on your back is different.
It would seem to me, that boardrooms across the country are married to ESG and DEI, and any pretense of doing what is right for the companies and their customers is optical at best, it’s like the ceo’s are being paid to run it into the ground.
Excellent Examiner article, sir. It’s hard to know who’s full of shit and who isn’t when it’s a subject that is outside your expertise.
I assume everyone is full of shit— that’s usually safe.
If someone is neither a relative nor a friend, then all they want from you is your money, or for you to be a foot soldier in the march to their paradise, or both.
Don’t always rule out relatives.
Maybe not, but MINE are okay.
Good stuff
Me, my brothers and sister, and my parents are probably the weird racist uncle all the leftie young people like to bitch about.
Hi Jack, unfortunately you have the same misunderstanding about Mary Barra that I had to unlearn the hard way. It's this: at Fortune 1000 companies what's good for the company has no relationship to what's good for the executives. I was once at a meeting where it became a running joke that every operating unit head had just flown in from their villa in Tuscany. Then the assembled group voted to lay off 1,000 staffers to get everyone's stock options above water. Lot's of talk about the stock price, and how to move it. Zero talk about why we'd hired 1,000 people we didn't need, or, conversely, what we were going to do without 1,000 people we did need.
The iron law of management is you get more of what you measure and reward. Executives are measured and rewarded based on stock price and government incentives such as tax breaks.
You have to know the rules before you can understand which players are performing.
Cynical but true, alas.
Cjf
I was responsible for Beatrice Foods budgeting and SEC reporting in the mid-80’s so I had a first hand view of the whole Beatrice/Esmark/KKR dick measuring debacle. The outright greed, pettiness, and real disregard for shareholder value was sickening to witness and put me off pursuing any corporate career track forever.
"It's this: at Fortune 1000 companies what's good for the company has no relationship to what's good for the executives"
Oh, I agree for the most part -- but that can't explain ALL of it, can it? General Motors isn't a tech company. They don't operate on the "bigger fool" theory that drives dot-coms and startups. At the core of it they have to keep people employed lest they be wiped out by government fiat -- and that involves, however peripherally, satisfying the market. They're not Pets.com.
GM's run by people live in a constant state of anxiety for their status and their golden parachute.
It explains pretty much all of it, IMHO. That's why I specified it was at an old-school Fortune 1000 company. At a certain point they are so big that they think they can ignore the market, and focus on lobbying the government and such. Then the market leaves them, and the two big to fail companies go ahead and fail anyway. Remember the original AT&T? Compaq? DEC?
My old company was worth multiple billions. It's all gone now...
Ah, but aren't the automakers attempting to rebrand themselves as tech companies - not of the pets.com variety, but the Apple and Google variety?
Not arguing that you're wrong, simply asking if part of the problem is automakers are trying to be something / compete with something they aren't.
I’ve long held the belief that all car companies took one look at people buying new $1000+ smartphones every year or two, and thought: “How can *we* get in on some of that action?”
Small turbo engines that readily blow up? Check.
Lots of on-board tech that obsoletes “overnight”, and/or is prohibitively expensive to repair? Check.
And so on …
I think you're spot on -- but most people feel comfortable making a $50-60 monthly payment on a $1000 Apple iPhone that lasts two years. When you multiply that by thirty or forty, the situation changes.
Thankfully I’m blessed to be able to put down the whole enchilada and pay for it at the next CC statement, every three years.
I can’t imagine making monthly payments on a phone, much less a plan with interest!
I’m sure there’s a good chunk of the populace that would sign their children away at the dealer in their haste to get home and show off their new GigrundoHoeBurbanSlade, and then can’t for the life of them figure out why they just watched their most prized possession get taken away on the back of a hook eight months later!
Long live the ‘Hoe!
"When you multiply that by thirty or forty, the situation changes."
Indeed. Curious that automotive CEOs didn't figure that out.
I think it's interesting that a Judge decided that, a board who's sole purpose is to keep stock prices up, paid Elon Musk too much money, even though he met the metrics to receive such money. I wonder if this will ever happen to the likes of Bara, or nah?
Barra hasn't upset the Uniparty. She'll be fine. The same way Hunter Biden will do less time than MAGA grannies.
Mary Barra could never bring the GM stock price up to a level that would trigger a $56 billion payday.
You can remove everything starting with "to a level..." and it would be equally true.
The entire company is only worth $53BN.
Ferrari is worth $65BN.
I think it is perfectly fine for the judge to do this, as long as he also buys with his own money at face value all the worthless stock from failed startups. Have to treat the winners and losers the same way, no?
As far as I can tell this is absolutely true in HCA. There is a remarkable amount of ‘penny wise, pound foolish’ or even outright chaotic operational decision making, especially regarding staffing levels, that is only rational in the context of quarterly share price optimization.
I mentioned this to a previous local hospital COO with a weakness for being occasionally honest, and he confirmed it, letting it slip that his comp was based as much on the corporate share price than the performance of the hospital he was running.
As an employed MD I have the option for a modest discount on HCA shares. I’ll never buy any.
interesting, I'm curious what would be the best way to incentivize executives then, since that will obviously be more important than a altruistic mindset
There isn't a silver bullet, alas. It's inherent to the situation. No matter what controls are put in place, the executives are there working on them every day, and you are not. It's instructive to remember that this setup -- tying executive compensation to the stock performance -- was a reform of the old system where executives had no skin in the game and got paid cash. Giving them stock options supposedly tied their compensation directly to the market performance of the company, putting them in the same boat with shareholders. Of course execs everywhere then began developing ways to game the option system, as I described above.
So much of life is the study of perverse incentives.
Hell, ALL of it might be.
Re: Frozen Crown. Bit stodgy I thought, and this kind of symphonic metal could be any one of a hundred European bands doing this stuff, at least this one doesn’t have the stereotypical ‘big guy with a beard’ shouting fill in vocals. In my limited opinion Within Temptation are the best at this sort of thing (I’ve seen them live a few times, and my god Sharon Van Adel can SING).
Ms Etro has been added to my Future Wives list though. As one of my old bosses used to say when someone caught his eye “that’s very me”.
Sharon's got a voice AND bedroom eyes, for sure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQVei5C2N4E
Absolute banger of a tune. I prefer this video though:
https://youtu.be/TU7-sdJARLo?si=DZg2g_IOjdbt-per
Yep!
That's actually the first place I heard that song!
It something isn’t it. I HAVE to go one year.
I have this great picture of what I can only assume to be safety precautions taken by some concerned citizen, consisting of a mattress thoughfully wrapped around a phone booth.
Ha! I posted the same video in the comments above. Best motorsports music video ever.
That’s fucking intense
Fully unrelated comment, anybody familiar with brew watches. Are they really made in the US and are they any good?
No, but I'll look into them!
I'm a casual motorsports fan these days, and I enjoyed what I did watch of the Daytona 24. A large reason for this was the world feed broadcast which I watched. I found the story that the Audi TCR driver told on the world feed about having to procure an ECU from a wrecked Seat TCR car in Mexico far more compelling than the human interest junk that NBC peddled. https://audiclubna.org/unitronic-rs3-makes-hail-mary-recovery-for-tcr-win-at-daytona/
Assorted thoughts on the actual racing: I thought it was a shame that the Cadillac ran out of time and luck with traffic at the end. The Corvette GT3 effort seems like it's got a long ways to go.
GM’s former “Chief Economist,” now at Harvard, came to my hometown to sell our local Chamber of Commerce on EVs yesterday. Wasn’t much of a receptive audience, though the fact that she’s a WV 9 helped her avoid getting the dinner rolls lobbed at her.
It was a group of 50% contractors or owners of similarly blue collar businesses. Average age of probably 65. Absolutely nobody bought it; even the wealthy excavator (had some exclusive Walmart contract, owns an SLR McLaren, a Veyron and three Ford GTs [two ‘05 models and one new]) who dailies a Tesla Model X thought it was stupid.
I’m not a chamber member (allegedly there are networking opportunities, but I see the same crowd at work events and the rest are pretty insignificant), but if I were I’d be calling for the ouster of whoever thought paying her for that speech was a good idea.
Sounds like people just wanted to look at her while they enjoyed a night away from the kids.
She had a few very pointed questions. Deflected them moderately well; if she didn’t look like a soccer MILF and instead looked like me, I imagine the whole “sell your truck; buy an EV” pitch could’ve gone much worse.