FRIDAY WRAP: Tucker out, Lachlan wins, DWade leaves Florida, Zuckerberg's giddy AI attention grabbing, fake deepfake Musks

LIVE from your ESG ashtray, it’s a Business Pants Friday Show here at Board Sabermetrics Studios, featuring all your favorites: Ari the data queen, Jessie the money whisperer, BS-man Matt Moscardi. On today’s weekly wrap up: Florida haters; artificial moons, the Business Pants curse, and we almost didn’t say Musk  

Story of the Week (DR):

1. Cucker Tarlson fired by a Murdoch AB JS MM

2. Bed Bath Bankruptcy Buybacks & Beyond

1. Glass Cliff Alert: Sue Gove became interim CEO of Bed Bath & Beyond last June and claimed the job on a permanent basis in October. A board member since 2019, she stepped in after the departure of CEO Mark Tritton, who held the job between 2019 and 2022, a period during which the company's stock fell almost 50%.

3. US Supreme Court ruling could turbocharge climate lawsuits

1. Justices at the US Supreme Court on Monday turned down appeals from five major oil companies–including BP, Chevron, and Exxon–enabling municipalities to file lawsuits to hold energy companies accountable for climate change. The lawsuits must now be heard in state courts, a venue often seen as more favourable to plaintiffs than federal court

4. Tim Cook falling to #-4 on Draft Board at Free Float’s 2023 Board Fantasy Team Draft

Goodliest of the Week (AB):

1. Tucker Carlson's Vulgar, Offensive Messages About Colleagues Helped Seal His Exit

2. Software Engineer is claiming his $5M reward from MyPillow CEO

1. MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell offered $5M to anyone who could prove that his claims that China interfered in the 2020 presidential election were inaccurate. 

2. Software engineer Robert Zeidman used his data analytics skills to debunk this false 2020 conspiracy theory and Mike Lindell refused to pay up, now an arbitration panel ruled in the engineer’s favor and has ordered Mike Lindell to give up the 5 mil.

3. Zeidman believes that Lindell is going to lose so bad in the defamation cases brought against him by voting machine companies, including Dominion and Smartmatic, that there will be $0 left for him  

3. Dwyane Wade says family left Florida because they ‘would not be accepted’ JS MM DR

1. During an interview this week for Showtime, Dwyane Wade, who has a 15 yr old transgender daughter, said he no longer lives in Florida because of the state’s political climate. Gov DeSantis has introduced a long list of legislation targeting LGBTQ rights, and this former Miami Heat is having none of it. He said “I have to make decisions for my family… my family would not be accepted or feel comfortable there. And so that's one of the reasons why I don’t live there.” 

Assholiest of the Week (MM):

1. Glass Lewis

1. Glass Lewis recommends vote against Tesla board nominee JB Straubel

2. JB Straubel is the problem??? JB Straubel?

3. Glass Lewis said three of the eight directors at Tesla are either affiliated with the company or are insiders, raising concerns about "its ability to perform its proper oversight role."

1. Kimball Musk has been on the board since 2004 - but JB Straubel is a bridge too far??

2. Elon has 72% influence over this board - you can’t even consolidate more influence with him

3. Board weaknesses would otherwise include: Joe Gebbia bats an ABYSMAL .142 for earnings, .276 for TSR, and .187 for controversies

4. Elon himself is overall below average, with an overall batting of .457

5. No, the problem is JB Straubel?

4. It also recommended Tesla shareholders vote for the re-election of two of its board members, CEO Musk and board chair Robyn Denholm, saying there are not "substantial issues for shareholder concern" about the two.

1. Denholm has been there since 2014 - they can’t let her go at GL because then it would be a ONE WOMAN BOARD?  

2. Anheuser Busch

1. 2 Bud Light Executives on Leave After Promotion With Dylan Mulvaney

2. 89% of the influence is Insiders at AB - the decision to say “Kid Rock is not our only buyer” was not made by some woke board or some rogue woke-y

3. Trans and LGBTQ+ people everywhere - JOIN US IN SHOOTING YOUR BUD LIGHT CANS AND RUNNING THEM OVER

3. Mark AB JS DR

1. Mark Zuckerberg says people spent 24% more time on Instagram after Meta launched AI-powered Reels

1. Average went from 11.2 hours per month to 12 hours

2. Americans sleep an average of 7 hours per night and eat an average of 67 minutes per day

3. Just under 3% of an American’s average day is spent on instagram now, vs. just over 2%.

Exhausting-est of the Week (JS):

1. Spending hundreds of billions of dollars on futuristic cities MM 

1. Saudi Arabia’s Neom- $500B futuristic city- a planned 16-borough city on the Red Coast that was to be completed by 2025 (a timeline that now looks unlikely)

2. Target population- 9M

3. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed's decision to form a closer alliance with President Xi Jinping has analysts concerned. They believe that the Saudis could be preparing to use sophisticated Chinese surveillance tech to tightly monitor and control Neom's residents

4. Here’s what makes Neom futuristic

1. Artificial clouds that will produce more rainfall than naturally possible in the desert

2. A giant artificial moon that will illuminate the city at night

3. Classes taught by holographic teachers which they believe will create the leading education system on the planet, 

4. Getting around via flying taxis, 

5. The Red Sea coastline will be altered with glow-in-the-dark sand added to beaches

6. And this one is just an idea- 'Jurassic Park'-like island for tourists with robotic dinosaurs

2. A potential deepfake precedent DR JS

1. Tesla is being sued by a Sz Hua Huang, whose husband died in a car crash in 2018 when his Tesla, in autopilot mode, crashed into a highway barrier

2. Huang's lawyers want to interview Musk about statements he made promoting the capabilities of Tesla's self-driving software, including a speech in 2016 where he said: "A Model S and Model X, at this point, can drive autonomously with greater safety than a person right now."

3. Tesla’s lawyers are arguing that they can’t be sure he actually said that- that since he’s famous, he’s susceptible to deepfake video and audio recordings

4. "The reality is he, like many public figures, is the subject of many 'deepfake' videos and audio recordings that purport to show him saying and doing things he never actually said or did."

5. This is a dangerous precedent: in other words anyone that’s famous can say whatever they want in public and hide behind the potential of deepfakes

3. Failing to accommodate worker menopause costs the U.S. economy more than $25 billion a year AB

1. Study from the Mayo Clinic analyzed responses of 4,400 women aged 45 to 60- nearly 11% reported missing work in the last 12 months due to symptoms like hot flashes and sleep disturbances

2. The cost itself doesn’t exhaust me…BUT the fact that a different survey, carried out by telehealth company Gennev, found that of 2,500 women, 99% of women in this stage don’t get any menopause benefits at work EXHAUSTS ME

3. Women between the ages of 45 and 54 make up 20% of the female workforce in the US

4. Keep in mind, many women are at a time in life where they’re experiencing career success and achieving leadership roles

5. A McKinsey report reflected that female workers are leaving the top ranks of companies at higher rates than ever before. For every woman at the director level who gets promoted, two female directors are choosing to leave their company

Who Won the Week?

1. DR: non-white-hetero-wasp-dudes (Re: Tucker fired)

2. AB: 

3. MM: Lochlan Murdoch - board of Tesla AND apparently behind the decision to fire Tucker.  It’s all coming up Lochlan.

4. JS: 

Predictions

1. DR: After Wells Fargo shareholders passed a proposal  on Tuesday asking for a Report on Prevention of Workplace Harassment and Discrimination, Vivek Ramaswamy’s Strive Asset management pens an angry letter wondering “when will woke america realize that workers have nothing to do with business” while citing a reddit post that claims that “sexually aggressive male executives are 78% more excellent” 

2. AB: 

3. MM: Molson Coors, the second largest beer brewer in the US, launches an ad campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick carrying a rainbow flag riding a black unicorn that’s reading a book on how to create ESG scores leaving everyone who listens to Kid Rock without a single beer to drink, and they’re forced to choose which is woker: rainbow Kaep or Dylan Mulvaney.

1. Molson clearly NOT woker - massive 16% gender power gap (5% female influence OVERALL), 16% diversity power gap, 73% rotation players, epic .367 - neither excellent nor woke?

4. JS: D-Wade create foundation to sponsor other families that need to leave FL