FRIDAY WRAP: O'Reilly Automotive's DEF14A orange jumpsuits, Twitter can't handle rubber band watermelons, Ken Paxton forget the "G" in ESG, and Musk's censorshippy-ness

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LIVE from your ESG carry-on baggage, it’s a Business Pants Friday Show here at May 26th Lane Studios, featuring all your favorites: Ari the data queen, Jessie the money whisperer, BS-man Matt Moscardi. On today’s weekly wrap up: 

Story of the Week (DR):

1. Woke Blowhard Fail at Twitter AB

1. Here are 9 online events that were bigger than DeSantis' 2024 campaign launch — and didn't glitch out:

1. The 2023 PlayStation Showcase held on the same day as DeSantis' campaign launch peaked at over 2.5 million viewers. 

2. Buzzfeed's 2016 livestream of two people putting rubber bands on a watermelon until it exploded had more than 800,000 viewers on Facebook Live.

3. April the Giraffe giving birth in 2017 drew in more than 1.2 million live viewers at its peak on YouTube. 

4. K-pop group BTS set a Guinness World Record for a livestreamed concert in 2020, amassing 756,000 attendees at once.

5. Almost 30 million players attended Travis Scott's in-game Fornite concert in 2020. 

6. And before that, 10 million people watched Marshmello's Fornite concert in 2019. 

7. Over 400,000 players simultaneously tuned in to watch NY Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez play Among Us on Twitch in 2020, more than those who heard DeSantis' announcement.

8. Rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine's Instagram Live after being released from prison in 2020 had 2 million viewers. 

9. Soccer star Christiano Ronaldo garnered over 700,000 viewers in an apparently accidental 2022 Instagram Live while chilling in a sauna.

2. Target CEO defends the decision to remove Pride displays and pledges to support the LGBTQ community. Read his letter to employees.

1. CEO Brian Cornell defended the choice, saying it took "many difficult days of deliberation."

1. “To the LGBTQIA+ community, one of the hardest parts in all of this was trying to contemplate how the adjustments we're making to alleviate these threats to our team's physical and psychological safety would impact you and your wellbeing and psychological safety. We stand with you now and will continue to do so - not just during Pride Month, but each and every day.

2. Those were the two guiding principles when it came time for us to act: do all we can to keep our team safe, and do all we can to honor our commitment and connection to the LGBTQIA+ community.”

3. Neuralink: Elon Musk's brain chip firm says US approval won for human study

1. Elon Musk's brain-chip firm Neuralink says it has received approval from the US Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) to conduct its first tests on humans.

2. An earlier bid by Neuralink to win FDA approval was rejected on safety grounds, according to a report in March by the Reuters news agency that cited multiple current and former employees.

3. The chips - which have been tested in monkeys - are designed to interpret signals produced in the brain and relay information to devices via Bluetooth.

4. Experts have cautioned that Neuralink's brain implants will require extensive testing to overcome technical and ethical challenges if they are to become widely available.

4. Chinese state hackers infect critical infrastructure throughout the US and Guam

1. A Chinese government hacking group has acquired a significant foothold inside critical infrastructure environments throughout the US and Guam and is stealing network credentials and sensitive data while remaining largely undetectable, Microsoft and governments from the US and four other countries said on Wednesday.

5. O’Reilly Automotive MM DR

1. 6 of 10 directors (all the white dudes) are wearing identical orange dress shirts in proxy pictures:

2. The 3 women and the black guy were not given the same shirts!!

4. MATT: 78% prison issue orange jump suit influence vs. 72% “generational suffix” directors at Ford vs. 74% influence of director’s with an apostrophe in their last name at De’Longhi SpA in Italy vs. 77% of influence (and a whopping 29% of the board) whose members have a hyphen in their names at Kering SA, the French fashion company

Goodliest of the Week (AB):

1. Helion to supply Microsoft with fusion power by 2028, or pay penalties

1. Microsoft and Helion Energy have signed a “jaw-dropping” BINDING purchase agreement for electricity from a nuclear fusion generator. I think the jaw dropping part here is that this would be the world’s first commercial fusion generator, the holy grail of energy, and the fact that if Helion can’t deliver by 2028 there is a financial penalty

2. 3 ways Minnesota is crushing it on climate action

1.  A $2 billion climate and environmental package - with money specifically set aside for things like installing rooftop solar panels on schools and public buildings, grid improvements to help solar customers connect to the grid faster, electric school buses, EV rebate programs,

2. $1.3 billion boost for public transit and e-bikes (separate transportation bill also signed this week). Transportation accounts for ¼ of MN’s emissions every year.

3. 100% clean energy mandate. Gov. Walz signed legislation that requires the state’s power utilities to use 100% clean electricity… by 2040 BUT they are well on their way to meeting the target (currently 40% of the state’s electricity generation come from renewables)

3. Glitches, echoes and ‘melting the servers’ crash DeSantis’ campaign launch on Twitter DR MM

1. I LOVE A GOOD MELTDOWN. Twitter’s livestream event with DeSantis attracted more than 500k users and apparently twitter COULDNT HANDLE IT. The event was delayed by almost half an hour, with people getting to listen in to the troubleshooting and technical issues during the first few minutes because apparently no one knows how to disconnect audio? When the event actually launched, only about half the users tuned in. IS THIS WHAT YOU GET FOR LAYING OFF SO MUCH OF YOUR TECH WORKFORCE? Yes.

Assholiest of the Week (MM):

1. This picture:

1. Let me describe this to our listeners: a white woman in her 50s or 60s is pointing to a graph showing that Long Beach Container Terminal, or LBCT, has reduced greenhouse gasses 80% on their way to net zero

2. It’s a stock image from this story: The ESG perversion of shareholder resolutions, which chronicles how prior to 2021, in the “good old days”, all shareholder resolutions were boring, and now they are racial audit laced net zero-gasms.

3. Why this triggered my asshole Spidey sense:

1. Long Beach Container Terminal, featured in the stock photo, is owned by Orient Overseas, a subsidiary of China Ocean Shipping Company, a Chinese state owned entity

2. EVEN IN THEIR TROLLING, THEY TROLLED - China gave us ESG!

4. The author is one Ben Zycher, who is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a “free market” anti-woke think tank

1. Zycher’s prior experience with proxy voting is none.  None experience.

5. But here’s the real assholes:

1. Harlan Crow is a trustee of AEI, as is THE WOKE PETER COORS, CHAIR OF THE BOARD OF MOLSON COORS

6. You’re all fucktards.

2. Ken Paxton AB DR

1. Texas Panel Files Articles of Impeachment Against State Attorney General

2. The man who authored this: CIVIL INVESTIGATIVE DEMAND of S&P Global on ESG forgot there was a “G” in ESG.  Oops.

3. Roelof Botha

1. VC firm Sequoia is pulling out all the stops to dominate AI, insiders say. The firm is using everything from 'speed dating' to star studded summits to woo founders.

2. The firm run by Roelof Botha, Elon’s BFF and a primary funder, is rushing to get every AI under Sequoia control

Exhausting-est of the Week (JS):

1. DeSantis dismisses climate change, calling it 'politicisation of weather' - The Independent

1. Floods in Miami are just politicization of water

2. The extinction of manatees is just politicization of water-based cows

3. Systemic injustice is politicization of melanin

4. See how easy and exhausting this is?

2. Under Elon Musk, Twitter has approved 83% of censorship requests by authoritarian governments AB

1. Zzzzzzzzzz

3. Fast fashion has spawned a mountain of leftover clothes in the Chilean desert that's so massive it can now be seen clearly from space MM DR

Who Won the Week?

1. DR: Target CEO Brian Cornell: for being on every conceivable side of the Woke ESG Data Wars

2. AB: The bees who belong to a billionaire that are getting bussed from California to Maine right now in a climate-controlled truck with two drivers so the only stops they need to make are for food and fuel. 

3. MM: Bogdan Culita, our programmer, who finish building our entire database for Board Sabermetrics this week and is working out kinks on the platform now so we can launch the ONLY PLATFORM COVERING THE PEOPLE THAT RUN YOUR STUPID COMPANIES

4. JS: 

Predictions

1. DR: We rename the company from Free Float to Musk Musk so people have a greater understanding of our content coverage

2. AB: 

3. MM: Vivek does a Twitter Space that fails, but audio remains on in which Elon and new CEO Linda Yaccarino get into an argument over which color the Twitter checkmark should be for presidential candidates and Linda is fired live for suggesting “red” because Elon thinks it’s too communist.