MONDAY KETCHUP: AI is more important than fire, meat-based-plant-based-meat, Regina's tourist campaign, New Jersey fines itself, and Amazon's Jassy has words
Live from the underside of a cat, it’s the ESG Industry’s ONLY daily woke business news podcast, featuring Jessie the Money Whisperer and the return of ME. In today’s Don’t Mention the Union episode called April 17, 2023: backlashes, apologies, and a CEO has eleven pages of things to say!
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Backlash is so in right now
Backlash against fire and electricity
Sundar Pichai says AI technology could be more profound than fire or electricity
In an interview on CBS's "60 Minutes," which aired on Sunday, Pichai said he thought of AI "as the most profound technology humanity is working on. More profound than fire, electricity, or anything that we have done in the past."
DIFFERENCE ALERT: ethicists were not required for the advent of electricity and fire
Rounding out our human backlash update…
Musk plans on using Twitter as the core learning dataset for his AI
According to Business Insider: Musk did not respond to emailed requests for comment sent to his Tesla and SpaceX email addresses. An inquiry sent to Twitter's communications address received a poop-emoji response, which has recently become a standard reply to press inquiries.
ESG wants to kill fire and electricity?
Backlash against fake meat meat?
Why this startup is adding real meat to its plant-based product
Momentum Foods is making products that are 90% plant-based, but adding in animal parts like collagen and fat, which they hope will entice more people to phase out meat.
The company’s first products, like a pulled pork and carne asada, will be sold under their consumer-facing brand, Paul’s Table. They use roughly 90% plant ingredients, including soy and brown rice, giving them most of the environmental benefit of fully vegan options. But they also include key parts of meat like collagen and fat—the “bits of meat that are not actually the muscle, but rather what drive the sensory quality of the experience,” says Fazeli. “I think everyone is familiar with the notion that fat is really what drives flavor in a big way. And for us, the inclusion of the animal fat is really what takes this stuff and makes it so much more like the meat experience that we would expect—the way it coats your mouth and the flavor that results.”
ESG admits vegans are stupid!
The AM radio backlash is under way
With AM Radio No Longer Available In Some EVs; Carmakers Are Facing A Backlash
Several prominent carmakers have decided for some of their models to drop AM radio from the dashboard. Most of the car models are electric vehicles (EVs). Automobile companies have noted electromagnetic interference with AM radio’s reception created by electric motors.
the elimination of AM radio has created a backlash from members of Congress, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), FEMA, AM station owners, political pundits, farmers and listeners.
ESG killed your radio!
Weekends are for apologizing to the ones you love
Sorry anti-trans beer drinkers
Anheuser-Busch CEO offers flat apology following Bud Light’s Dylan Mulvaney backlash
As the CEO of a company founded in America’s heartland more than 165 years ago, I am responsible for ensuring every consumer feels proud of the beer we brew.
To feel proud, maybe they shouldn’t make Bud Light at all?
Conservatives calling the press release an “apology” - in which there is no apology, no intent to apologize, because the whole thing is made up stupidity?
ESG made your beer trans!
Our bad, having a genital adjacent city name doesn’t mean we should use that as marketing
ESG means we can’t even joke about
We swear, we DO think climate change is like, a thing…
Vanguard's Galloway: climate group exit does not change environmental concerns - Reuters
"Climate change is an existential risk and a risk to investor returns," said John Galloway, who oversees the Pennsylvania firm's engagement and proxy voting at portfolio companies, in an interview by teleconference.
But Galloway defended Vanguard's proxy votes against a shareholder proposal last year that he said would have compelled refiner Valero Energy Corp (VLO.N) to set targets to reduce so-called "Scope 3" emissions caused by the end-users of products.
Galloway said in practice the proposal, which won 42% support, would have required a wholesale change to Valero's business, a decision best left to the board.
"A proposal that’s asking a company to make a change that’s changing its strategy is not a proposal we're likely to support," Galloway said.
Maybe we should just kiss you with money and make up?
Fox News, Dominion Defamation Trial Delayed Amid Network’s Push to Settle
Wall Street analysts said that while Fox could absorb a substantial financial penalty, that might limit its flexibility to engage in share buybacks. “They can afford it, but of course there’s other things that they’d rather do with that cash,” said Joseph Bonner, a senior analyst at Argus Research.
Fox had just over $4 billion in cash when it last reported quarterly earnings back in February. At the time, it authorized a new $3 billion stock-buyback plan, bringing its total authorized repurchases to $7 billion.
I’ll make it up to me, I swear…
New Jersey might fine itself for destroying a bird habitat it swore to protect
New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection has charged itself with damaging habitat for threatened and endangered birds that it was supposed to protect.
The department acknowledged it sent a violation notice and threatened penalties against its own Division of Fish and Wildlife regarding unauthorized work in February and March at the Glassboro Wildlife Management Area in Clayton, Gloucester County
On its website, the department wrote on Feb. 1 that the work sought to create 21 acres of habitat for the American woodcock, a member of the sandpiper family that uses its long, narrow beak to forage for earthworms in damp soil. The project was designed to create “meadow habitat.”
But in doing so, the state destroyed mature oak and pine forests in and near wetlands, and filled in some wetlands, four conservation groups said in a letter to the department in early March complaining about the work. The agency issued the violation notice on April 6
Finally, a CEO has words…
Andy Jassey’s much awaited shareholder letter is OUT, and the results are RESULTS!
Top word: Customer (59 times), Amazon (53 times), business (38 times) = Amazon wants customers to do the business
Top phrase: “third party” - 7 times!, followed by “Amazon business” 6 times
Opening: inventing stuff is awesome, we did a bunch
we made important adjustments in our investment decisions and the way in which we’ll invent moving forward, while still preserving the long-term investments that we believe can change the future of Amazon for customers, shareholders, and employees
Set up: we did some soul searching, and some stuff sucked… like our staff
For instance, we stopped pursuing physical store concepts like our Bookstores and 4 Star stores, closed our Amazon Fabric and Amazon Care efforts, and moved on from some newer devices where we didn’t see a path to meaningful returns. In other cases, we looked at some programs that weren’t producing the returns we’d hoped (e.g. free shipping for all online grocery orders over $35) and amended them. We also reprioritized where to spend our resources, which ultimately led to the hard decision to eliminate 27,000 corporate roles.
Also, what sucked was everyone wanting to work from their couch…
We also looked hard at how we were working together as a team and asked our corporate employees to come back to the office at least three days a week, beginning in May. During the pandemic, our employees rallied to get work done from home and did everything possible to keep up with the unexpected circumstances that presented themselves. It was impressive and I’m proud of the way our collective team came together to overcome unprecedented challenges for our customers, communities, and business. But, we don’t think it’s the best long-term approach. We’ve become convinced that collaborating and inventing is easier and more effective when we’re working together and learning from one another in person. The energy and riffing on one another’s ideas happen more freely, and many of the best Amazon inventions have had their breakthrough moments from people staying behind after a meeting and working through ideas on a whiteboard, or continuing the conversation on the walk back from a meeting, or just popping by a teammate’s office later that day with another thought. Invention is often messy. It wanders and meanders and marinates. Serendipitous interactions help it, and there are more of those in-person than virtually. It’s also significantly easier to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture when we’re in the office together most of the time and surrounded by our colleagues. Innovation and our unique culture have been incredibly important in our first 29 years as a company, and I expect it will be comparably so in the next 29.
Honorable not mention: unionizing employees!
Also, stuff takes to long to ship, like longer than a day, so we fixed that…
If a local fulfillment center didn’t have the product a customer ordered, we’d end up shipping it from other parts of the country, costing us more and increasing delivery times.
But we have a lot of shiny things still that aren’t unions…
AWS at $85bn annual
Chip development, now chips for AI models like “tranium”
Advertising
Groceries
Low earth orbiting satellites for internet to… buy more stuff?
Finally, AI buying stuff
In closing, don’t mention your employees or the unions…
While we have a consumer business that’s $434B in 2022, the vast majority of total market segment share in global retail still resides in physical stores (roughly 80%). And, it’s a similar story for Global IT spending, where we have AWS revenue of $80B in 2022, with about 90% of Global IT spending still on-premises and yet to migrate to the cloud. As these equations steadily flip—as we’re already seeing happen—we believe our leading customer experiences, relentless invention, customer focus, and hard work will result in significant growth in the coming years.
