MONDAY QUIZ: Damion's back for a Musky, Buffett-y, Pony Ma, Southwested Twit apology-laden UFC domestic abuse-y catchup quiz

LIVE from the screen playing the live action Dragon Ball Z movie on the way from the Azores, it’s a “this film has been modified for content and to fit this screen” edition of Business Pants!

Joined today by Damion “What’s a job again?” Rallis, I’m the one true Matt Moscardi, Lord of Board Sabermetrics.

In today’s fetid bag of better-late-than-never nuggets called January 9, 2023, a how out of touch is Damion quiztacular!  

Some housekeeping - a thanks to our sponsor ESGauge, your ESG data solutions provider, for sponsoring our show into the new year.  Apparently someone likes what we do!  

Also, show update for this week - Vivek had to reschedule, so we’ll have him next week, but we still have our prediction show this week.

Onwards.

MATT1

I pulled some headlines over the last three weeks when Damion was apparently on a beach drinking Portuguese PBRs.  I’m going to quiz him on what actually happened.  There is no winner, we are all losers, including the listeners.

Here are some catchup stories…

1. After wrongly repossessing cars, foreclosing on mortgages, and charging a myriad of fees, mostly to poor and/or black people, Wells Fargo settled with the Consumer Finance Protection Board for how much?

1. 2.1% of 2022 revenue

2. 4.6% of 2022 revenue

3. 7.2% of 2022 revenue

4. 11.3% of 2022 revenue

2. Warren Buffett added who to his highly diverse board of directors

1. His aunt’s step son

2. His son’s nephew

3. His best friend’s son

4. His wife’s yoga instructor’s bookkeeper

3. Tencent’s CEO Pony Ma accused his employees of what instead of working

1. Surfing pornographic websites

2. Watching their kids

3. Looking for jobs

4. Chilling on the weekends and playing ball

4. Southwest’s CEO apologized for stranding half of America for the holiday season by saying

1. “No way to almost apologize enough”

2. “We can’t say enough how sorry we are to most people”

3. “People deserve better service from someone”

4. “As CEO, it’s my responsibility to make sure someone does their job better”

5. Walgreens announced it would be the first US pharmacy to sell what

1. Seats on its board of directors

2. Pharmaceuticals using an AI robot to measure doses

3. Blood testing that only requires a finger prick for over 200 tests

4. Abortion pills

6. Twitter employees have started bring what to the office after cuts

1. Desk chairs

2. Sleeping bags

3. Toilet paper

4. Small quantities of ecstasy and cocaine

7. Vince McMahon is returning to be CEO of WWE in order to “sell the company”, also did what as part of his return

1. Announced a line of energy drinks called “Brass Ass”

2. Purged the board of two members while two others resigned in disgrace

3. Made his daughter and son-in-law, the co-CEOs, co-co-CEOs

4. Announced a line of Vince McMahon NFTs

And here are some stories emerging in the last few days…

1. Dana White, the CEO of UFC, a division of Ari Emmanuel’s Endeavor, punched his wife at a New Year’s celebration on tape.  Emmanuel has said of the incident:

1. “It’s about time”

2. “We are currently reviewing the situation”

3. “We reject domestic abuse and harassment in all its forms, the board and I have moved to place Mr. White on leave from his position pending a full investigation.”

2. The day of Richard Branson’s almost outer space flight where he failed to pierce the mesopause, Elon Musk went to his house to congratulate him how

1. In a Toyota Prius

2. At 2am with his 2 year old, waking up Branson

3. Bringing a cake that said “SIR IN SPACE”

4. He didn’t, he was busy buying Twitter

3. ChatGPT is being heralded as

1. The death of Google

2. A game changer for online retailers like Amazon

3. A huge win for Microsoft who invested early

4. A replacement for academics

4. Air India’s CEO was forced to apologize for what

1. A customer got hammered and peed on the woman in the seat next to him

2. A customer was forcibly dragged from a flight after losing his glasses, accidentally sitting in the wrong seat, and refusing to move

3. A 14 year old was stranded in the airport for 19 hours on Christmas Eve by themselves

4. A customer’s dog was denied boarding after it refused to obey commands to stop sniffing other passengers’ groins

5. The CES 2023 conference happened and featured

1. An app that listens for each time you use a racial epithet and auto-beeps

2. A robot capable of pre-cutting meat at restaurants for easier consumption

3. An app that uses augmented reality to show you variety of eyebrows on your face

4. Facial recognition glasses that can overlay images of beautiful famous people over your friends faces, with face replacement packages coming in at $29.99 per set

6. A startup in San Francisco has figured out how to use CRISPR gene editing on meat and named itself what delicious name

1. TruMeat

2. NearlyProtein

3. AgriBlood

4. Scifi Foods

7. Which terms are hot early in 2023

1. Nepo-babies - describing executives who got their jobs through nepotism

2. Rage applying - describing the opposite of quiet quitting, applying to jobs after not getting raises

3. Returns tsunami - describing “return season” post holidays

4. Southwested - describing being in the boarding line for your flight when it is spontaneously canceled