There was a guy in my town who died in his late 80s with a high 8 figure net worth, owning several car dealerships and with no estate plan.
The estate proceedings were public record because he had done zero planning. The dealerships went from making $2+ million of pure profit to losing more than $1 million IN LESS THAN A YEAR when his idiot kids took over.
Wild business.
AMZN is basically the only one of the internet high-fliers back in the dotcom days that lived up to the âit could turn out to be so much more than a X companyâ hype.
Good luck to all the people holding Yahoo, Dell, AOL, JDSU, Broadcom, CMGI, Red Hat, Qualcomm, Worldcom, Brocade, and a ton of other high-fliers Iâm forgetting. When your uncle is asking you âWhat do you think about XML? I hear it could be the next Linux.â - itâs time to bail.
And even then, you could have correctly sold when AMZN was at $400 pre-2000 crash, and easily gotten back in when it started to show signs it was actually going to deliver on becoming much more than an internet retailer.
Yup. Iâm going to guess that they should have sold the dealerships cheap to the managers who ran them.
My bosses boss in the car business was the GM of a massively successful mega dealership. One year his boss fucked him out of a 100k bonus (his boss was Red McCombs, a guy known through South/Central Texas for his tortoise and the scorpion level tendency to fuck people out of stuff) and he got mad⌠so he went over to the utterly failed car dealership three exits down the interstate and made the failson who had run it into the ground an offer he couldnât refuseâŚ
Failson basically gave my bosses boss 50% of the dealership and financed the renovation of the facility to his satisfaction⌠in exchange for my bosses boss taking his entire team with him and setting up shop in this dudes building. He also signed a contract that said failson would stay on the golf course far away from the dealership and have absolutely no say in how it was run. It was so extreme that when failson sent friends in to buy cars at âhisâ dealership bosses boss had standing orders in place to take them for absolutely everything you could get. It was like the opposite of a friends discount.
Anyway failson made the right move. That dude made him rich again. Ended up owning 50% of the number one Chrysler/Jeep dealer in Texas, the number 3 Nissan Dealership (#1 in market by a mile), and the Number 1 Mazda dealership in the state. Probably made a million dollars a quarter in net profit for his end.
Truly insane business. Bosses boss took his end of the earnings and used it to buy dealerships every time the home stores that I worked at turned out a talented manager. Keeping the golden handcuffs on and keeping peopleâs careers progressing inside the chain was the core of his strategy.
The Theranos documentary really is a scorching indictment of businessbros and techbros and their self-absorbed world of nepotism and grifting. All these supposed expert investment dudes threw billions of dollars at Elizabeth Holmes because she âseemed very smartâ (i.e., she had the right businessbro family upbringing/connections and she dropped out of a science degree program).
You watch the interviews and itâs like âOh, she started a silicon valley business in her 20âs so we knew she was a mega-geniusâ and itâs like no, my dude, she had her stupid rich parents buy her way into the businessbro world. Then they interview actual scientists and theyâre like âWe have no idea what the hell sheâs talking about, it seems like total gibberish.â 10 billion dollars pissed away with no one ever trying to understand the science. All because businessbros were horny for a scam artist.
And by god, the sweater thing. It could not have been more obvious that was a half-assed affectation designed to dupe stupid horny business dudes. Oh look, she dresses up like Steve Jobs every single day. Thatâs definitely the kind of quirky thing very smart people do, please take all my money.
Not as much of a fan of Peter Murphyâs voice. Heâs more speaking than singing. No breath support, no projection, a tiny range for pitch and dynamics. Heâs like the 80s version of Sugar Ray.
Mark Hollis and Bryan Ferry are amazing singers. Especially Ferry and the track you linked 
Not going to lie stories like Theranos make me realize my chances are way better than I think.
Sweetness, sweetness I was only joking
When I said Iâd like to smash every tooth
In your head
OhâŚsweetness, sweetness, I was only joking
When I said by rights you should be
Bludgeoned in your bed
No seriously, maybe you could give a dude the benefit of the doubt and educate before you go HAM.
Nope. I donât need educating about him - I even had the misfortune to catch them live once supporting The Fall. The Smiths were great, but him, yewch.
I guess the lyric you quoted was about the Asian owner of his local shop.
No I mean, educate me instead of saying âfuck everyone who posts himâ because I donât know what youâre talking about.
Tesla has a sort of cult following. My flatmate absolutely adored Elon Musk, thinking that he was doing so many amazing things with his money and that his products were gonna make mankind better and all that jazz. Heâs got stock in it and everything.
You just know some Juicero techbro who dropped out of engineering school walked into the DNCâs office and was like âWhat if the Iowa caucus, but with APPS?â and Tom Perez signed off on it without checking with any IT people first.
I misread your post.
Well thereâs been a lot of it over the years but general verbal attacks on immigrants and support of far right white supremacist groups covers it.
This, by one of our best comedians (a Smiths fan)âŚ
Okay, thanks. Your post prompted some googling and I turned this up:
Now I know I guess. Too bad, I like the music.
Haha, KPOO is legendary. And Iâm glad you found live version. Itâs stunning. I think I debated sumitting that one but went with the recording because it more clearly fit in the category? '70s? Who know what I was thinking.
Man Iâve read a ton of Auster though. But itâs been a while. The best of his most recent stuff, I thought, was Oracle Night. Have you read that?
I recently made an appointment for an annual(ish) physical with my Dr. The first available date was Feb. 28. The appointment time is 10:10, because they are apparently working with tight windows. This is with Kaiser, know as one of the best healthcare orgs. Is this better than Canada or the UK?
Also, are they short on Drs? My understanding is that Drs are not one of the more costly elements of the healthcare system.
People short Tesla a lot, but I would not mess with that. Elon isnât dumb and it has some great products. There are many wounded animals out there and itâs easier to bum hunt than to try to take down Johnny Chan."
Iâve never waited more than a day or two to see my GP.
Joy level: negligible
You mean the Panasonic batteries? And probably at least 90% of electric car charging occurs at home.