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emiko-matsui · 3 years

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hello this is my official list of what i think every member of the bau would work with if they wouldn't work at the bau like if that wasn't a reality you get me

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Jason Gideon: look i know this is technically canon but i truly do think he would be an author and would guest lecture a bit in his later years and like sure he could still write true crime books but also just regular crime novels i think this old man would just like to write

Jennifer "JJ" Jareau: i think she would work inside of the media, not in front of the camera necessarily but as a communicator or similarly inside of the media and the news. however i think there's a possibility of a divergence of path for her, i think its possible she could end up in a hostage situation due to her job in a similar situation like in neon terror and would start working out as a coping mechanism and like genuinely would pick up a (extra?) job as a personal trainer at her gym

Derek Morgan: firefighter. that's it i don't know what to say other than that, derek would 500% be a firefighter. there's nothing else. now that i think about it derek should've been a firefighter from the beginning fuck the bau this is his true calling don't even @ me

Elle Greenaway: similarly to JJ i think elle would work inside of the media but as an investigative journalist. well i think she would start out as a regular journalist but become an investigative journalist after a while because her drive would be too big you get me. also niche but i think that when she was a teen she was like briefly a singer like you know robin from how i met your mother but she would've made angry girl music

Aaron "Hotch" Hotchner: genuinely don't think this punk could stay away from the government so i think he would still work a fancy government job just not inside of the bau, maybe not even the fbi but i so think he'd still be in government. now what i have no idea because i know nothing about the government especially the american government seeing as im not even remotely american

David "Dave" Rossi: now i don't even know if this fucking counts but you know those really fancy shops that are like made of dark smelling wood and is called something extravagant with a cursive gold font and they sell like cigar or wine or herbal products or like mustache wax or whatever the fuck you know the places im talking about. i think rossi would work there and be that old man at the counter who will come up and talk to you and you have no idea if he just works there and is really invested in this stuff or if he owns the place or just a really weird costumer but then he's the one you pay too so you assume it's his but the moment you step out of the store you've forgotten his face and you never want to go back there but you always think about it once a month or something. if you don't know what kinda place im talking about consider yourself lucky

Penelope Garcia: if the bau wasn't even a prospect here there's no question that penelope would still be a hacker illegally and make most of her money from there but i also think that she would work in a small second hand shop with lots of old trinkets and clothes and stuff just because she genuinely thinks it's fun to work there and also the old woman who owns the shop lets her be on the computer when there's no costumers in the store. i just think she would sit there in her cupcake dress next to a ceramic old cat from the 1930s talking to bernice about her grandson while hacking jeff bezos on her computer

Spencer Reid: now it's time for spencer all over the place reid who i think would work at like one of those really prestige but still public libraries where like everyone is welcome but they have like locked rooms with super valuable books and stuff and he kinda does whatever there bc sometimes he gives tours talking about thr history of the building and stuff and sometimes you find him at the counter ready to guide you to the specific book you're looking for plus twenty other recommendations you should read if you like this book and sometimes you find him in a window reading and his coworkers politely ignore he's had his "break" for three hours now bc he guided 17 tours yesterday (only ten were scheduled) and they suspect he mightve slept here. plus in his spare time i think he would do some independent work to keep him stimulated with stuff but that's not a fully developed idea yet

Stephen Walker: this might be controversial but i think stephen would be a guidance counsellor at like a school and i don't know why but he has the vibe and i think he would be quite good at it. maybe he just gives me more official jawbone vibes from dimension 20

Emily Prentiss: i firmly believe this woman cannot hold down a job for her life. i think the bau and interpol were flukes in her reality because im quite certain emily would physically not be able to keep one job for longer than a year. if you mention a job she's probably done it. she's done everything from high positions in government to bagging groceries to leading seminars to breeding puppies. listen emily prentiss is a lesbian ex goth trust fund kid (like canonically yall). i think right now she's working with the lights for a theatre production and she's liking it and seems to have a knack for it

Tara Lewis: this one's out there but i think she would work as a principal at a university (do universities have principals?). but like the one who's in charge of a school but like advanced studies with like adults study after they've already studied if you know what i mean. idk i just think that's what she would be

Luke Alvez: hate to do this to luke but he would simply just be a cop. or like a detective (that's like a promotion for a cop in america right? bro my knowledge extends to brooklyn 99 and brooklyn 99 only). i hope this is because i feel like luke is the serious crime version of jake peralta and jake is the sitcom version of luke. anyway, cop

Matt Simmons: this is my magnum opus but bro i think he would be a podcaster. i think he would do a podcast with kristy. for everyone who follows my blog think justin and sydnee mcelroy but matt is sydnee. i think they would have a little podcast together. after his unit at the fbi (?) got got by linda barnes i think he would retire home and start doing podcasting full time with kristy. this is my hot take

Kate Callahan: because such a central part of kate's personality/backstory is that her sister died in 9/11 i think that kate would've been a nurse. specifically a nurse not a doctor and i don't think it's because a lack of competence or anything like that fuck u no i genuinely think kate wanted to be a nurse and chose to study to become that. her hours would still be crazy but maybe meg isn't as worried about her now

Ashley Seaver: i don't have a lot for seaver but i think she would work in local government more centralised like those guys from parks and rec and yes i realise ive made way too many references that some people might not understand but here we are. i think seaver would do whatever leslie does in parks and rec or something like that

Alex Blake: this is just a formality to have her on here because she's literally a linguistics professor in the show

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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Ducktales Final Four: Beaks in the Shell! or JESUS WEPT!

This.. this is a big occasion for me. It’s a return to regular Ducktales coverage.. but it’s also the first episode of the LAST four of the series. It was thanks to Ducktales my blog got a following, first through in character chat things, then through my reviews of this very season. It was starting this last year that took my blog from something I was passionate abbout but did ocassionaly to a vital part of my being and my source of income via one lucky boy who just wont’ let me stop! I kid of course, I thank kev for it, though i’d gladly welcome any other review comissions from you fine folks and fit them into the schedule. There’s a page on my blog for how and if your on mobile you can simply send me an ask or submit to ask about comissiong an episode or episodes of an animated shwo you like and i’ll give you my prices and what not. But it’s thanks to these Kev started comissioning in the first place and thanks to you all clicking on these reviews every week I do them that kept me doing them early on. So I wanted to thank you all.

Covering the last four episodes is really bittersweet for me. It’s not the end for ducks here: I have most of seasons 1 and 2 to cover, and will be covering a lot of season 1 next month so I can properly cover shadow war for my Lena retrospective, not to mention continuing to cover life and times when I have the space, various birthdays, including Carl Barks Next Month!, and so on and so on. But this is not only the first show I covered on a weekly basis but it’s the first show i’ve covered like that to end. To put it in perspective, Loud House won’t be leaving until it WANTS to and even then nick will probably prepare a second spinoff to follow it up in some form, Amphibia has both the rest of season 2 to go, starting next month!, and a third season renewal meaning while that probably WILL be it i’ll have had two full seasons to cover by the time it’s over, and I went into Close Enough FULLY expecting it not to make it past season 1 as it’s long and harried production cycle lead me to belivie Time-Warner was just going to dump it on HBO Max and be done with it.. and to my utter and everlasting delight the opposite has happened: It didn’t just get renewed but it’s become one of HBO Max’s most popular shows, the flagship of it’s adult animation lineup, and been given THREE more seasons, two of which are coming very soon, and likely will get as many as it wants for the forseable future.

The point is.. I went into covering Ducktales expecting at least one more season and genuinely not knowing if i’d make it thorugh covering this one, and once this started to really work out for me, to the point from doubting i’d EVER be able to set up a Patreon to having one that nets me ten dollars a month, feel free to contribute if you enjoy these reviews even a buck a month helps, honest. Plus thanks to that ten bucks a month i’ll be covering the five part 87 Ducktales pilot in April and if you get it up to ten i’ll cover super ducktales. But I wouldn’t even had one without these reviews giving me something to start with, and I figured they’d be around for a few more years, at least one more season. I didn’t think the show would just.. end with this season and while the season IS a proper final season of the show, wrapping up arcs, introducing long overdue cast additions, giving us the biggest and best overarching plot thus far.. a good final season dosen’t make it hurt any less. But as a wise Synthizoid once said...

It hurts it’s going.. I wasn’t prepared for it.. but it’s giving us one hell of a last act, and if this episode is any indication, just because the end is in sight dosen’t mean the last few eps before the finale are phoning it in. This is the end... so now i’ve got my emotional stuff and the weight behind it out of the way, for now i’m defintely going to be bawling come the finale and I’m not ashamed, we can dive into the begining of the end. Counting down.. because really when else am I going to get to use this...

We’re at four and under the cut it’s beaks in the shell. Let’s get dangerous.

We open with a crime in progress as Gandra is stealing a thing for FOWL and Fenton has shown up on the scene to stop her as you’d expect.. along with Huey the boy wonder! He’s finally Fenton’s Sidekick!

Seriously it’s just so sweet to see this little payoff, to see Huey, after talking about it and clearly wanting to assit Fenton however he can, actually participate. Granted he dosen’t have an armor, yet, of his own, but still he’s been through enough stuff to be helpful> plus, Gyro’s reaction to Fenton trying to ge the resources for another gizmosuit was...

Gandra trips up his wheel, and im with 87 Scrooge in Ducktales Remastered, which I finally got to play recently! Horay!, what WAS gyro thinking with that design. Regardless she gets away, and our heroes return the loot off screen. Good day’s crime fighting.

Except something’s off with Fenton as he’s been working extra late lately and lying to both Gyro and Ma’Ma about it with both suspcious, Gyro because he dosen’t like not knowing things and especially not knowing what his former intern’s up to because he’s a bit of a control freak.. and because he probably can’t go visit his new clone farm and work on speeding up the process of his replacement bodies after moonvasion used em all up without Fenton finding out as he’d tell Scrooge and Scrooge would be like “Stop playing God in ways that could get me a steep fine!”. It’d be a whole thing. The fact Fenton’s also using their now shared intern in Manny and neither is telling him why probably isn’t helping and i’ts only that workplace harassment seminar that keeps him from trying to strangle either of them again. That and Manny dosen’t have a neck.

Ma’Ma is more upset that not only is he lying to her again, more on that later, but .. that she’s figured out he has a new girlfriend and understandably thinks there’s some dark reason he’s not telling her, and unlike Gyro turns out she’s two for two. I mean she is a detective while Gyro is more worried about his clone army, his man horse and his robot son. I mean the last two are valid but still Mama just has to worry about her job and her socially awkward adult son. She has more time to focus on this.

But yes, not only is Fenton seeing someone.. but it’s Gandra again. A bit abrubt but honestly this isn’t the first Fenton episode to move his life fast.. and frankly i’m more lenient on final seasons, or seasons INTENDED to be the last ones in terms of offscreen stuff, as your trying to get everything you can wrapped up in the span of 13-24 episodes depending on how lucky you get, if not less. Sometimes you just gotta use a reveal and some exposition to hurry things along and if presented right it works.. and here it is a while the summary for this episode spoiled the reveal, i’ts still subtly dramatic that not only has hef ully forgiven her.. but their together.. despite the fact she still works for fowl. Wuh-oh. After the credits we get an idea of what their working on, as Fenton used the gizmoduck suit to enter some kind of VR scape. This is the Gizmoscape! It’s a vast virtual reality landscape.. that looks like a fancy version of the VR Interface from community. Marble pillars, flowing water falls. Though ironically enough Jim Rash’s character is NOT a part of it and despite Fenton suggesting letting him in to help with their glitch problem she’s reluctant as it’s THEIR baby and she wants it to be perfect first before they allow other people in. Though i’m also sure part of it is that Gyro would start screaming JESUS WEPT! over and over.

Meanwhile Mark Beaks is having a big flashy press confrence to announce the new Waddlephone. Only a 50% chance of exploding! And that’s not my dig at Samsung but the shows as that’s really Beaks sales pitch. Unsuprisingly only one VERY bored looking nerd is there at the confrence. As for why he’s finally fallen so low part of it is explalined in the episode: His attempted thefts of the Gizmoduck suit have gotten stale. As the bored nerd puts it he’s tried to steal it four times already, two that we’ve seen but i’m VERY unsuprised he’s tried again off screen. He’s made it PAINFULLY clear he has no ideas of his own, constantly steals them, and the public’s tired of it. As for why it took THIS LONG.. this is sadly realistic. As the throngs of “hardcore gamers” defending Cyberpunk 2077 before it was released can attest to, internet nerd culture can often be toxic, stupid and defend big personalities even when they’ve CLEARLY done something terrible as long as their doing something they like. Beaks was clearly pilfering enough good products and doing enough antics on social media to still be liked and for them to ignore his blanat and douchey crimes and had enough money on him during said crimes to walk away from it.

Problem is.. while people can be awful and defend someone despite them not deserving their loyality, being a douche in public and doing VERY terrible things.. you have to have something to earn that loyalty. Waddle had that at first iwth project ta-dah, Waddleduck, various aps i’m sure... but it’s clear from context by this point Beaks has nothing left and no cult of personality to insulate him. Unlike say Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos he dosen’t HAVE some big product to mask his shadier wealth hoarding actions, he just has rampat supervilian attempts to steal someone else’s power armor and a hired hyjacking to get back at his cold unloving mother. Even when he does supervillian stuff like that.. he can’t be bothered to do it originally. The public will, and very sadly, defend you from terrible stuff, we’ve seen it with people supproting Gina Carano even though she’s actively spreading harmful disnfermation and then had the GALL to compare herself to jews hiding from the nazis, and one journalist trying to defend her had the gall to compare this to the hollywood blacklisting if the 50′s instead of you know, someone who woudln’t shut up about harmful dangerous shit finally getting fired for using teh platform said job provided to spread said harmful dangerous shit about masks and the vacine. But if you have nothing to offer.. thieri just going to forget you and move on. He has nothing to offer so they’ll gladly gravitate to some other jackass who can at leasat given them a neat phone instead of trying to steal a superhero suit for the 8th time. Mark realizes if he can’t steal something soon.. he’ll be forced to go with the Nuclear option: MAKE SOMETHING HIMSELF.

Back at Fenton’s toilet lab, Huey finds Fenton having some cyber makeouts with Gandra... which translates to him kissing the air and Huey feeling evne more awarkd than usual. As for why Huey’s here despite it being late, he got a piece of Gandra’s nanotech during the robbery and figures they can track her. Fenton is.. less than enthused about that for obvious reasons but things soon get worse for our hero as our other hero notices the linkup. And while sidekicks are a good thing in my eyes; They allow young heroes to get proper training, help nuture their talents and prevent assholes from telling them to stop it instead of you know helping them. It’s.. a more common trope than you think let me tell you.

But Fenton’s discovered the Downside is they can show up anytime, want to hunt your criminal girlfriend down not knowing the full story, and if their a genius like you, figure out what your up to with no effort and really want to try it. Seriously Huey’s almost as smart as you Fenton and will no doubt surpass you one day, this was a matter of when not if and you shouldv’e been more prepared. But Huey wants to try, and while Fenton tries deflecting since he only has the gizmoduck helmet and it only works for him now... Manny comes in with a bunch of vr rigs and Huey dives in. Naturally, Huey soon running directly into Gandra dosne’t go great.. and given this is huey his natural instinct is to have a panic attack over his best friend, mentor and the only person besides maybe his family, boyfriend and girlfriend that really gets him possibly betraying him and his entire family. Gandra is of course mad Fenton invited someone in when she didn’t want that, and even more someone whose clearly not happy with her and will likely tell on them because that’s basic hue-man nature.

Fenton explains he didn’t ask for this, so we get easily the best part of the episode: Gandra’s solution to the child having a mental breakdown.. is to summon a weighted blanket and throw it over him, which Huey mistakes for a trap and she explains helps with Anxiety.. and while he struggles.. it really does. Damn gotta get me one of those. Also while his Autisim remains vauge, likely on puprose, Huey having anxiety disorder, while obvious before, is now 100% confirmed.

So now he’s calm, though his Anxiety meter shows he’s still not happy and Gandra doubts he’ll listen, Fenton can at least try and explain: The two have been seeing each other and working on this in secret.. but it has NOTHING to do with FOWL other than Gandra embezzling resoruces to make it happen. Gandra also explains why the project is so important to her and Fenton via her own backstory: Super Science is a dangerous, unrpedictable field and accidents happen a lot, and given people tend to hate what they don’t understand, hence why the X-Men founded their own island after getting spat on one too many times, it often gets an unfair bad wrap.. and she shows she’s had to put up with this her whole life, making an intresting lazer thing as a kid that lost to a volcano and getting glared at for it accidently destroying said volcano. And as an adult due to her work’s dangerous and experimental nature, no one would take a chance on it and like many a super villian she had to experiment on herself. It’s also why she worked for Beaks last season and works with FOWL now, only supervillians with thier grandiose ambitions and lack of care for property damage would fund her.

That’s part, at least, of why this is so very important to her: The Gizmoscap eprovides an invorment where scientests and others can experiment unabated, where the only limit is imagination and those glitches they keep having and any accident can be frozen , dragged and dropped away with no damage. There’s no risk but all the reward and they plan to give it out for free, to let the public use this and let the world grow from it.

It also fills in a lot of Gandra’s character and gives weight to her last apperance: Her working with Beaks, while hypocritical, now has a tragic edge as he was simply the only one who’d fund her work. Her hatred of Fenton’s corprroate job and people like Scrooge.. is that in general billionares like him usually aren’t good people, and even SCrooge has his clear faults, and she assumed he was just making Fenton shut up and do things just to beniefit him and make him more money.. when Scrooge was instaead paying him to do a genuine public service as gizmoduck, and gives him and Gyro a LOT of leway and a pretty bottomless budget and only turns things down if their way too dangeorus for public release. The tragedy here is if she’d gone to Scrooge.. she never would’ve had to work for FOWL. He wouldd’ve genuinely supported her and likely given her a full ride and a spot in the lab of her own, maybe as an intern but probably on her own merit given how game changing her tech is and how he of all people understands a ballance of risk and reward. It turns her from a very hypcoriticla techie who works with the very people she scorns.. to someone who has no choice and desperatley wants out. And this is her way out: something new and bold that’, while not hers alone as Fenton co created it, could change the world and make it safe for people like her to do what they do without ridcule, scorn or risk. It’s everything she could’ve dreamed of and more and once it’s done she promises to leave fowl and as the end of the episode bares out, and as her tone makes clear, she’s genuine about it. She also TRULY does love fenton and vice versa and both are desspearte for Huey to keep a lid on things from Gyro till it’s ready, as she rightfully worries if it gets out unfisnished they’ll just be mocked agian. Naturally being a good soft boy Huey is now entirely on board, because he loves science, and he loves love and this is both. And frankly given what we saw way back in Astro BOYD... .he knows more than anyone what its like to be laughed at and mocked for being diffrent and simply being smart. And even though his family lvoes him.. only one member is as smart as him in the same way, his mom whose still a very diffrent person, and it wasn’t till this season he really got to connect with people his own age like him. And both Violet and BOYD could benifit form this.. everyone could. So he’ll keep it secret for now. This proves problematic as both Gyro AND Mama are there and both have questions. And while Huey ducks gyro, Mama.. interrogates a small child who she’s defintely met and likely knows has anxiety over something as trivial as her son having a secret girlfrined. You.. you guys might’ve wanted to remove this bit given last year. I”m just saying. Does not play well. The most Huey can come up with is a girlfriend in Canada which fenton plays along with... but given neither her nor gyro are really buying into things, though Mama has a check done on seamstresses in canada just in case because this bit was clearly written years ago and not rerecorded for whatever reason, Huey uses little bulb to fake a gizmo emergency so Fenton can get out of there, go home and work on this himself while Huey stalls and lies. But since his best on the fly lie was “a girlfriend in canada”, which is somehow worse than “who’s Dewey”, and while our boy is many things: excellent at opera, a good friend, a wonderful wingman, excellent at setting a mood, a good son, great at panic attacks, a genius, an expert woodchuck, knowledgeble on quantum mechanics.. the list goes on lying is not one of those things and he seems to be in a pickle.

Meanwhile Mark is struggling to create, can relate, because he’s entirely creatively sterile. And that’s probably why out of Scrooge’s foes.. he stopped being a threat. He has no vision. And while true the Beagle BOys also don’t besides steal stuff and maybe get our deed back, that’s by design as Ma knows they can’t take scrooge or gizmoduck so why cry. Stick to petty crimes and stuff he isn’t aware of or dosen’t care about. But Magica and Glomgold do. Magica is cunning, if not subtle, and manipulative and when on full blast horrifyingly powerful, and it took everything Clan McDuck had to stop her at full, and she still nearly won without any powers when she came back, and even if Lena can keep her in check now, she still GOT her powers back and got her new arch enemy to defeat her old one. Glomgold while only slightly more comipitent than beaks, and even then VERY slightly, he at least has vision. His schemes are entirely stupid.. but he dosen’t stop coming up with them. They may be his first draft but damn if they aren’t entertaining and damn if one or two haven’t WORKED. Simply stealing a few cents from scrooge and gaslighting him in a devil costume NEARLY drove him insane and cost him his fortune. Beaks.. has no ideas. He has ambiation.. but it’s to steal the same tech that even if he got it, he woudln’t know what to do with. The ONLY time he’s been a full on threat has been using someone else’s scheme, that Gandra clearly came up with and STILL required piggybacking on the gizmo suit. He has nothing and while it was fine for a while.. eventually h’es left iwth nothing. Glomgold at least has money, magica at least has power... Beaks HAD both.. but had no idea what to properly do with it and now is on his last legs. Even his idea for a coffee cups with aps is taken because of course “even the dumbest ideas are taken”, this is america. Making dumb shit for rich morons is our primary export. But he sees the fleeing fenton, has a breakdown and declares FINE if that’s what fate wants i’ll steal the armor I’LL STEAL THE ARMOR ALL DAY.

So Fenton heads home to recharge in both senses of the word, and to tell Gandra the timetable’s moved and Huey can hold them only so long. And he seems to be wrong as Huey confidently prepares to answer their questions.. but is seemingly thrown when we get the real reason Mama is so upset: She’s just worried and still a bit hurt from Fenton not feeling he could tell her he was gizmoduck and it breaks her heart that her son feels he has to hide from her again. However while this is genuinely sad and emotional.. the reason he’s thrown is it’s NOT huey, but Louie, whose a bit miffed as he DIDN’T know Fenton was Gizmoduck, and can’t properly bullshit without full info. it’s also really nice that bit FINALLY came up as the rest of the four main kids have known for a while now. But Huey convincnes him to do it.. for 6 months allowance. Frankly the real shocker here is that they actually GET an allowance.

However Mama.. is again a cop. One who REALLY needs to rethink her ethics.. but a cop, and the best one on the force, and thus has easily guessed this is not Huey, and given she’s probably ran into his schemes before, figures out which one he’d bring in to buffer for him and easily gets rid of Louie by asking him to tur informant on himself, since the REAL Huey would under pressure and Louie instead flees in terror not wanting to get arrested and leaves both the lab and the episode. Though I’m pretty sure i know where he went

So yeah things are not great and only get worse, as Mark breaks into fentons house via the open window and upon finding out abotu the Gizmoscape naturally plans to hack into it and take it for himself. Before he does Fenton talks to Gandra and admits they may have to let other people in and we get another reason: She’s worried she’s not good enough. He reassures her.. and this tender moment is interupted by Beaks who imprisons them, hyjacks fenton’s security system aka a gizmo armor, and while still a creatively sterile douche, does have a decent if horrifically scummy way to profit all of this: use the open coloabreation concept to get the legal right to steal all this and say it’s his.

Fenton bemaons the fact that Gandra was right, one bad apple spoiled the bunch and unveling it too qiuckly would’ve gone bad as she feared.. but Gandra’s grown and realizes Fenton was also right, and that they needed more people. While the wrong people can ruin a project, collaboration can help, finding perspectives you didn’t see and helping fine tune ideas. Huey, whose collapsed at Fenton’s due to the exustion of lying, wakes up to find Beaks crimes and being unable to just unplug him, as while Beaks is VERY dumb, even he’s not THAT stupid. But Fenton gets out an SOS over morse to tell everyone So Huey does.. and the calvary arrives, as Huey enters the Gizmoscape with Mama and Gyro. And while Mama is pleased to realize she’s right about the girlfirend thing they don’t really have time for that, so once Huey explains the basic concept, he uses it himself to give himself GIZMO ARMOR. AT LAST.

He also has extra long legs, because of course, just.. of course. Naturally Beaks steals it, and everyone else takes a stab at their own gizmotech armor: Mama daawns a stunning police themed one, Gyro goes for a bulb mecha based on the giant version of little bulb from the great dime chase, an idea brought up by LB, and Gandra goes for a sleek tron esque nanotech number. Beaks take sa bit from each and our heroes wonder how to beat him.. but Fenton realizes that’s simple: Beaks can only copy and steal... they can create. And Gandra uses this against him by pointing that out so he drops his super armor.. to look like Andross from Starfox.. which shows that EVEN when trying to come up with a cool final boss form... Beaks has to steal from something. The rest of the Gizmo Corps, my name for them I own that, Gizmo Legion would also be good, after Iron Man’s iron Legion, suit back up and kick beaks ass as a team. I smell second spinoff.. or first if darkwing ends up hyjacked by Seth Rogen.. who I have nothing agianst he’s just not the one who put in the work for a reboot.

So our heroes win in an awesome sequence, seirously spinoff and Beaks is knocked the fuck out and presumibly will FINALLY go to jail for good to this as he can get away from a lot but directly breaking into an officer’s house and stalking her son, they can omit the gizmopart and even if Fenton went public.. no one would care and he and Mama can take care of htemselves, as can Huey, Gyro, Gandra and Manny, so it’s not like anyones in danger. Beaks is well and truly defeated: he has no idea, an imminet jail sentence, and no one to back him up. Fenton’s finally got the little boil off his back

So now the big fight is over, Gyro can actually process the Gizmoscape.. and is genuinely impressed.. he tries to hidei t because of course he does.. but it’s clear for someone who himself has constnatly been called crazy and had his ideas blow up.. this is paradise to him. a place where he won’t be judged and has unlimtied funds to experiment with his ideas without having to get yelled at when they destroy a city block or nearly choked to death by his own robot son, daughter or nonbinary person. He also easily fixes the problem and proves Fenton right for wanting to include him, as he points out they hadn’t been DELETING anything, simply downsizing it and it naturally caused stress on the server. Fenton talks about Gandra and defneeds her to Mama.. whose just happy he’s happya nd someone can take her son. Alls well that ends well right.

Final Thoughts: So this was a... wait.. why are we cutting back to fowl.. why is bradford there.

Yeah turns out megalmanoical diabolical msterminds kinda monitor their employees so he knew she intended to quit and stole resources, and while she plans to leave, he simply calls in a bunch of eggheads who overwhelm her with sheer numbers and has her fined two weeks pay.. and taken to the lost library to indefintely lock her up. What’s that she asks “You have your secrets, I have mine”

So yeah a bit of a downer ending

Actual Final Thoughts:

This was an excellent capper to Fenton’s character arc. While the Gandra relationsihp is a bit rushed the rest is a masterful capper to his character arc: This episode shows off how he’s changed from EVERY one of his previous three focus episodes, while a major part of astro boyd and how he got his docterate it dosne’t quite contribute to his character arc, and grown from them: From beware the buddy system! he’s learned to colaberate properly and taken his desire to WORK with other people, like he always did with Gyro but was constnatly shut out, and found a proper and brilliant way to that allows people like him, gyro, gandra and huey to really express themselvs. He’s grown from a niave rookie trusting the wrong people in who is gizmoduck.. to someone whose STILL fully trusting despite constant betryals, but now knows who to trust, and an experinced hero who once freed easily counters his nemisis. And finally from Dangerous Chemistry, he’s finally got a ballance in his life: inastead of running from gizmo or treating his alter ego as something else.. he’s found a way to use the gizmotech for science, and FINALLY found his world changing invention one so good and so practical even his mentor, despite trying to walk it back, is genuinely proud of him and genuinely in awe.

Every step lead to his happy ending.. well okay his girlfriend still needs to be freed from her insane ex-boss, but that’s just a few episodes away. Fenton has everything he wanted when he started: his boss finally respects him and treats him as an equal, his mom not only knows who he is but is proud and supportive of him, he has a loving partner creatively and romantically.. and a best friend who while a good two decades younger, is there for him and who he genuinely apologizes too for putting so much on him. LIke all the endings so far this season.. it feels like a throughly satisfying end to the journey we’ve been following. This fits in nicely with Penny realizing earth could be her home and that she dosen’t have to constnatly fight to have a purpose, Lena finally accepting magic instead of running from it and thus gaining peace of mind and power to stop her former abuser from hurting anyone else, Goldie finally accepting how much she cars about Scrooge and his family and that she CAN change... all of this, except penny obviously has been built up through three seasons and while I DEFINTLY could see frank and matt returning to all of them.. i’ts nice to get some closure. It feelsd earned and impressive. The episode is also.. REALLY fucking funny, from the weighted blanket gag to Beaks in general, to Huey yelling at fenton about Mama “She somehow broke Louie!”. It’s a masterful and throughly satisfying end to Fenton’s story. And again we’ll likely see him in the finale but character arc wise.. its a good place to end his.

Next Week: FINALLY, AFTER 10,000 YEARS, IT’S THE TAILSPIN EPISODE. OWEEOOO, OWEEHHHH.

Tommorow: We return to the noiry furry world of John Blacksad as everyone’s favorite panther detective battles white supremacists to find a missing girl and we’re introduced to your faviorite sidekick and mine Weekly.

Later on this week: The Lena retrospective continues with Jaw$, we celebrate Tex Avery’s birthday, and I tackle the awful original tom and jerry movie.

So if any of that tickles your fancy see you at the next rainbow

#ducktales #beaks in the shell!#beaks in the shell #fenton crackshell cabrera #gandra dee #huey duck #mark beaks #gyro gearloose #mama cabrera #little bulb #manny the headless manhorse #gizmoduck #ducktales spoilers

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tanadrin · 4 years

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The current episode of WITH with Gabriel Zucman has some good bits: he argues that tax jurisdiction shopping probably isn’t something the US has to worry about, because being a citizen resident outside the country isn’t enough to avoid US taxes, and renouncing your citizenship comes with a tax on unrealized capital gains--Warren proposes making this a 40% wealth tax, in addition to her annual wealth tax, which would be pretty funny IMO. He also argues that combating mundane tax avoidance schemes is mostly a matter of political will. Europe hasn’t tended to have that, which is why European wealth taxes have not seen much success; fortunately, in the US, the idea of a wealth tax is wildly popular, among supporters of both parties.

The only argument he can muster against Hayes weakly suggesting that maybe it’s better for Bill Gates to spend Bill Gates’ money than the US government spend Bill Gates’ money is that relying on private charity is undemocratic, and while I think that’s true, I wish he’d given over half a sentence as to why. “Undemocratic” by itself is kind of waffly, and not super convincing. The real answer I think is that politics often points to needs of the electorate that billionaires overlook or outright refuse to fulfill--one half of one percent of Warren Buffet’s net worth annually could, for instance, do wonders for Nebraska’s public schools--and even in the most generous reading, where this is nothing more than the result of coordination problems among charitable foundations run by rich people, we have a mechanism for solving that particular suite of allocation issues, and it’s called a legislature and a state or federal budget.

The biggest rejoinder of course is that the US government also spends a lot of money on awful things like wars. However, I think the rejoinder to that rejoinder is that the politicians more likely to enact wealth taxes seem the least enthusiastic about wars: Warren and Sanders are no Biden or Clinton (to say nothing of Cruz) and so as a practical matter I feel like the likelihood of US tax revenue being spent on mass murder is going to be strongly anticorrelated with actually increased tax revenue. (If Bernie Sanders starts arguing we need to bomb Tehran, I promise to revise my position accordingly.) But even if there were no correlation in either direction, I still feel like the consistent position would be to vote for wealth taxes and against war.

There’s another argument against wealth taxes that I think is quite good--that is, that (say) Jeff Bezos’s hundred-billion dollar net worth is a theoretical number, and is as high as it is at least in part because it is owned by Jeff Bezos. You can’t treat assets, especially ownership stakes in publicly-traded corporations, as though they’re equivalent to piles of cash in a vault, even if we attach numbers to them that indicate they’re in some sense similar. Forcing Bezos to sell some small part of those assets annually to meet an arbitrary tax demand might not yield the expected revenue for the US government, and having Bezos, who apparently doesn’t suck at his job, hand over control of these assets to other people might be bad for the economy as a whole in the long run.

To this, I would say: sort of, but that’s actually kinda the point. First, I’m pessimistic and I think it’s very, very hard to overestimate the amount of wealth that very rich people have that’s the product of rent-seeking, favorable regulation, and luck, rather than innate capability. But even if it were true that Jeff Bezos is one hundred billion times smarter and more capable in a general sense than One-Dollar Bob who runs the convenience store next to my house but is up to his eyeballs in back child support payments, then by virtue of his talents and abilities, he is always going to enjoy an outsized proportion of wealth and prosperity compared to poor ol’ Bob. After all, Warren and Sanders are not proposing a law saying all billionaires as of January 1, 2021 are to be taxed until they’re wearing half a boot for a hat and living in an old boxcar--I think Warren’s proposed tax is like 2% above 50 million and 6% above a few billion? I.e., you can be close to filthy stonking rich as you like by the average person’s reckoning, and be liable for bupkis under Warren’s tax (even better if you live in a low cost-of-living state like Nebraska!); this is a far cry from seizing the means of production and setting up a guillotine in front of the NYSE.

I think it’s a good thing not to have huge swathes of the economy in the hands of a small number of people. I think it’s a good thing because I think rich people largely aren’t nearly as competent as we alieve they are; we often operate under the opposite, rosier end of the just world intuition, and forget how much wealth depends on things like favorable tax codes, exploitation of labor, and rent seeking. Fuzzy concerns about “democracy” aside, I think a small number of private individuals not responsible to the electorate are going to be worse about directing their wealth to publicly useful ends, even if they are highly motivated to do so. And even if we got very lucky, and we had a generation of billionaires in the US who were, every single one, deeply committed to extremely important humanitarian projects like eradicating malaria, we could at best treat such a thing as a fluke. The problem with absolute monarchy is that even when you get a great king, his successor can be a real jackass, and there’s nothing you can do about it. The heuristic that private property--not mere personal possessions, but an abstract imperium over the ends of the labor of thousands or tends of thousands of people a major shareholder may never meet, reified as a thing like a physical possession in law--ought to be endlessly deferred to, even when such property is hoarded until someone has command over the equivalent of 4% of California’s GDP, relies for the continued good functioning of the economy, and the wise application of that power, on mechanisms of succession that, like the peasant in the Kingdom of Prussia, many interested parties simply have no say in, and to which few tools of institutional improvement can be applied from the outside. In short, there’s no reason to think that even if Bezos is good at his job, his kids won’t suck at theirs, and ruin a lot of people’s livelihoods as a result.

The real solution to my mind would be to heavily reorganize the economy in the direction of giving workers a far greater stake in the companies they work for, and requiring democratic methods of workplace management. That’s a far more radical approach, though; by contrast, a wealth tax--a gentle nudge in the direction opposite the accumulation of vast fortunes, but by no means an iron law against it--is a positively delicate instrument.

#i am aware that if you think all forms of taxation are theft #then a wealth tax is probably morally equivalent to me murdering your family and burning your house down #but if you think all forms of taxation are theft #then you and I probably have a more fundamental rift in our starting assumptions than can be resolved on tumblr

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icthumilityg3-blog · 5 years

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FAMOUS and SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE **TOP 5 RICHEST PEOPLE **

#5 Mark Zuckerberg

REAL TIME NET WORTH : $62.3B as of February 2019

Source of Wealth: Facebook

LINK: https://www.quora.com/How-does-Mark-Zuckerberg-make-his-wealth-from-Facebook

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has had a difficult 2018; the social network has been criticized for enabling the spread of hate speech and fake news.

In April 2018, he testified before Congress after it was revealed that Facebook shared users' data with political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.

Zuckerberg started Facebook at Harvard in 2004 at the age of 19 for students to match names with faces in class.

He took Facebook public in May 2012 and still owns nearly 17% of the stock.

In December 2015, Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, pledged to give away 99% of their Facebook stake over their lifetimes.

Age: 34

EDUCATION: Drop Out, Harvard University

DID YOU KNOW: Mark Zuckerberg was not the real co-founder of Facebook .He had the idea of facebook but didn't implement but hired someone who can implement it perfectly. So, Divya Narendra is the founder of idea not the implementation and mark implemented this idea with his skills which he named the Facebook.

Mark 5 secret passion to success:

LINK: https://maxmyprofit.com.au/blog/mark-zuckerbergs-5-secrets-to-success/

#4 Bernard Arnault

REAL TIME NET WORTH: $70B

LINK: https://wealthygorilla.com/bernard-arnault-net-worth/

SOURCE OF WEALTH: LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton

One of the world's ultimate taste-makers, Bernard Arnault oversees an empire of 70 brands including Louis Vuitton and Sephora.

His luxury company, which owns leading fashion houses such as Louis Vuitton, Fendi and Givenchy enjoyed one of its best years to date last year and saw Arnault blaze past fellow fashion billionaire.

Record results at LVMH and a megadeal to buy out nearly all of Christian Dior helped boost Arnault's fortune by $30.5 billion in one year.

Age: 69

EDUCATION Bachelor of Arts/Science, Ecole Polytechnique de Paris

#3 WARREN BUFFETT

REAL TIME NET WORTH $84.6B as of 2/18/19 ( Forbes)

SOURCE OF WEALTH: Berkshire Hathaway, Self Made

Known as the "Oracle of Omaha," Warren Buffett is one of the most successful investors of all time.

Buffett runs Berkshire Hathaway, which owns more than 60 companies, including insurer Geico, battery maker Duracell and restaurant chain Dairy Queen.

The son of a U.S. congressman, he first bought stock at age 11 and first filed taxes at age 13.

He's promised to give away over 99% of his fortune. So far he's donated $35 billion, much of it to the foundation of friends Bill and Melinda Gates.

In 2010, he and Gates launched the Giving Pledge, asking billionaires to commit to donating half their wealth to charitable causes.

Age: 88

EDUCATION :Bachelor of Arts/Science, University of Nebraska Lincoln; Master of Science, Columbia University .

#2 BILL GATES

REAL TIME NET WORTH $97B as of 2/18/19 (Forbes)

SOURCE OF WEALTH :Microsoft, Self Made

As the principal founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates is one of the most influential and richest people on the planet.

To date, Gates has donated $35.8 billion worth of Microsoft stock to the Gates Foundation.

Gates has sold or given away much of his stake in Microsoft -- he owns just over 1% of shares --and invested in a mix of stocks and other asset

Besides his plane, one of Gates' biggest splurges was the Codex Leicester, a collection of writings by Leonardo da Vinci. He acquired it at a 1994 auction for $30.8 million.

Age:63

EDUCATION:Drop Out, Harvard University

Gates scored a near-perfect 1590 out of 1600 on his SATs.

Did you know: As a teen at Lakeside Prep School, Bill Gates wrote his first computer program on a General Electric computer. It was a version of tic-tac-toe where you could play against the machine.

#1 JEFF BEZOS

REAL TIME NET WORTH $133B as of 2/18/19 (Forbes)

SOURCE OF WEALTH: Amazon, Self Made

Amazon's chief Jeff Bezos is the first person with a net worth surpassing $150 billion in the 3 decades that Forbes has tracked the richest Americans.

He owns 16% of e-commerce colossus Amazon, which he founded in a garage in Seattle in 1994.

Bezos attended Princeton and worked at a hedge fund before quitting to sell books online.

His other passion is space travel: His aerospace company, Blue Origin, is developing a reusable rocket that Bezos says will carry passengers.

Bezos purchased The Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million.

Age: 55

Jeff Bezos :Yep, that’s me. I was lucky to be exposed to tech and coding at a young age. Inspired a lifelong love of invention. I hope the new Amazon Future Engineer program does the same for some kids today. https://www.amazonfutureengineer.com

DID YOU KNOW: In 1995, Jackie and Mike Bezos plowed $245,573 into their son's fledgling e-commerce website. It's worth almost $30 billion today.

LINK:https://www.livemint.com/Companies/EsJXaSlwLDV0Jtdy1d1MnI/A-hidden-Amazon-fortune-Jeff-Bezos-parents-could-be-worth.html

by: Aaliyah L.

*******************

** 5 FAMOUS CELEBRITIES **

Taylor Swift

American singer

Full name: Taylor Alison Swift

Born: December 13, 1989 (age 29)

Place of birth: Reading, Pennsylvania, U.S.

Description:

Taylor Alison Swift is an American singer-songwriter. As one of the world’s leading contemporary recording artists, she is known for narrative songs about her personal life, which has received widespread media coverage. She signed with the label Big Machine Records and became the youngest artist ever signed by the Sony/ATV Music publishing house. Her 2006 self-titled debut album peaked at number five on the Billboard 200 and spent the most weeks on the chart in the 2000s.

Music Video: Sugarland- Babe

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l25AL0BdD6w

Ariana Grande

American singer

Full name: Ariana Grande-Butera

Born: June 26, 1993 (age 25)

Place of birth: Boca Raton, Florida, U.S. Description: Ariana Grande-Butera is an American singer, songwriter and actress. Born in Florida to a family of New York-Italian origin, she began her career in 2008 in the Broadway musical 13, before playing the role of Cat Valentine in the Nickelodeon television series Victorious from 2010 to 2013, and in the spinoff Sam & Cat from 2013 to 2014. Grande made her first musical appearance on the soundtrack for Victorious and was signed to Republic Records in 2011 after music executive Monte Lipman came across one of her YouTube videos covering songs. Her accolades include three American Music Awards, three MTV Europe Music Awards, two MTV Video Music Awards and six Grammy Award nominations. She has supported a range of charities and has a large following on social media. In 2016, Time named Grande one of the 100 most influential people in the world on their annual list. In 2018, Billboard named her Woman of the Year. Ariana Video Music: Thank U, next

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl1aHhXnN1k

Justin Bieber

Canadian singer-songwriter

Full name: Justin Drew Bieber

Born: March 1, 1994 (age 24)

Place of birth: London, Ontario, Canada

Description:

Justin Drew Bieber is a Canadian singer and songwriter. After talent manager Scooter Braun discovered his YouTube videos covering songs, he was signed to RBMG in 2008. Bieber then released his debut EP, My World, in late 2009. It was certified platinum in the US; he became the first artist to have seven songs from a debut record chart on the Billboard Hot 100. Bieber released his first studio album, My World 2.0, in 2010. It debuted at number one in several countries, was certified triple platinum in the US, and contained his single “Baby”, which debuted at number five on the Billboard Hot 100 and sold 12 million units.

Bieber Award List:

LINK: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3595501/awards

Ed Sheeran Singer-songwriter

Full name: Edward Christopher Sheeran

Born: 17 February 1991 (age 27)

Place of birth: Halifax, West Yorkshire, England

Description:

Edward Christopher Sheeran, is an English singer, songwriter, guitarist, record producer, and actor. He has sold more than 45 million albums and 100 million singles worldwide, making him one of the world’s best-selling music artists. Two of his albums are in the list of the best-selling albums in UK chart history: x at number 20, and ÷ at number 34.

Ed upcoming tour:

LINK: https://www.edsheeran.com/tour

Justin Randall Timberlake

Born: January 31, 1981 (age 38)

Place of birth: Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.

Description:

Justin Randall Timberlake is an American singer-songwriter, actor, dancer, and record producer. He appeared on the television shows Star Search and The All-New Mickey Mouse Club as a child. In the late 1990s, Timberlake rose to prominence as one of the two lead vocalists and youngest member of NSYNC, which eventually became one of the best-selling boy bands of all time. Timberlake began to adopt a more mature image as an artist with the release of his debut solo album, the R&B-focused Justified (2002), which yielded the successful singles “Cry Me a River” and “Rock Your Body”, and earned his first two Grammy Awards.

Justin Music Video:

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA-NDZb29I4

by: ROCKSUPRINCE

*****************************

*****5 FAMOUS ACTORS *****

Brad Pitt

Full Name: William Bradley Pitt

Occupation: Film Actor, Producer

Birth Date: December 18, 1963

Age: 55

Place of Birth: Shanwee, Oklahoma

Description:

William Bradley Pitt is an American actor and film producer. He has received multiple awards and nominations including an Academy Award as producer under his own company Plan B Entertainment. Pitt first gained recognition as a cowboy hitchhiker in the road movie Thelma & Louise (1991). His first leading roles in big-budget productions came with the drama films A River Runs Through It (1992) and Legends of the Fall (1994), and horror film Interview with the Vampire (1994). He gave critically acclaimed performances in the crime thriller Seven and the science fiction film 12 Monkeys (both 1995), the latter earning him a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor and an Academy Award nomination.

Tom Hanks

Full Name: Thomas Jeffrey Hanks

Occupation: Director, Television, Actor, Film Actor

Birth Date: July 9, 1956

Age: 62

Place of Birth: Concord, California

Description:

Thomas Jeffrey Hanks is an American actor and filmmaker. Hanks is known for his comedic and dramatic roles in such films. Hanks has collaborated with film director Steven Spielberg on five films to date: Saving Private Ryan (1998), Catch Me If You Can (2002), The Terminal (2004), Bridge of Spies(2015), and The Post (2017), as well as the 2001 miniseries Band of Brothers, which launched Hanks as a successful director, producer, and screenwriter. Hanks’ films have grossed more than $4.6 billion at U.S. and Canadian box offices and more than $9.2 billion worldwide, making him the fourth highest-grossing actor in North America. Hanks has been nominated for numerous awards during his career.

Tom Cruise

Occupation: Film Actor, Producer

Birth Date; July 3, 1962

Age: 56

Place of Birth: Syracuse, New York

Description:

Thomas Cruise is an American actor and producer. He started his career at age 19, in the film Endless Love (1981), before making his breakthrough in the comedy Risky Business (1983), and receiving widespread attention for starring in the action drama Top Gun (1986). After starring in The Color of Money (1986) and Cocktail (1988), Cruise starred opposite Dustin Hoffman in the Academy Award for Best Picture-winning drama Rain Man. For his role as anti-war activist Ron Kovic in the drama Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Cruise received the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama and his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor.

Harrison Ford

Occupation: Film Actor

Birth Date: July 13, 1942

Age: 76

Place of Birth: Chicago, Illinois

Description:

Harrison Ford is an American actor. He gained worldwide fame for his starring roles as Han Solo in the Star Wars film series and as the title character of Indiana Jones. Five of his movies are within the 30 top-grossing movies of all time at the US box office. Ford is also known for playing Rick Deckard in the neo-noir dystopian science fiction film Blade Runner (1982) and its sequel Blade Runner 2049 (2017); John Book in the thriller Witness (1985), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor; and Jack Ryan in the action films Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger (1994). His career spans six decades and includes roles in several Hollywood blockbusters.

Morgan Freeman

Occupation: Film Actor, Producer, Television Actor, Theater Actor

Birth Date: June 1, 1937

Age: 81

Place of Birth: Memphis, Tennessee

Description:

Morgan Freeman is an American actor, producer, and narrator. Freeman won an Academy Award in 2005 for Best Supporting Actor with Million Dollar Baby (2004), and he has received Oscar nominations for his performances in Street Smart (1987), Driving Miss Daisy (1989), The Shawshank Redemption (1994), and Invictus (2009). He has also won a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Noted for his deep voice, Freeman has served as a narrator, commentator, and voice actor for numerous programs, series and television shows. He is ranked as the fifth-highest box office star with $4.31 billion in total box office grosses, an average of $74.4 million per film.

by: Reinard P.

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boyce9333bonito · 3 years

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Live streaming | UEFA Champions League |

Uefa champions league live streaming - Where to watch the UEFA Champions League | UEFA Champions League |

Can I really watch for free? What is leagke catch? Your first month is completely free. You can cancel your free month at any time with a few clicks. You will not get charged during your free month. Getting started on DAZN is quick and easy. Simply click Sign Up Now, choose between an annual or monthly pass, enter your name and email address and then your payment details. Liverpool put their Premier League woes to one side by staying in the hunt for Champions League glory in Budapest.

Is Haaland ready to be a Pep nine? Watzke: No alternative to Haaland. Guardiola wary of Dortmund threat. Tuchel wary of Porto uefa champions league live streaming. Tennessee Titans.

Washington Football Team. Big Big Sky. Big South. Big Ten. Sun Belt. SW Ath. Arizona Diamondbacks. Atlanta Braves. Baltimore Orioles. Boston Red Sox. Chicago Cubs. Chicago White Sox. Cincinnati Reds. Cleveland Indians. Colorado Rockies. Detroit Tigers. Houston Astros. Kansas City Royals. Los Angeles Angels. Los Angeles Dodgers. Miami Marlins. Milwaukee Udfa. Minnesota Twins. New York Mets. New York Yankees. Oakland Athletics.

Philadelphia Phillies. Pittsburgh Pirates. San Diego Padres. San Francisco Giants. Seattle Mariners. Louis Cardinals. Tampa Bay Rays. Texas Uefa champions league live streaming. Toronto Blue Jays. Washington Nationals. Atlanta Hawks. Boston Celtics. Brooklyn Nets. Charlotte Hornets. Chicago Bulls. Cleveland Oive. Dallas Mavericks. Denver Nuggets. Detroit Pistons. Golden State Warriors. Houston Rockets. Indiana Pacers.

LA Clippers. Los Angeles Lakers. Memphis Grizzlies. I have 1 of 2 Univision channels. I also have Galavision and Univision Deportes Network. Lague are 15 providers and Comcast is not one of them. Do you know why? Thank you so much and keep up the excellent work! It appears that the Univision games not televised on a linear channel will this year require a subscriber login. Last year, the non-televised games were available without any authentication. I think that you get the games via tudn.

From the apple app store page:. Thank you for the update on upcoming matches and for the info on channel changes. We do get some of the South American leagues here too occasionally. Select games from smaller continental European clubs are shown via mycujoo. But it appears that the other games are available on a club-by-club basis. Unfortunately, the vast majority of them are not available to viewers in the United States.

Well that is shocking! Would make sense for CBS to start their coverage early, but uefa champions league live streaming they basically brand new in covering this type of event, would also make sense for UCL to give it to someone more established in soccer for the resumption of the tournament and give CBS lead time for next year make it a 4 year deal instead of 3?

ESPN makes sense, as does Fox. As a beIN fan would also be funny if they got it and everyone complains about not getting that channel…. I agree with everything you typed. TNT network should have never gotten the Champions League TV contract as they are not a good sports covering network and do not have good qualified people to manage it.

We also cannot watch any games in English without paying, I hate listening to Univision as they only broadcast in Visit, which is a pain to my ears. A uefa champions league live streaming shame on UEFA. A big uefa champions league live streaming on TNT.

They should have never uefa champions league live streaming in winning this contract a they are simply incapable in handling it and doing a good job. No, I am not happy as CBS will start their coverage next year in It is also disheartening on why TNT stopped covering this year, they should have at least broadcasted all the games starting August 7th between Real Madrid at Manchester City, and continue coverage till the final in Lisbon website August They offer a 7-day free uefa champions league live streaming ,ive it is worth trying it.

My anger and disappointment is at Leagye for just cancelling their coverage before this season was completed. They should have at least completed this whole season. I will not miss their poor coverage anyway. I am also very angry and disappointed at stupid and greedy UEFA for not acting in a proper way to service English speaking soccer fans in the US.

Uefa champions league live streaming poor decisions are most unbecoming and very poor business I am trying to be polite here. TNT stfeaming have at least covered till the end of this season…. Their abysmal disregard to all US soccer fans is unpardonable.

Watch Champions League online: Live stream, TV channels, schedule

Agree with everything above. If streamong super elite rich person hates soccer so much they want to destroy the game in USA, then the contract to TNT and not showing the games is how you do that. Amazing TNT really had no idea what they were getting into with this. Any clue who has taken the remainder of this years CL?

CBS is next year but not Aug games. Remember that all matches starting with the quarter-finals are all going to be held in Lisbon and are single elimination matches, no more home and away matches, so these games should be very exciting. They offer a 7-day free trial.

Maybe it is worth buying this just for a month. You can watch these matches for free on Univision if you have this channel available, but it is only in Spanish. The only free way to watch these games in English is to find a free online streaming site, Google should come in handy in finding them. Again, UEFA fumbled these arrangements very badly. If we are lucky…. More matches will be available on TV too just as soon as the decisions are made on which matches will be on English-language TV.

Thank you Christopher Harris for all your help and information. This page must have been updated to include a uefa champions league live streaming of new and useful current information, which I had not seen before. We soccer fans appreciate all your good efforts. Stay well and wish you oive the best. Today, July 25,I checked what Leagke read the following on the top of this page here: Manchester City vs.

It is possible that this schedule has not been updated yet …. If and home this information is ever updated and corrected please share it here. Of course, they can always change their mind. Hi Christopher Harris, thanks for your prompt reply and explanation.

You could be absolutely right as I too expect this scheduling information to be corrected and updated closer to game day. Thanks continued lot for all your help strdaming information, we all soccer fans appreciate all that you do here. Have a wonderful day and stay well and healthy, we need you.

The advantage is you can watch this channel on your TV with this new coming app and without needing to stream it through your WiFi or Internet. Check with your TV provider. Champlons luck all. Chris do you think CBS is uefa champions league live streaming only going to show the final on all access? That seems horribly inconsistent with their prior claims. When Turner had the rights, none of the games were on over-the-air television. My question is will I able to watch the Streamkng League through my Prime account or will I have to pay for a separate subscription?

If anyone can answer this question it is greatly appreciated. Thanks Chris. If you pay…. You are right Christopher. Amazon Prime does make available many shows and channels to Prime members, the sad fact is that many of these available offers are NOT free, the customer is forced to buy their selected packages at extra cost besides paying for Prime membership. I made this fact very clear in my earlier post which was deleted from here, I uefa champions league live streaming because I was unkind to Jeff Bezos.

Hopefully this one will be fixed in time. There is no DVR offered. A great relief to have that in place. Or does coverage begin at the Playoffs? Group Stage uefa champions league live streaming How much do those rights in the past cost. How in the world does acompany only get half a tournament. I guess this is the new streaming world we now live in. Is CBS interesting getting that or later?

Real played very poorly today to have any chance to eliminate Manchester City. The only consolation for Real fans is that at least we won the La Liga championship this season. Now we have to wait till the next season starts. It has been a very sad day for all Real Madrid fans. Real Madrid lost and got eliminated because of their French Connection. He picked wrong players for this very uefa champions league live streaming game and did not srreaming players till the game championd almost over.

Even though Zidane is highly regarded as a brilliant coach his stupid stubbornness is also his downfall. I will not be sad if and uefa champions league live streaming Zidane departs Real Madrid.

His personal stubborn and poor decisions have hurt this team enormously, Had he planned smarter and more logically Real would have uefa champions league live streaming a much better chance to win and advance to the quarter-finals. Champion: Bayern Munich. You are welcome to use my tips and call your bookie and get rich. Hi guys, anyone getting rich with my accurate picks?

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qmcareers · 3 years

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Entrepreneur of the month: Karthik Swaminathan

Karthik took part in our QIncubator programme, and has since gone on to develop his business, Nostalgiera, an online market place for buying and selling vintage items. We asked him about how he got to where he is today, and how Careers and Enterprise helped along the way!

Could you give us an elevator pitch of your business?

Nostalgiera is an online marketplace platform where users can discover, shop and sell collectible and vintage items, antiques and memorabilia. We curate the sellers to ensure that the products listed on the website are verified and as described. This also eases the search and discovery experience for the user.

What inspired you to start Nostalgiera?

Many great businesses today have come up by focusing on a small problem faced by many in a marketplace, and creating a better solution for it. Uber did it for transport, Etsy did it for handmade goods, StockX did it for sneakers and Airbnb did it for home rentals. Most of these were initially transacted on bigger marketplaces but eventually found a home here because it was a better, more focused solution to the problem.

I noticed similar issues transacting when trying to buy collectible type of goods on other marketplaces, because they cater to a wider category of goods and so the discovery process wasn’t great. Plus, there are issues with accuracy of the product listing and its authenticity. So I figured it would be interesting to start a dedicated marketplace for collectors, building that community and addressing their particular needs and issues. Since the focus was on goods from the past that invoke a feeling of nostalgia – I decided to call the business Nostalgiera.

What is your biggest achievement?

It’s still very early on and we’re pre-launch, but I would say I’m really proud of the small team I’ve built. The company was founded a few days before the first lockdown began and so the early hires and working with them initially had to be done remotely. It’s tough as it is to build a founding team, and even more so when you’re not in the same environment. But I’m extremely lucky and the few people we’ve brought on have been amazing and extremely passionate about what we’re doing.

It was crucial to creating an environment where people are motivated to work on their tasks – remotely – from the get go. Many conversations took place for over a month before we began meeting in person and there are still some I haven’t had the chance of meeting personally. It’s all down to luck, but I’ll put it in here as my biggest achievement.

You participated in the Careers and Enterprise QIncubator programme. What skills did you learn from your time on the programme?

QIncubator was a great learning experience. Each session covered an important area of starting or scaling a business, and there were important takeaways from each. The mentors and guest lecturers who came in during sessions and gave advice in smaller groups was also constructive and we got to ask them questions.

It was also interesting to see the different kinds of businesses and ideas that people were working on. Many sounded extremely unique and offered great value. It also encouraged you to explain your idea in simple and clear terms which is very important.

What tips would you give to any students/ graduates who are thinking of starting a business?

If you have an idea that you’re passionate about and have done your research on it, your best bet is to give it a shot, especially if its online. It’s becoming increasingly easier and cheaper to set up a website for a product or service and market it, even organically, on social media.

If you are confident in your idea, you can bootstrap it, create a first version of your product or service and give it to your users to get their feedback. It doesn’t cost much to start. You’ll then have a better idea if its worth working on further and the changes you might have to make. Starting with just the first steps is better than thinking long about all the reasons it might not work

Do you have a business idol? If you had the chance to ask them one question what would it be?

I’m really inspired by the story of Airbnb and its founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gabbia. They started the company around the time of the 2008 crisis and didn’t get much traction early on because everyone thought the idea of letting strangers into their homes was stupid. But they carried on and did some unusual but effective things to bring on their first users and listers. They were advised to focus on making the product for only a small set of core users and make them extremely happy with the service – this proved extremely effective. They also focused a lot on the product’s design and user experience.

I would probably ask them how they would navigate starting and scaling Airbnb if they were launching it now as a new idea in the midst of a pandemic, where they couldn’t go and talk to their users (they would knock on doors and take free professional shoots of early listers’ homes, to incentivise them).

What are your top recommendations at the moment? (i.e. webinars, podcasts, books etc.)

If you plan on starting a business, it’s important to know about the past successes and failures in your line of business and business in general. The Everything Store about Jeff Bezos and Amazon and Steve Jobs (the book), for example, are great books to learn how ideas turn into business empires. Learning from their journey, you can pattern match or have a frame of reference when you potentially come across a similar situation. Fireside chats or interviews with founders of companies you admire are also great places to look.

More generally, I think all the information you’ll ever need is available for free on YouTube. It’s also presented in a really clear and practical manner so you can reference them as and when you need to. Y-Combinator has some great videos and resources on starting and scaling a business. The Lean Startup is a great book to learn how to bootstrap your idea.

What is next for you and for your business?

We plan to launch our website to a few users sometime in mid-December. In the meantime and for the near future, we’ll navigate the COVID-19 climate and grow our user base as well as start generating revenue. We’ll also focus on growing the team – especially on the product side. Our website today has all the core functionality that other major marketplace platforms offer but we want to build and provide a more personalised experience for our users and collectors, as well as an app.

Nostalgiera Website

Instagram: @nostalgiera

E-mail: [email protected]

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luwucas04 · 4 years

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𝐇𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞

Personally, every day I grow more and more disappointed with the masses of humanity and people with a large portion of power within society. More than ever it’s become so prominent just how people putting financial gain ahead of the well-being of others during the current global crisis we are currently living through is so utterly, disgustingly evil. I’ve noticed that how the world runs and the lack of attention to grave issues regarding the prosperity of nature and humans in general is very unfortunately dominated by billionaires and other capitalists, all with disgustingly little regard for any decency pertaining to morality or the greater good. If they can’t gain from it, they simply don’t care. They are more concerned about their economic status, gain, and the economy itself than the things that have real value when it comes to the betterment of our Earth and its people.

To be specific, right off the bat we have Jeff Bezos. He is THE richest man on the planet. The average person spending one measly dollar is equivalent to Jeff Bezos spending 1.2 million dollars. Adding to this, he roughly makes well over $2,000 every second. He is 36% richer than the entire British Monarchy (or than at least what we know the British Monarchy has). And what does he do with this tremendous amount of wealth? The absolute bare minimum. The only thing he himself has recently done was contribute a small donation of $100 million toward US food banks. Of course, any donation counts, but in this man’s case that’s just like a regular person donating less than 90 dollars: easy and not impressive considering just how wealthy he really is. What’s more, amidst the vast struggling within anyone below upper-class, him along with countless other selfish men are profiting from this. Just within the last couple MONTHS Jeff Bezos has gained 24 billion dollars. Yet, funding issues still remain, healthcare is overflowing, and the working class is suffering. And guess what! Just a few days ago he was announced to be well on his way to becoming the world’s first ever TRILLIONAIRE. I don’t know about you, but trillionaires should absolutely not exist on this planet whatsoever. There are too many injustices to be able to hoard that much money for yourself.

Rich people and even governments are fighting to reopen businesses and the conventional running of day-to-day life solely for the sake of ‘saving the economy’ and their profits. They don’t care about the well-being and safety of others. Minorities and the most vulnerable within society aren’t profitable to them, therefore they don’t exist as something that requires their attention or consideration. They have the privilege to do such incredible things with the wealth they have acquired—but they don’t. They stand by inhumane working conditions within their own companies. They silently watch people struggle and die within the situations they help to ensure. They choose to use their positions of power to prey on and assault others and get away with it. These figures of ‘authority’ do all they can to make it look like workers are being brave for stepping up during these times but do absolutely nothing to ease their material conditions. Oh, wait, the minimum wage was just upped by four whole dollars. That’s definitely going to help protect them from the novel coronavirus and put more food on the table, that’s so kind of them for their generous consideration.

Sorry for the heavy tangent on capitalism, but as of late rich people have been exceedingly getting on my nerves in ways I genuinely cannot describe.

However that aside, I’ve ALSO noticed changes in how humanity tries to bring itself together in a way! In my case, a lot of the bands I like have been providing (pre-recorded from past performances) concerts available to livestream on YouTube and various other insider-personal takes on their music. Those have been really fun; it’s usually on designated Thursdays and Fridays and I have to be awake for 10 am when a concert starts, we (me by myself) go to town for like 3 hours, then I go downstairs to have lunch. Or, a few weeks ago this other group had a 3-day-long (again, pre-recorded) livestream (that started at 11 pm this time) and I ended up staying up till around 3 am with my friend. I had a light stick from when I actually went to their concert in 2018, I was able to sync it up through their app and it probably looked like a low-key rave was going on from the cars passing by. Very good times.

From a non-personal standpoint, I recall seeing videos of people on their balconies in Italy coming out and singing and playing instruments together as a neighbourhood. That was very nice to see, but it’s also worth keeping in mind that is one of the best-case scenario situations and those people were lucky enough to indulge in something like that so nonchalantly. Not to say enjoying yourself isn’t allowed, but it should be acknowledged that just looking at lockdown like that is romanticizing the whole of what’s really going on, as it’s not that glamourous for everybody.

It’s been interesting seeing how people interact with others during their adjusted daily lives, too. I’ll go on walks sometimes and me and my friends will take turns sitting at the end of each other’s driveways and ‘hang out’ like we (well not really) would before. Adding on to human interaction, I’ve seen videos of people handing out packages of things like masks and hand sanitizer to people on the street, or leaving things out for delivery people, quite thoughtful, and maybe one could say even creative, things.

Living the life as you can see (I’m sitting on the grass)

Overall, when all is said and done, in my opinion, I think everything would be much better if the people who are in charge and dictate things A) weren’t painstakingly dense and simple minded—Angela Merkel and her policies would be a great example for countries like England and the US to take notes from; B) genuinely cared about their citizens and not just money and themselves; and C) properly absorbed science and legitimate medical advice and guidelines. Sadly, a lot of people, as you may be able to have tell, are very easily influenced and follow quite blindly *cough* ingesting cleaning products *cough*. But, fortunately that’s only a small portion of the population.

Conversely, this also goes to show other like-minded regular people, in a better light, become closer and stand in solidarity for what they know is best for them and the well-beings of others. Because the majority of us are all in the exact same situation doing the exact same thing, I feel like we can gain a better understanding and deeper familiarity with those around us. And this is really specific, but I think it’s cool how we now get to see some ‘famous people’ (right off the top of my head Doja Cat, Bernie Sanders and Taylor Swift are some examples) just livestreaming or posting themselves existing in their homes and generally having a good time. You wouldn’t get to see that part of their lives too much before. I think I’ve mentioned them over 50,000 times on this blog already, but the other day the band One Ok Rock (whose song I did on the guitar) released an upload of them recreating one of their old music videos while all the members are individually self-isolating.

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(Joke explained, the original title of the song is 「完全感覚Dreamer」 (Kanzen Kankaku Dreamer), but they changed it to「完全在宅Dreamer」 (Kanzen Zaitaku Dreamer); the original kankaku means ‘feeling’ or ‘intuition’, and the new zaitaku means ‘staying at home’.)

Above all, it’s difficult to decide whether this has either brought out the best or worst of humanity. I think it’s really subjective to your status and mindset that you had in the first place and what you were dealing with before all this. Adding onto that, we know how the news likes to focus on the negative the most. There are good people in this world, and grouping them together with those who think haircuts are a human right and aggressively protesting in large crowds is a good idea isn’t really fair to them.

As for myself, I haven’t noticed anything prominent come out of myself. The best I can do and what I’ve been doing right now is just following official medical guidelines, keeping distance and not go into super crowded areas, and simply wait for what happens next while staying informed. Nothing outstanding.

Here’s someone’s hot take on the subject matter as well, as much as this is 100% valid I strongly believe it’s worth acknowledging even the smallest good things happening from this too.

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davewakeman · 4 years

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3 Ideas About the Future of the Business of Tickets, Sports, and Entertainment...

Like all of you, I’ve been keeping an eye on the world while I’ve been physically distancing.

3 lessons from being social distanced with my family:

I’m an incredibly below average 4th-grade teacher. Give those folks a raise.

Having grown up in the very rural south, I’ve been practicing for this since I was a kid…so #winning.

If you can do stuff, good for you. But if you are struggling to keep it together, don’t let anyone shame you into needing to “crush it.”

I’ve been lucky to get to talk with folks around the entertainment industry over the last few weeks and I’ve connected with a lot of new folks through a Slack Channel I set up and my ‘Talking Tickets‘ newsletter.

If I could boil down all of our feelings and thinking into 3 big points, here they are:

When will events come back?

What will business look like?

How will things be different?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot and started a few blog posts that I never completed because they didn’t seem exactly right. But I’m going to give it another go this morning and share 3 ideas I’m going through as I wait out the coronavirus.

1. It isn’t just about what will be different at the end of this, but what will remain the same:

I think this is a lesson or an idea that Jeff Bezos is reported to talk about at Amazon.

I don’t know if that is true.

Can you really trust the internet?

But as a thought exercise, it is pretty valuable to think through this idea.

We know that things are going to be different after events come back and the world comes out of isolation due to the coronavirus.

What I’m concerned about is that we will rush to catch up with the new, shiny object at the expense of focusing on the basics and the things that have been and should always been core to many of our businesses.

Value

Customer

Marketing

As I look at the landscape now, I’m thinking about what will be the same and I’ve been a few big ones that are on the top of my mind:

Eventually, people are going to want to gather in groups and have shared experiences. To not do this would be to change something that has been true for thousands of years.

Arts, sports, and entertainment will be a way for us to collectively gather and share stories. I gave a talk in 2017 in England that was built around the idea of community as the biggest factor needed to ensure the long-term success of organizations that sell tickets. This is still true…and we will have to work hard to tell the stories that bring us together.

Some of the challenges that we will face coming out of the pandemic crisis will be trends and things that were already evident if you were looking at the right things. I think some of the challenges we are going to see were trends that we were likely ignoring along the way, but the shutdown due to the coronavirus is likely to make these trends prominent in a way they wouldn’t be before like poor attendance, pricing, demand creation, and more.

All of this means, what does this mean for all of us?

It means that as much as we are in a rush to find out where the “new normal” is, we need to think through our core processes, our core value, and what things are likely to be the same or to have been things that have often been the core value drivers of our business like:

Community

Connection with others

Experiences

What do you think?

2. I do think the canceling/postponing/rescheduling mess with companies like StubHub is going to leave a mark:

One of the big challenges with the “open up the economy right now” crowd is a misunderstanding of psychology and consumer psychology.

How do I mean?

Well, in theory, we are all going to say we are ready to open up the economy and get back to things ASAP.

At the same time, we are all likely to underestimate how cautious many of us will be and how scared we will collectively be if a second wave of the virus comes through right after we open business back up again.

In Martin Lindstrom’s book, Buy-Ology, Martin talks about people saying and thinking one thing and subconsciously acting differently.

This applies to StubHub, Ticketmaster, and all of the organizations that sell tickets.

Of course, customers are pissed at StubHub and making complaints right now. And, they may not even realize it now, but in all likelihood, the blowback from StubHub is going to touch all of us.

Why?

In a lot of ways, a company like StubHub bringing ticketing to the masses so successfully in the early stages of “Web 2.0” gave consumers confidence that buying things online was the way to go and safe.

Now, in a crisis, StubHub breaking their promises to their customers could have the same dampening effect on buying tickets, spending money on experiences, or just buying things that aren’t the essentials that you hold in your hand.

Someone sent me a note about a trend that was definitely going to emerge going forward is the “move to all-digital” and what if the opposite happens with tickets…folks get burned by ticketing companies in the face of the pandemic not being able to get refunds and they decide that digital tickets are scary because if you don’t have a hard stock ticket, what do you have?

This matters because just like the economy at large, everything is built on trust. And, when you break the trust…how do you recover it?

Far too often, you can’t.

3. There will be a reset with customers.

For a lot of folks, inside and outside of entertainment, I think that it was surprising how close to the edge so many businesses are.

People were shocked to find out that Live Nation is carrying over $3B in debt.

Eventbrite laying off a lot of staff seemed to come as a shock to folks.

In the UK, Premier League and football clubs have to open their books to the public. And, even when a lot of money was being made, teams and organizations were cash poor.

These examples and others being laid bare was likely eye-opening to a lot of folks that don’t regularly pleasure read Live Nation’s public disclosures and read the notes of football team’s trustee meetings.

What all of this tells me is that as an industry, we’ve kind of messed up our business models…a lot.

I had a conversation with a friend at a major team, global brand, and he said, “If we are being honest, our attendance never came back after the financial crisis.”

It is true.

Despite the numbers that teams in the States show, real attendance has fallen at an ugly and rapid clip.

Why is that the case?

From my conversations with fans, let’s go with their top 3:

Pricing

Competition

Discoverability

Pricing should be obvious. There are many fan indexes and stories that point out that the price to attend a game is outpacing inflation and reaching the point of just being a luxury.

I’ve written and spoken a lot over the years that if everything is premium, nothing is premium.

The premium we are putting on the live event experience runs right into the idea of competition. There are more things for folks to spend their money on than ever before.

So the value that we offer has got to meet what our customers feel is reasonable for the money we are charging.

Again, I’ve complained about the $17 Bud Lights at Nats Park a lot over the years and I will continue to do this because, honestly, it is offensive to most reasonable folks.

But when you compare that $17 Bud Light with average tickets around $30+ in a stadium that can get quite hot and has long lines, no crowds, and $50 parking…

Pretty soon that adds up to maybe meeting friends at Bluejacket down the street if I want to atmosphere or just staying home, going to a sports bar, or doing something else entirely.

The final point here is one that I got in close touch with while working on a start-up a few years back, folks just can’t even keep up with all the things that are going on in their towns.

This hit home when Tom Petty played the 9:30 Club and I had no idea until the day after the show.

You’d think I’d know, but you’d be wrong.

This happens over and over again.

We had research that showed how often folks missed events that they would love to attend and didn’t know they were coming until the day of or after the show had happened.

This may be anecdotal but when I had my friend, Stephen Glicken, on my podcast…he talked about the number of unsold tickets around the world being something like $56B.

Maureen Andersen has talked about the need for marketing and ticket sales to have a stronger working relationship on many occasions.

And, I’m a walking, talking billboard to the need to do a better job marketing.

All of this means that we need to recreate our contract with our fans.

In Australia in November, I did a workshop where I focused on working with some folks from the AFL, the Melbourne Racing Club, the Victoria Racing Club, Activity Stream, and a few other organizations to think through the process of putting their fans first.

I called the outcome “The Fans Bill of Rights” and a few of the idea at the core of the workshop were:

We need to let our fans know we care about them.

We want fans to feel like a part of our journey, win or lose.

We must reward fans for their attention and caring about our teams, games, events, bands, or performances.

Going forward we need to rethink our relationship with our fans and customers.

How will we do that?

We need to put the customer first by having the customer/fan be at the center of all the decisions we make.

Think through the value we offer from their point of view.

Give them a value that is commiserate with what we are charging them to attend.

I know this is going to be tough. But looking at how much revenue is coming in and how close to the edge businesses are running, just trying to get more money out of the folks that still come to live events isn’t likely to be a winning strategy…especially since we have no idea what the economic challenges from the pandemic induced financial crisis is likely to look like.

In general, this is where my head is.

What are you thinking through right now?

Let me know. You can connect with me in all the social media areas or send me an email [email protected]

Please follow and like us:

3 Ideas About the Future of the Business of Tickets, Sports, and Entertainment… was originally published on Wakeman Consulting Group

#entertainment #marketing #sales #sports #strategy #tickets

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dippedanddripped · 5 years

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“You want the truth? It’s hopeless. It’s completely hopeless.” That’s what Patagonia founder and chairman Yvon Chouinard told the L.A. Times about the plight of the earth amid climate change. In 1994. Regardless, Chouinard and his company have spent decades—and millions of dollars—fighting for environmental causes around the world while investing in more sustainable business practices. What’s more, Patagonia has embraced and promoted the B Corporation movement, while Chouinard led such efforts as 1% for the Planet, a collective of companies that pledged to donate 1% of sales to environmental groups and has raised more than $225 million since 2002. Meanwhile, over the past 46 years, Patagonia has become a billion-dollar global brand, making it the ultimate do-good-and-do-well company.

But Chouinard remains unsatisfied. The 81-year-old is more focused than ever on demonstrating, by Patagonia’s example, the lengths a company can go to protect the planet. During a break from fishing near his Wyoming home, Chouinard is both passionate and wry in discussing his business philosophy, what we get wrong about sustainability, why he’s so excited about regenerative agriculture, and Patagonia’s rising political machine.

Fast Company: How do we cope with the idea that to be in business means we are polluters and hurting the planet?

Yvon Chouinard: Everything man does creates more harm than good. We have to accept that fact and not delude ourselves into thinking something is sustainable. Then you can try to achieve a situation where you’re causing the least amount of harm possible. That’s the spin we put on it. It’s a never-ending summit. You’re just climbing forever. You’ll never get to the top, but it’s the journey.

FC: About eight months ago, you wrote a new mission statement for the company: “Patagonia is in business to save our home planet.” What impact has that had so far?

YC: It’s affected every single person’s job. Some more than others, but it’s got everybody thinking. We’ve made a commitment to be fossil-fuel-free by 2025. We’re invested in companies that are working on growing synthetic fibers, stuff made from plants rather than petroleum. We’re not just cleaning up our act in our own buildings and stuff; we’re going around to our suppliers and convincing them to use cleaner energy. Then we’re continuing to work on saving large areas of the planet that capture a lot of carbon. I’m personally working on a new state park down at the tip of South America, about 800,000 acres of peat bogs and swamps and 200,000 acres of sea, that sequesters more carbon than almost anywhere in the world.

FC: Ten years ago, you started getting into the food space, launching Patagonia Provisions and working on regenerative agriculture. Now you’ve been bringing those regenerative principles to your cotton supply chain. Did you always see that as the ultimate path?

YC: This is all pretty new. Scientists are just discovering how important agriculture is to climate change, both negatively and positively. [Environmentalist and entrepreneur] Paul Hawken has a book that lists 100 things that we can do to combat climate change [Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming]. Out of those 100, the most important that applied to us was agriculture, so we’re doubling down on regenerative organic agriculture. We’re working on a new certification that goes beyond organic. We’ve been using organically grown cotton for years, but all it does is cause a little bit less harm. So we decided to start growing it regeneratively and organically. We started with 150 farmers in India, small-scale farmers. We talked them into growing cotton with a minimum amount of tilling. Even with cotton now, we’re sequestering carbon. This is a big deal. Regenerative agriculture can’t be done on a large scale. It just can’t. These people are getting rid of their bugs by squashing them with their fingers. They’re stringing up lights to attract the insects at night and using natural methods. Then they’re using cover crops—chickpeas and turmeric, for which there is a big demand. And they’re using compost. We’re paying them an extra 10%, so [between that and the cover-crop revenue] they’ve almost doubled their income. Next year, we’ve got 580 small farmers who will grow cotton this way.

FC: What do you think of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk pursuing interplanetary travel and Mars and moon colonies because they don’t seem to believe that we can save our home planet?

YC: [Laughs] I think it’s pretty silly. And not just silly, but it’s really a shame. The monies that are going to space exploration should be used to save our own planet right now. We’re in a triage situation. Things are so grim. It’s World War III. I lived through World War II, and I remember what the country had to do to mobilize. You couldn’t buy sugar. You couldn’t buy meat. Being French Canadians, we were lucky in that we got horsemeat. [Laughs] That’s what has to happen with this global warming business. Here we’re just wasting this money going to Mars. I want to start doing some T-shirts that just have a rainbow trout on it, the T-shirt, and it says, there’s no rainbow trout on Mars, or screw Mars. We gotta do that.

FC: You’ve been pretty clear about your pessimism around the fate of the planet while remaining committed to trying to fix it. When we spoke back in 2017, you said something to the effect of “What’s the alternative, just sitting on my ass?” To what do you attribute your ability not to be nihilistic and to keep working toward that never-ending summit?

YC: The solution to depression is action, and I’ve got a clear idea what I need to do. A lot of people want to do something about global warming, but they don’t know where to start. It’s a lack of introspection and imagination. A guy in our fabric lab went to one of our suppliers in Japan and he said, “Hey, I see you’re buying your energy from coal-fired power plants. Why don’t you switch over to green power?” This is a giant Japanese factory. He said, “I hadn’t thought about that.” They looked into it, switched over to green energy, and it only cost them $7,000 more a year. So there you go. The guy never thought about it, but it sounded like a good idea. There is a lot of that low-hanging fruit around.

FC: What role has your Buddhism played in finding that approach?

YC: You can approach Zen in different ways. One way is you can sit there and contemplate your navel all day long. I just approached it through action, whether it’s sport or business.

FC: In the face of news like the Amazon rain forest burning or the current administration’s efforts to open up logging in Alaska, how do you stay motivated? Is it simply more action?

YC: Yeah, it is. We came out with a film that’s against offshore, penned fish farms and hatcheries, Artifishal. It has had a huge effect, particularly in Europe. Because of that film, a lot of the schoolchildren in Sweden are no longer fed farmed salmon. I just heard yesterday that Denmark is going to stop licensing any more offshore fish farms. Francis Mallmann, the chef, the barbecue king in Argentina, has taken salmon out of 19 of his restaurants worldwide. You see little victories like that, and it all adds up.

FC: That’s where your motivation comes from?

YC: Yes. It’s not like we’re sitting here all depressed. [Laughs] And Trump, we’re doing a big backsliding with this whole Trump administration, but they’ll be gone in another year or so. I’m convinced of that. Then we can get rid of all the stuff that he did, start over again.

FC: The Business Roundtable recently issued a statement expanding its definition of the purpose of a corporation from solely making money for shareholders to seeking to benefit all stakeholders, including employees, communities, and the environment. What did you think when you heard that?

YC: It’s a good first step. The ones that actually do it are going to be pretty pleasantly surprised that it leads to good business. The consumer, especially with consumer products, is expecting that from companies, and if you’re not doing it, you’re going to lose out.

FC: You’ve said in the past that you could convince anyone one-on-one that chasing growth for growth’s sake is bad and that embracing the ideals of sustainability, or responsibility, only makes you more profitable. If you were in that Business Roundtable, what would you say to the CEOs of JPMorgan Chase or Apple?

YC: If I had enough time, I would just give them example after example of how doing the right thing ended up making us more money. And the additional motivation was just believing in karma. It comes back every single time.

FC: Patagonia is a private company. Would it help your argument to more regularly disclose financials?

YC: It probably would. [Laughs] But I don’t know. Let’s say you’re a gasoline company, selling gas at the pump. There’s a gas station on every corner, basically. Would you go out of your way to go to the one that was a member of 1% for the Planet, and on your receipt it said, “Thank you for spending $40 on gasoline. Forty cents of that is going to go to planting trees, saving the planet”? I mean, be very specific about where it’s going to go.

FC: Probably, yes.

YC: Gasoline is gasoline, right? You can’t sell your gasoline on [the idea] that yours is superior to someone else’s.

FC: Though they try, but yeah.

YC: We all know it’s the same stuff. [Laughs] Yet they spend millions in advertising themselves. For what? It’s ridiculous. It’s not based on anything tangible. But this would be a great marketing ploy.

FC: In the past, you consulted with folks at large companies, such as Walmart, and came away not so convinced of their actual ability to pursue sustainability. If we’re looking to create a better version of capitalism, what do you think should be done with publicly traded companies?

YC: You’ve got to reinvent capitalism altogether. It leads to a whole bunch of poor people and a few extremely rich people. Ultimately, capitalism is going to lose its customers. There won’t be anybody to buy the product because everybody is going to be so poor. The whole thing is going to crash before the next election, probably. We’re going to get another huge recession, and everybody’s going to lose out on their stocks. There we go again. It’s a system that’s got to change. The whole stock thing is dependent on growth. Look at Amazon. Amazon doesn’t make a profit. They don’t pay any taxes. Nothing. But they’re growing like crazy. It’s all growth, growth, growth—and that’s what’s destroying the planet. I’m dealing with that myself. We’re a billion-dollar company, over a billion, and I don’t want a billion-dollar company. The day they announced it to me, I hung my head and said, “Oh God, I knew it would come to this.” I’m trying to figure out how to make Patagonia act like a small company again.

FC: How do you stop growth?

YC: There is a book from the Henokiens, an organization of companies that have been in business for 200 years minimum. Of course there are hardly any American companies; they are either Japanese or European. How are they able to stay in business for 200 years? Well, they couldn’t grow 15% a year for 200 years, let me tell you that. [Laughs] They were able to diversify, and they’re not the same company as when they started. Some of them started out as a blacksmith’s shop, like I did. But they have purposely held back on growth for the sake of longevity.

FC: What do you make of proposals like the Green New Deal? Is that encouraging?

YC: It is, absolutely. I’m an avowed socialist. I’m proud of it. That was a dirty word just a few years ago until Bernie Sanders brought it up. It was equated with communism and that whole thing. Yet the countries around the world that are most squared away are all socialistic countries like those in Scandinavia. I’m not talking about Venezuela, which is a disaster. That’s not a socialistic country. That’s a . . . I don’t know what.

FC: What role can businesses like Patagonia play in advocating for that national mobilization effort to save the planet and change how we work in the process?

YC: We’re keeping quiet in the primary election, but for the national presidential election, we’re going to be very, very active. We’re going to spend a lot of money and basically say, vote the climate deniers out. Anyone who is a climate denier or even on the fence, vote them out because they are evil. They are out to destroy our planet, and we’re not going to stand for it. We got involved in the last election and we helped elect a couple of senators in Montana and Nevada. I had no idea how much power we really have.

FC: That was the first time Patagonia pushed for and supported individual candidates. What were the lessons out of that experience?

YC: They were going to be close races, and I’ve heard from them both that we made the difference. When we have that amount of power, let’s use it. Because the opposition is using it. You’ve got the Koch family and the fossil-fuel companies: They’re going to be influencing the elections. We’ve got to do the same thing.

FC: You mentioned Artifishal. Even with Patagonia’s smaller, shorter films—I liked [surfer] Dave Rastovich’s Saving Martha, on Tasmanian fish farms—there’s an aspect of fun with them, whether it’s surfing or climbing, combined with activism for the causes you believe in. Over the last number of years, you’ve invested more in that kind of storytelling to get these issues across to people in a way that’s engaging. I don’t want to call it marketing, but has this become a much bigger part of the company?

YC: Well, that’s for sure. We’ve got a propaganda machine going. After we were involved in this film 180 Degrees South [a 2010 documentary retracing Chouinard’s 1968 journey from Ventura, California, to Patagonia, Chile] and then DamNation [Patagonia’s 2014 movie about the damage dams can do], we realized the power that we have in film. I had no idea. With DamNation, we got the whole Obama administration to rethink hydropower. They no longer considered it green energy. Now it’s back, of course, with Trump, but that was it; they said hydropower is not green energy, and that was as a result of our film. We recognize that people make decisions based on emotion, and the best way to elicit emotion is through film. It’s not through books or catalogs or speeches. So we’re in the film business. We’re working on 10 films at a time these days. Some of them don’t make a cent. But that’s not the purpose.

FC: A lot of people look at you as an inspirational figure, but who inspires you? Who is Yvon Chouinard’s Yvon Chouinard?

YC: [Laughs] Well, I think . . . I don’t know. There are a few people around the world who are doing really great stuff. Huey Johnson, who has a nonprofit in Marin County, in San Francisco, has been around a long time. He started Conservation International, the Nature Conservancy, the Trust for Public Land, and he’s got an organization called Resource Renewal Institute. The guy never gives up. He is an optimist. I’m a pessimist. He’s been an inspiration. [Environmentalist] David Brower. [Oceanographer] Sylvia Earle. Jane Goodall is trying to save her chimpanzees, and they’re on their way out. It’s like Friends of the Polar Bear. Forget about trying to save the polar bear; you gotta save the planet to save the polar bear. That’s depressing stuff, but they hang in there. Goodall is on the road 360-something days a year. It kills me to spend just a few days. I just got back from Labrador and oh my God, I mean . . .

FC: That’s far from Wyoming.

YC: Getting back from Labrador to Jackson Hole was an effort. I ran from one end of the Boston airport to the other, because my plane from Halifax was late. I passed 36 gates, and they weren’t in a row. They were in different terminals. I practically had a heart attack. [Laughs] And get this: I get to the gate, and they’ve shut it down. The plane is ready to take off. There’s a guy there who says, “Hey, I know who you are. I told them to keep the gate open for just a couple minutes more. I knew you were gonna be coming.” And they did, and they got me on. The guy says, “Hey, I’m a cinematographer. I know all about all the films you make. Keep up the good work.” And he walked away. I thought, Jesus, this guy is an angel. [Laughs] That’s the karmic kickback I’m talking about.

THE SECRET TO FIGHTING CLIMATE CHANGE

Patagonia is helping to lead the shift to regenerative agriculture, which sequesters carbon rather than producing it. Here’s how it works.

1. Create healthy soil

During photosynthesis, plants use solar energy to extract carbohydrate molecules, or sugar, from carbon dioxide. Those carbon-based sugars are extruded from the plant’s roots, feeding bacteria and fungi into the nearby soil. Those microorganisms turn soil minerals into nutrients that feed plants and fight disease.

2. Avoid pesticides

To keep the soil as healthy as possible, growers eschew chemicals (akin to organic farming), relying instead on natural methods—from hanging lights at night to physically removing and killing insects by hand.

3. Plant cover crops

In between seasons of growing cash crops such as cotton, farmers cultivate cover crops such as turmeric and chickpeas, which make the soil hardier by protecting it against nutrient loss and erosion, as well as helping to control pests. The farmers then have an additional crop to sell to supplement their income.

4. Use low-till farming

Tilling churns and disturbs roots—where most plants store a significant amount of their carbon—and other rich organic matter in the soil, making it less robust and productive. Even worse, it releases carbon into the atmosphere. By contrast, low- or no-till growing lets the carbon remain sequestered in the soil. Even when the roots decay, the CO2 emissions take a long time to reach the earth’s surface and atmosphere.

#issue 236 #patagonia #outerwear blog #sustainable fashion

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shitizsrivastava · 5 years

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TB#7 || How “Rags to riches” Stories are destroying you?

Well, I have a theory and the theory is that Rags to Riches stories are mostly fake and are destroying lots of young minds.

Before I even begin telling you who rags to riches stories are destroying you, here are few facts.

Jeff Bezos was born rich. So was Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Warren Buffet.

None of them is rags to riches stories.

Jeff Bezos’ grandfather was one of the largest landowners in Texas. And most of them attended pricey Ivy-League universities such as Princeton, Harvard and Columbia at the undergrad level where scholarships are scarce.

When Jeff Bezos started Amazon, his parents invested several X hundred thousand dollars into the startup. And that was in 1990s money.

Father of Bill gates was already a millionaire as he was an attorney and in a time when laying on your hands on a computer was a distant dream, Bill Gates and his friend were in a posh school where only rich kids studied and they had many computers in their lab. When he dropped out, he already had the seed money from his father to start his company.

Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk often sell their immigrant stories but they already have rich parents who gave them seed money to start their own business. While Zuckerberg got a handsome check from his father to start his business when he dropped out, Musk was not so lucky and got less money. They do however spend it nicely.

Warren Buffet’s father was a wealthy stockbroker and investment advisor himself who was elected to Congress four times. He got all the help from his father to start his own career.

I have numerous examples like that -

Shahrukh Khan’s mother was a magistrate and she had a three-story house in Delhi. He had his own car when buying a car was not something which any middle class would think of. He would play Video games in his home in 80s when kids at that time in India hadn’t heard that such a thing even existed. He had ten thousand rupees in his pocket when he reached Mumbai which was a big amount on the early 90’s and stayed in a five-star hotel, Sun and Sand, which costs more than 13K a room for one day, today.

Amitabh Bachchan was from a nice well to do family. His father was a national poet who was very popular and had great family connections with the first family of India at that time, Nehru Family. He studied at one of the most expensive schools of India at Nainital, Sherwood and later did a well-paid job at Merchant Navy in Kolkata. He had travelled extensively and after his marriage, when he was not a big actor, he had planned his honeymoon in London which is quite unaffordable for any struggler even today.

Mahatma Gandhi went to South Africa to get his law degree at a time when going abroad was an expensive idea. He not only went there, but he also had a successful licenced practice there before he came to India and practised poverty.

But then a question arises — why lie about their past?

It is because people love Rags to riches story.

They like to believe in their idols and they like to believe in self-made men.

It all comes back to one thing — you have to dramatize even your life to sell it.

No one likes to hear that someone was rich and he got richer. That for people is not an achievement.

Donald Trump who is a billionaire once told a story how he had no money once and he made a comeback to being a rich again.

He knew that people would admire that story of his and those who didn’t know much, in fact, did. He had to shed his billionaire's son background to get some admiration for his immense wealth.

Steve Jobs also had a famous story that how he became bankrupt after his ambitious company, NeXT didn’t work which he started after being thrown out of Apple, he had to struggle his way to the top.

Steve Jobs inherited millions of dollars from Apple when he was thrown out, not to mention the royalties he got from them. How do you think he produced a mega-budget animated film called Toy Story which starred Tom Hanks after an expensive failure of NeXT.

Successful men like people to believe that whatever they have done was all because of them alone and they had to struggle a lot to reach where they are.

Here is the problem with these stories.

People actually believe them to be true and want to imbibe them.

Rags to riches stories give them a believability that they can do it too.

It gives them a false indication that it can be their story.

They keep convincing themselves that if they can do it, why can’t them.

They also start believing in the myth that without a painful struggle they will never get anything worthy in life.

They start believing that anything worthwhile can only happen to them when they will go through extreme pain.

They start believing that being a poor person is a virtue and being a rich man is a vice.

They start believing that anyone who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth is evil.

Have you ever realized that how much rich people talk about money is not an answer to everything in life, how they hate having so much wealth, how being successful is not the solution to life’s problem and yet they keep doing what they are doing instead of donating all their wealth and living like a poor.

It is because they say it to make people like them.

Abhorrence to money and wealth is still seen by most people as a sign of nobility and great moral standards.

Well, it is not true.

That is why poor people remain poor while rich people keep getting richer day by day.

People spend their entire lives struggling and not ever becoming a millionaire and then they blame luck for it.

Let me break another myth for you -

Luck has nothing to do anything with it.

My advice -

Don’t believe in Rags to riches story, while some may be true, most are just created by men to glorify themselves in front of people.

It is not necessary that you have to struggle or face a tremendous amount of pain to get successful and rich. You just have to work hard focussed in one single direction.

Biographies are the one-sided glorified version of a man who really wants people to admire him for the kind of man that he was after he is gone. Don’t believe every word of it.

While it is good to get motivated by listening to successful people, usually they are nice speakers, it is not necessary to walk on the same path to get successful.

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giancarlonicoli · 5 years

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Newsonomics: Inside the new L.A. Times, a 100-year vision that bets on tech and top-notch journalism

It’s a few years behind its East Coast brethren in New York and Washington. But tens of millions in new investment and ambitious digital plans are showing a path back to its former prominence — and beyond.By

KEN DOCTOR

@kdoctor

March 27, 2019, 2:05 p.m.

Look past the view of the 105. Beyond it is the unfolding of the 21st century, delayed but now in full force at the Los Angeles Times.

That’s my big takeaway from a visit to Patrick Soon-Shiong’s new temple to next-stage journalism. Last summer, he moved his just-purchased L.A. Times (whose lease was expiring) to one of the sprawling L.A.’s least glamorous addresses: 2300 E. Imperial Highway, El Segundo, CA 90245. (Google’s satellite view is revealing.) That move stirred some newsroom complaints early on, though the new address seems to have receded as an issue as Soon-Shiong and editor-in-chief Norm Pearlstine have laid out their fast-paced, if still incremental, visions of a new Times.

The visions are big enough, but they stand out even more dramatically in a newspaper business still cutting its way to the future, looking to mergers and acquisitions as a short-term lifeline in the cash-poor trade. Like The New York Times and The Washington Post, the new L.A. Times wants to tell a contrarian story: Investment in the daily press underlines a deep belief in the power of journalism, optimism that it can make both readers’ lives and their democracy run better amid the gobsmacking rate of political and technological change.

“So my concern was editorial, the newsroom. That was my very, very, very first concern,” Soon-Shiong told me in a two-hour interview. “I knew that that’s where I needed to go as my first and highest priority. My second priority now is the business model, but the business model, sadly — and I don’t mean this to sound in any way arrogant — has to be consistent with this next generation, not with the past generation,” says the 66-year-old Soon-Shiong. He’s put his money behind his ideas, taking a loss of about $50 million this year as he marches the Times forward.

Soon-Shiong has been a man of some mystery in the news trade, his entry having been midwifed clumsily by one-time Tronc chairman Michael Ferro. In our wide-ranging interview — to be published in full here tomorrow — the med-tech billionaire connects many of the missing dots that have characterized coverage of him over the last several years.

The Times’ turnaround from those bad old days (actually quite recent!) of the Tronc/Tribune/Ferro reign is nothing less than remarkable.

The Times’ newsroom had unionized as Tronc’s tragicomic handling of its properties reached a denouement, and Ferro made Soon-Shiong an offer he figured he shouldn’t refuse. Soon-Shiong believes that had Tronc/Tribune kept title to the Times, it would have cut as many as another 100 jobs in the newsroom in short order.

His June 2018 purchase stopped any new cuts in their tracks.

Norm Pearlstine, one of America’s top editors whose career had been built at The Wall Street Journal, Time Inc. and Bloomberg, inherited a newsroom of about 440, including part-timers and contractors. That still ranked among the largest in the country; The New York Times counts 1,550, The Washington Post about half that number.

Want a number that symbolizes the Soon-Shiong era? That 440 less than a year ago stands today at 535 newsroom employees.

Many in the business thought that Pearlstine, 76, would play something of a caretaker role — a short opening stint to help orient Soon-Shiong in this business and then stepping aside to pick a younger successor. But Soon-Shiong told me Monday that he’s signed Pearlstine to a new multi-year contract extending his term as executive editor.

“When Norm agreed to come out of retirement and become the executive editor of the Los Angeles Times, we were thrilled,” he said. “He has a long, impeccable track record as a journalist and as a media executive. He is truly enjoying the challenge of guiding the L.A. Times through the transition and positioning the company to succeed. As part of that, he is developing a diverse team of managers and possible successors. We are moving forward in a very positive direction and Norm and I have agreed to a multi-year extension of his term as executive editor. I could not be more pleased.”

How does Pearlstine now look at this almost unique turnaround opportunity? “I’m a little bit torn because I don’t think I’ve ever met an executive who did a turnaround who looked back and said, ‘I went too fast,'” he said. “So the pressure intention is to want to move quickly. But that said, I think we need a pause to just catch our breath and integrate…If you think about [Soon-Shiong’s] ambitions and what the brand lets you do, we need to do additional hiring as we roll out some of these products that we think will induce people to pay for content. What we’ve done over the last eight months has been to fill critical vacancies that had resulted from either layoff, buyouts, or attrition.”

Pearlstine described his Times journey so far in depth in two additional hours of conversations. (We’ll run a transcript of that interviews, like my one with Soon-Shiong, later this week here at Nieman Lab.)

It’s not just the number that matters — it’s also the kind of hires Pearlstine is making, near the top of the newsroom and throughout it. In leadership, he lured away from the East Coast both The New York Times’ Sewell Chan, who heads the news desk and is also responsible for audience engagement, and Slate’s top editor Julia Turner, who is creating the Times’ playbook for upping its arts and entertainment game. In this hiring binge, Pearlstine aims to do both the basic blocking and tackling required to heal an ailing news enterprise and to draw from the new world of digital journalism. His key hires of food critic Bill Addison from Eater and Peter Meehan from Lucky Peach signal an appreciation of journalism that comes from beyond old “newspaper” formulas.

But even that almost 25 percent headcount increase in less than a year marks just the beginning of the Times’ expansion ambitions.

Behold the fifth floor

Among the projects soon to get more attention is on the fifth floor. There, Soon-Shiong says, about 100 new staffers — about 80 of them still to be hired — will operate what he calls a new transmedia operation. The idea — in video, TV, audio, VR, games, and plain old-fashioned social management — is multiplication.

The strategy: Even as fundamental newsroom resources are being rebuilt, magnify their impact across all the means of distribution and audience engagement that technology now enables. Which will work and which will prove to be experiments to retire? Soon-Shiong is the first to say he’s not sure. (A previous transmedia company he backed, Fourth Wall Studios, closed in 2012.) But while his optimism about applying his Nant medical tech to journalism was sometimes lampooned when he first bought into Tronc three years ago, he’s undaunted in explaining tomorrow’s potential.

Take another number: 157,000. That’s the number of digital subscriptions the L.A. Times has today. It’s roughly doubled over the past two tumultuous Times years. The growth rate is significant, as is the fact that it’s more than any other “local” daily in the U.S. But Soon-Shiong sees it as just the first handhold on a towering mountain. He wants to get to 1 million quickly and has a stretch target of 4 million over the next four years.

That quest for fast scale helps explain the Times’ decision to become a major partner of Apple in this week’s launch of the Apple News Plus subscription package. It’s another step in increasing reader revenue. Both The New York Times and The Washington Post declined to join Apple’s service, it makes more sense for Soon-Shiong’s paper. The L.A. Times wants to do everything it can to get “discovered” by new readers, and it has much less to fear from the cannibalization of existing direct digital subscribers. Says Soon-Shiong of the deal: “Apple News editors will be able to curate current and recent coverage from all of our sections…We are delighted to be one of just two U.S. newspapers selected to participate at launch and to share in the revenue from the premium subscription service, which will help fund our journalism.” (Some content, such as the paper’s archives, won’t be accessible through Apple News Plus.)

As for Soon-Shiong’s stretch goal, New York Times CEO Mark Thompson’s recently setting of a 10 million subscriber total by 2025 is instructive. Thompson had laid out that seemingly impossible number two years ago, but back then, he didn’t put a date on it. Now, having reached 4.3 million total subscribers, no one laughs at the 10 million aspiration anymore. That tells us a lot about the digital news business and all the ground Soon-Shiong’s paper will have to make up quickly.

How far is his paper behind The Washington Post or that other Times? (“You mean The New York Times,” he notes several times in our conversation, as if to emphasize there is another Times back in the national media conversation.) Jeff Bezos faced a similar challenge when he bought the Post six years ago, and the paper’s ascent since then has surprised even the most skeptical about the chances of journalistic rebirth. (Amazingly, when Bezos bought the Post, its newsroom staff was smaller than the L.A. Times’.)

Figure the L.A. Times is 6 to 10 years behind its East Coast models, the “papers” it once called its brethren and would like to again.

As it retools, the L.A. Times faces new competition — including from that other Times. The New York Times is intently focused on California, home to 40 million people. It has more digital subscribers in California than in the state of New York. Its California Today newsletter is its Trojan Horse into the Golden State, competing with the L.A. Times’ “Essential California” newsletter. Even as the L.A. Times works to maintain its claim on food coverage, The New York Times went and hired its first-ever California restaurant critic.

Maybe the meaning of the geographic identifiers in these two “newspaper” brands will be something quite different in the years ahead.

Why the long turnaround?

Why might it take the L.A. Times a half decade or more — and continued reinvestment — to enjoy success similar that of The New York Times or The Washington Post?

While any keen Angeleno will tell you that the Times’ troubles began when the Chandler family sold it (and the rest of Times Mirror) to Tribune Company in 2000, it’s been the past decade that inflicted the most pain to what was once one of the most powerful and influential of American press institutions. Certainly, the Chicagoans who ran Tribune — and often tried to run the Times from Chicago — never quite got it right, but it was the seizure of Tribune by bottom-feeder financier Sam Zell in 2007 that sent it into a deepening tailspin.

Throughout it all — Zell’s reign, his five-year “bankruptcy from hell,”Tribune’s split into newspaper and broadcast companies, new management, and then the company’s second legal seizure by the arrivisteFerro in 2016 — the Times resisted. That resistance was both staunch and at times comical. The L.A. Times newsroom would come to be known, rightly or wrongly, as the toughest room in the country.

Amid the turmoil, the L.A. Times was more a punchline than a setter of the news agenda, even though its newsroom through the years (and still today) has produced among the highest-quality newspaper reporting and writing in the country.

There was the midnight firing of publisher Austin Beutner by then-CEO Jack Griffin — who himself was dispatched just five months later by Ferro. Who can forget the three-month tenure of Lewis D’Vorkin as editor-in-chief, after longtime Timesman Davan Maharaj was axed? Or Maharaj’s secret taping of Ferro, chronicled in David Folkenflik’s watchdog reporting on Tronc excess for NPR and giving us the wonderful headline: “Tribune, Tronc And Beyond: A Slur, A Secret Payout And A Looming Sale“? Or the cameo appearances of serial CEO Ross Levinsohn and his sidekick Mickie Rosen in the farce? It all makes the Times’ breakout true-crime podcast Dirty John seem fairly tame. (Anyone written the Times’ screenplay yet?) Keen industry observer Tom Rosenstiel calls the Times, at the time Soon-Shiong bought it, “the most degraded major metro in the country.”

That environment is just part of what Soon-Shiong inherited when he decided to buy. (Ferro had given him a weekend to decide whether he wanted his hometown paper so much that he’d pay a half a billion dollars for it — not allowing him to do much due diligence. In our interview, Soon-Shiong also tells the story of how he entered into a “partnership” after a first whirlwind weekend courtship.)

Soon-Shiong, Pearlstine, COO Chris Argentieri, and the emerging new order of management also inherited a broken technology stack. As Tribune/Tronc reeled for a decade, it had both centralized its operational systems and technologies — and failed to sufficiently invest in them to keep them up to date.

Argentieri describes what taking back the Times from Tronc/Tribune meant operationally: “Tribune operated with a number of functions shared across the company over the last couple of years — well beyond your typical shared services of finance, IT, HR. More than just the back office — so consumer marketing, circulation, national sales. Really, in Los Angeles at the end of Tribune’s ownership, we were essentially left with the newsroom and local advertising — and virtually everything else, including manufacturing, distribution, was all centralized.”

As Soon-Shiong told me, “With regard to the technology, I found it was non-existent. Not even…to fix. Just non-existent. I worried about the systems to the extent that I was worried: Could I run this paper with these systems that are so archaic?”

So even as the L.A. Times became “independent,” it remained — and still remains, roughly through the end of this year — stuck in part on aging, fatigued systems. Observers who wondered why Soon-Shiong signed a “standstill” agreement in January — allowing Tribune to commit to a merger or sale without his assent — have their answer. It was all that old tech that the Times still needs to publish (until its fast-paced plan to replace it all is complete) that was responsible. Soon-Shiong agreed to the standstill — which should make it possible for Tribune to merge with a McClatchy or otherwise sell itself — and in return got his “transition services agreement” extended until June 2020.

There are still many decisions to be made as the clock runs toward that date. Among them: Will the Times keep or replace Arc, The Washington Post’s fast-emerging new newspaper platform standard? Does it believe that Arc can rise to the occasion and help power Soon-Shiong’s expansive vision for the Times?

Overall, says Argentieri, the Times is “probably 40% there, I would say, through transitioning of services.” The big remaining piece, he says, “is to stand up our own traditional IT infrastructure — so our own HRISsystem, our own ERP system, our own infrastructure from a hosting standpoint. All are underway and will happen in 2019.”

Argentieri notes the unique perspective Soon-Shiong brings to the beleaguered newspaper industry. If Jeff Bezos brought the best consumer marketing chops, Soon-Shiong brings his own highly profitable experience.

“Nant [Soon-Shiong’s collection of tech enterprises] brings a pretty deep understanding from a technology standpoint. It’s a little different than how certainly we had looked at things…They look at things from fiber in the ground all the way up through the technology stats. Most, particularly legacy media companies have looked at IT as a major cost center, and put every bit of investment they could make into ‘digital business.’ We’re trying to look at it more holistically, because storage is cheaper, the infrastructure, there’s more things you can do today to have a site and app load faster, and all that leads to better user experience — where we just wouldn’t have focused on moving an infrastructure off servers in a data center in Chicago to somewhere else.”

After the buy and the building, $50 million

All of this transition — in hiring and in technology — comes at a hefty price. Which brings us to the third noteworthy number about the Times: $50 million. That’s the amount Soon-Shiong will have spent on the new Times in his first year of ownership.

How much more investment may be possible? Says Soon-Shiong: “I’m willing to continue to make an investment and collectively, as a collective, to work together” — mindful of the first contract with the News Guild, which unionized the place the week before he took title.

Like most other people of great wealth — Soon-Shiong’s fortune has been reported at over $7 billion — he’s not one to throw money around. Like Bezos, he’ll invest, but “he’s focused on where every dollar goes,” one insider says. As at The Washington Post, good ideas can get funded, but they’re approved by Soon-Shiong on an initiative-by-initiative basis.

How has that tough (and “abused,” as Soon-Shiong puts it) newsroom responded? Conversations with several staffers suggest a wary optimism — about as good as it gets in any newsroom. When the first union contract is concluded, staffers will see raises that mark a clear departure from the experience of their brethren at other dailies, including those still residing within Tribune. Those raises should add up to at least a 10 percent increase over the next three years.

“For staff who are over scale, they would see a 5 percent raise in year 1, 2.5 percent in year 2, 2.5 percent in year 3 under the company’s offer,” says Matt Pearce, a News Guild leader at the Times. “So in other words, pretty much the worst you can do is a guaranteed 10 percent raise across three years. It’s not quite enough to get us to match the pay standards at our East Coast competitors, and doesn’t repair the 10 years the newsroom went without regular raises, but it’s a decent bite out of the apple.”

For those who had been “underpaid,” the impact will be greater. “The company’s last/best/final offer on pay creates a series of pay minimums that would lift up some underpaid staffers fairly dramatically — in some cases, we’re talking raises of 30 percent or more on ratification,” says Pearce.

In addition to wanting a piece of the intellectual property action involved in Soon-Shiong’s multimedia adventures (which Soon-Shiong discusses in our interview), the contract addresses the usual issues: severance, jurisdiction, and seniority. It could be a month or two away from completion.

The guild, representing a workforce still recovering from shellshock, wants to add another clause to the new contract, one on “successorship.” Pearce: “So the contract survives, in the hopefully remote scenario that Patrick decides to sell the paper sometime in the next three years.” Just. In. Case.

Not yet defining the new L.A. Times

If you are reading this hoping to hear the new Times’ leadership clearly outline its strategy for the years ahead — sorry to disappoint you. Ever since Soon-Shiong bought the Times and pledged to rebuild it, people have been wondering about the big strategic questions.

Will the new L.A. Times be more national, expanding still further a fairly robust and re-energized D.C. bureau? More global, seizing the opportunity of the “Asian century” and its spot on the Pacific Rim? More California-centric, seeing a “nation” of 40 million to serve? Or will it be happy to focus on dominating the large and wealthy southern California market?

In other words, what category does the Times fit in now — or will it fit in in a few years? Is it America’s largest local newspaper in the country or its smallest national one?

(In Monday’s keynote, Apple split the difference, calling it “the country’s largest metropolitan newspaper and a rising star.”)

It’s both and neither at the same time, and that makes classifying it tough. “It’s probably safe to say if we’re trying to get to a million digital subscribers over a number of years, we will start with local. But we’ll have to evolve into California stories that have a global relevance,” Argentieri told me. (Former publisher Austin Beutner hired Argentieri, a magazine veteran, back in 2014, and through all the Tronc turmoil, he somehow managed to keep his head down. He widely receives plaudits for his steady hand.) “I think we’ll reach a point of penetration with people that are, you know, ferociously into local content, and we’ll have to go beyond that in some areas that travel better.”

The reality is that the Times is creating the building blocks that could easily be used across multiple strategies and target audiences. For now at least, instead of worrying about classification, let’s watch what’s in at the new L.A. Times. Its ownership is only nine months old, but Soon-Shiong talks about a 100-year vision — there’ll be plenty of time to classify later.

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March 27, 2019, 2:05 p.m.

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New Post has been published on http://militaryspouse.com/career/amazon-kindles-its-relationship-with-the-military/

Primed for Growth: Amazon Kindles Its Relationship With the Military

Amazon kindles its relationship with the military as an exemplary employer, recognizing each individual has unique circumstances

Amazon pioneers. It pioneered a wildly successful online shopping site. It pioneered an e-reader that now has expanded to include several models. It’s a popular site from which to stream music and movies. So it’s only fitting that Amazon is pioneering a business model it hopes other companies will adopt – tapping into the military spouse and veteran population to gain stellar employees.

Amazon’s military hiring practices are organically based. Theresa Lepow, senior program manager, military talent acquisition, says,

“We had former military leaders, both seasoned and new veterans, who came to the company looking for a challenge and to grow. A lot of them were very successful. The military is a strong community and when you have a community of people at Amazon who are doing well, they want to bring their own community in for the same opportunities. The business drove the need. That’s where this program started at Amazon.”

Formalizing an idea

One of Amazon’s claims to fame is its Prime two-day free shipping. Inherently, this necessitates a great deal of planning, movement and supply chain logistics – a natural fit for veterans. “Throughout the years, our veterans have been really successful across all business units,” Lepow says. “That cultivated an environment of necessity to have a military team at Amazon that can go out and find more veterans and spouses.”

What started as a well-intentioned but casual idea to recruit a specific demographic grew into a formalized program five years ago. “Before, it was organic word of mouth, networking and referrals,” Lepow explains. “Five years ago we built a military talent acquisition network and hired a small group of fierce leaders to focus on this specific market.”

One Marine veteran ran the military program in 2011. Today, the department has grown to 16 dedicated employees separated into specialty groups, including transitioning military members, military leaders program to include specialty skillsets such as Navy SEALs and Army Rangers, wounded veterans, military spouses, caregivers, seasoned veterans, dependents, and the Guard and Reserve.

“We have dedicated people from the military team for every audience that has been involved in the military,” Lepow says. “It helps us grow, scale and determine programs to help them get in, find the best fit, grow and then retain them.”

In May 2016, the company committed to hiring 25,000 military spouses and veterans throughout the next five years, in addition to training 10,000 military spouses and veterans (not employed at Amazon) in cloud computing through the AWS Educate program. AWS Educate is Amazon’s global initiative to provide students and educators with the resources needed to accelerate cloud-related learning endeavors and get them on a path to a sustainable high-growth career.

Amazon’s efforts earned it the No. 5 slot on the 2017 Military Spouse Friendly Employers® list. The list is one in a series published annually by Military Friendly® identifying employers and schools that do the most for veterans and military families by asking, “Is this program better for veterans and their families?”

Spouses in particular

Lepow’s background makes her uniquely qualified to spearhead the military spouse recruiting and retention efforts. She was a virtual employee and full-time caregiver to her husband while he was fighting cancer in Houston, an experience that gave her a personal interest in how to support the family and caregivers through an active career. She worked at the White House, in the Office of the First Lady supporting veteran employment through the Joining Forces initiative. Lepow joined Amazon after moving back to her home town, Seattle, in November 2015 to start the new Military Spouse Program under the Joining Forces commitment made by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in the spring.

Upper-level management at Amazon has given Lepow and her department the flexibility to build the program and address needs as they arise – spouse needs are very different from veteran needs, which Lepow says Amazon leadership recognizes.

“Military spouses have to be so dynamic,” Lepow says. “They are caregivers, support systems, moms, dads, employees and strong community members. That all makes them great employees and Amazon military spouse ambassadors.”

Lepow addresses spouses individually. “Each spouse has a different background, skillset and desire for their career,” she says. “Spouses run the gamut of experience and education levels, so we have built our program to be very flexible.” If a spouse knows of an upcoming move because of a PCS, Amazon looks at the job to see if it can be made virtual if it isn’t already. If not, Amazon examines where the employee is moving and what options are there. Other considerations include how long an employee has been with Amazon; perhaps a promotion is in order or a completely new role. Lepow says that working in tandem with the employee’s manager, oftentimes they can find a solution that’s a win-win for everyone.

“I’m really excited to help this community. Military spouses don’t need a handout; they need someone to give them a chance and to even the playing field,” she says. “Amazon is focused on giving them that chance to get a foot in the door. Generally speaking, military spouses out-perform their peers and volunteer three times more than their civilian counterparts. We want employees like that. If we can prove this model [of hiring military spouses and veterans] works for our business, we hope other companies might take a similar approach because it’s good for their growth and it’s the right thing to do.

“At Amazon, we don’t want to perpetuate the problem where a spouse has to start over everywhere he or she moves. I can understand how hard that is. How can we create a continuum of growth and career trajectory despite moves due to an active duty military spouse? We’re hiring military spouses knowing that the life of an active duty spouse is that they move every few years, if not more. Our company has decided it is not something that’s a high barrier of entry and we want them.”

“Everyone who’s deployed knows that military couples serve together. Often it’s the spouse at home who has the tougher job! At Amazon we’re honoring that legacy of service by making spouses an integral part of our “Hire 25K” commitment.”

-Juan Garcia, Global Leader for Associate Career Development at Amazon.com

More than an Employer

Amazon’s military friendliness doesn’t stop at employment. Most items can be shipped to APO, FPO and DPO addresses, although standard shipping may take up to 21 days. In addition, Amazon Prime video and radio can stream to certain installations around the world; some Amazon Prime original series even are available on the Armed Forces Network.

ALSO from Amazon:

Amazon Treats Coast Guard Wife to a Day in the Big Apple

On Veterans Day 2016, Amazon celebrated military spouses on “Style Code Live,” one of its streaming shows. The company solicited nominations for a military spouse who had had a challenging year who deserved a trip to NYC for a fun and relaxing day, capped with a style makeover given by former Victoria’s Secret Angel Karolina Kurková. Jennifer Mullen, the 2016 Armed Forces Insurance Coast Guard Spouse of the Year, was the lucky recipient. Check out Jennifer’s recap of her day here.

Amazon Offers Work-from-Home Jobs for Military Spouses

“Although I work from home most of the time, my managers do a great job of making me feel included in all office and team events,” she says. “I am very much a part of a team and have embraced the Amazonian culture. Amazon is a bar raiser in the way they treat their veterans and military spouses. I have never felt more optimistic about what the future holds within my new family at Amazon.” Read more here.

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