We also needed a good lawyer.
I am sure that to many of you, the title seems heretical and blasphemous. You are probably like me in that you have been told your whole life that the salvation of humanity is the direct result of Jesus dying on the cross. You have probably been told a story about how Jesus was punished in your place on the cross, and that this needed to happen for God to forgive you. This is the story that I have believed and defended almost all my life.
According to the bible, this story is wrong.
I am a doctoral student working on a Theology degree, and my dissertation is about the incarnation. While working on my dissertation, I spent a lot of time thinking about the book of Hebrews. It was during that time I started to realize that the way I thought about the saving work of Christ is completely different than how the author of Hebrews thought about it. In Hebrews, the focus is on what Jesus does after resurrecting from the dead. We are saved because Jesus is our high priest who is always present to make intercession for us. This idea picks up elsewhere in the New Testament, Paul mentions in Romans 8 that the reason that nobody can bring a charge against us is because Christ is interceding for us in heaven. John makes similar remarks in 1 John 2.
So why is our salvation in the New Testament so focused on us having an advocate in heaven? Probably because according to Revelation 12: 7-11 there were accusations that were brought against us in the heavenly courts by the Devil.
The more I studied the bible, the more I have been convinced that our salvation comes from Christ serving as our defendant in a cosmic lawsuit. Humanity has been on trial, but because of Christ, our accusers are cast out. I just released a short book arguing for this position, in which I go through numerous scripture verses in the Old and New Testament and address potential objections. If you are interested in this, the book is currently free for those with Kindle Unlimited and can be found here
Also, I received mod permission to post this.

https://twitter.com/BrandonThurston/status/1790542164532842639 But but but I thought Papa Haitch improved the culture!!! Why did he use his wholesome bookerman powers to influence the legal department to dispute this?? That's what the double double e fans sound like, ha! Another loss for the double double E fans, baby.

Trial Day 11
Katherine Jackson, Rebbie and Trent are at court.
Choreographer Travis Payne & Katherine Jackson spoke briefly in the courtroom before the jury came in. They seemed cordial
Travis Payne Testimony
AEG direct
Payne is wearing a black jacket with a gold emblem on the shoulders with the word "MJ" & a pair of wings
Payne said he was concerned about MJ missing rehearsals. He didn't know why he wasn't showing up, but MJ was also working on an album and a book
Payne said he did not think that Jackson had a problem abusing prescription medications. He acknowledged that Jackson missed rehearsals and he saw the singer shivering or appearing cold in some of his final rehearsals
He worked with Jackson beginning in the 1990's and testified that he never saw Jackson drink alcohol or take any medications. Michael also never discussed his medical treatments, Payne said
Payne told the jury he advised MJ he was looking thin.

"Michael said he was 'getting down to my fighting weight', which I took to mean that he was preparing for the performances", Payne testified. "I had no reason to doubt him"

Payne says he was satisfied with the response.
Payne said there was one day (6/19) when MJ was cold. He thought the frustration had him on edge. When Jackson needed to be layered in blankets and required a heater to be comfortable, Payne said, he believed Michael was merely fighting a cold.

"No one else was cold. He had flu-like symptoms"
"Sometimes he was tired and lethargic and had to be, not convinced, but supported throughout rehearsals," Payne recalled

Payne said that in April, May & June, MJ missed 5 rehearsals with the whole group. He said one time Ortega sent Michael home
Bina shows an email from Ortega to Gongaware on Jun 14:

"Were you aware that Michael's doctor didn't permit him to attend rehearsal yesterday? Without invading his privacy, it might be a good idea to talk to his doctor to make sure everything he requires is in place. Who is responsible for Michael getting proper nourishment/vitamins/therapy every day? Personally, I feel he should have a top Nutritionist and Physical Therapist working with him on a regular basis. The demand on this guy is mentally and physically extraordinary! The show requirements exhaust our 20 year olds. Please don't underestimate the need to stay on top of this"

Another part of the same email chain, from Gongaware:

"Frank and I have discussed it already and have requested a face-to-face meeting w/ the doctor... We want to remind him that it's AEG not Michael Jackson who's paying his salary We want him to understand what is expected of him. He has been dodging Frank so far

Payne said his understanding was that AEG was paying Dr. Murray's salary not Michael. The doctor was there to oversee many things, Payne said. Payne explained he didn't have much reason to question Dr. Murray since he thought that a doctor selected to work with Michael was top notch.
Bina asked Payne whether he ever met Conrad Murray. The choreographer says he met Murray twice. Payne says the first time he met Dr. Murray was at the Carolwood house.

"I was going up the steps, Dr. Murray going downstairs, Michael introduced us."

Payne was coming up from the basement to the middle floor. Studio was at the basement. Payne said he never went to the top floor of the house. He says the second time was at the Staples Center, after a rehearsal and Jackson was leaving for the day. Both meetings were brief.
When asked how Michael performed on June 23 & 24:

"He was having his process, I didn't expect him to be like he would in front of a crowd," Payne explained. "He was not at show standards ... I didn't expect him to be as he would be in front of a crowd."
Payne: "It ebbed and flowed. Some days were good, some days were not as good."

The last two days were good.

"I thought he was in his way to the goals he set himself," Payne told the jury.

He didn't have any question that MJ would be able to perform , adding that he and others were impressed while watching Jackson rehearse at Staples Center on June 23/24, 2009.
Payne described the day MJ died: He was headed to rehearsal at Michael's home, got a call from his mother who said she saw reports on the news. Payne heard news on the radio, called Staples Center spoke to Stacy Walker, she said they were rehearsing. He was told to go to Staples.

"We were optimistic of his arrival," Payne said explaining they were expecting Michael to rehearse at the Staples Center.

Payne said Ortega got a series of calls. He remembers Kenny saying:

'tell me something that will make me know it's you and that this is true'

​

" I remember him (Kenny Ortega) collapsing in his seat and crying," Payne testified

Payne said he never saw Michael drink alcohol or take medication but

"Sometimes, in rehearsal, Michael would appear just a little loopy, under the influence of something, but mostly when he would come to the rehearsals from the dermatologist," Payne testified.

That happened two to four times in the weeks before his death, he said. Payne told that he didn't think Jackson had a problem with prescription drugs

"Michael was undergoing personal cosmetic procedures, so he could feel great and do a good job," Payne said.

Payne also said he appeared groggy in the morning sometimes, which he attributed to lack of sleep

"Mr. Jackson just explained to me that he had trouble sleeping, that he was tired, and that satisfied me," Payne testified.

He stated that he's not sure how much weight MJ had lost
Payne mentioned one day in particular at a meeting with Andre Crouch and singers, MJ seemed a little out of it
Payne said at one point, he & others tried to bring in a top physical therapist who works with Olympic athletes to help Michael. Jackson didn't work w/physical therapist flown in for him.

"At the last minute we realized that Michael was not going to go through with it. He was just not comfortable with the invasion of personal space."

Bina played a clip of This Is It from Jun 4 showing the green screen and making of "Drill" and Michael talking about the cool moves, dancing. Payne said the idea was to show the rehearsals and how things came together. The footage itself wasn't altered, but there was editing. Payne said they picked the best of the rehearsal to include in the documentary. He wanted to reshoot some scenes but was not allowed. Payne, who was an associate producer on the This Is It documentary, said the footage of Jackson had not been retouched or altered.
Jackson cross
Attorney Brian Panish cross examined Payne. He asked if Michael ever performed the entire show from beginning to end. Payne said "No"

"Was he ready to perform for an audience?", Panish asked.
"I thought he was on his way to the goals he had set for himself," Payne answered. "All I saw was improvement and getting closer to the goals"

Payne's impression was that MJ loved being a father. He said he saw the beauty of their relationships, loyalty to one another.

"When we rehearsed, we had meals together," Payne recalled, talking about Michael and all three children.

Payne thought the relationship between MJ and Prince was awesome, Michael was a proud father, great to see how they interacted. Prince wanted to be a director, Michael would point out things to him during rehearsal should that be his career, Payne remembered.
As to Paris Jackson, Payne said he saw a very protective young lady, smart, astute, with knowledge of the production, very hands on. Paris, who was 11 at the time, was

"a very retentive young lady who was very, very smart, very astute," Payne testified. "She had full knowledge of the day-to-day operations, from the time of lunch and what it was going to be, she was hands on -- far beyond her age," he said. "She had a lot of responsibility, which I think she welcomed"

Payne said she was "the female of the house," and also "a daddy's girl."

"She really loved her father," he said. "At that time, she was coming to find out his global successes and presence, so she would wear her Michael Jackson t-shirt, headband and bag," he said.

It was Paris who would bless the food when they were have lunch with their father at home, he said.

"She was always the most vocal of the three children and was very concerned about many of the details of the house, was the temperature correct, what do you want to eat," Payne testified. "She just handled a lot for her young age"

Blanket, who was 7 when his father died, was the most quiet of the three. He liked to watch his father rehearsing his dances with Payne in the basement studio of their home, Payne said.

"He was quiet, but always right there with his dad," he said.

Michael guided and mentored him. Payne said he would be proud if MJ was his father and agreed the children suffered a tremendous loss. When rehearsing with Jackson at his Holmby Hills residence, Payne said the singer clearly delighted in being a father and shared meals with all three

"I saw the beauty of their relationships. I saw their loyalty to their father, I saw his loyalty to them. Their father enlightened them and taught them", he testified. "I was very proud to see Michael as such a loving father."
Panish: "Was Paris a Daddy's girl?"
Payne: "Yes, I believe so"

His description of the close relationship Paris (15) and Prince (16) had with their father four years ago could foreshadow the significance of the children's testimony later in the trial.
Payne always carries a video camera with him and shot videos of rehearsal. AEG took the footage that Payne shot and never returned to him. Email from Randy to Paul:

"Make sure you take out the shots of Michael in that red jacket... He looks way too thin and skeletal."

Payne said he was not aware of the email. He said Michael looked thin, but not skeletal. He doesn't know if Paul/Randy took any the footage out. The email was not displayed for the jury
As for Michael's relationship with Katherine, Payne said

"there's no secret that he loved his mother very much. It is kind of common knowledge"

​

"Karen Faye is a make up artist. She designed the make up, was always there when Michael was there", Payne testified.

Payne said Faye and MJ had a long term working relationship. They spent a lot of personal time together. Faye was concerned and frustrated with how Michael looked. She went to Payne kind of in an aggressive way. Payne told her to report to Ortega.
Payne said he wanted MJ to have a physical therapist, nutritionist, massage therapist, and have his family around. He said this was a different scenario.

"This was the first time MJ was working with AEG," Payne testified, saying he had always been hired by MJJ production before.

Payne said this was the first time Michael was not the sole producer of the show. Payne started working without a signed contract. He was being paid by AEG. Panish showed Payne's written contract. It is between Payne and AEG, beginning April 1, 2009. The contract said only AEG could cancel it. He testified that there was a delay in his contract with AEG because the salary was not in line with his standard charges, but that things worked out after he had a conversation with Jackson. Payne also said he believed AEG was paying Murray's salary, not Jackson
Payne was hired and paid by AEG. His contract was with AEG.

Panish: "Who could fire you. AEG?"
Payne: "I'm sure"

Things became heated when Panish inquired about a text message Karen Faye sent to Payne that accused him of lying to the media after Michael's death. He said earlier Faye had approached him in an "aggressive" way about her concern for Jackson's health but he told her to take her concerns to Ortega.

"I do not remember receiving a text message from Karen Faye asking why I was lying to the media," Payne explained.
Panish: "Were you upset when MJ died?"
Payne: "Yes"

During cross-examination, Payne was shown several photos of premieres for the This Is It documentary .Panish shows a picture of Payne at the red carpet premiere. He agreed he was happy about the premiere. In one, Ortega & AEG executive Randy Phillips flank Jackson's manager, Frank DiLeo, who has a cigar hanging out of his mouth. All three are grinning. Brian Panish, the attorney for Jackson's family, remarked that everyone looked pretty happy
Payne said he wasn't privy to details of what was expected of Dr. Murray. AEG was producepromoter, but MJ was the star, had to be happy
Panish reminded Payne that he had testified in his deposition that AEG was

"trying to protect its investment"

​

"I don't have a dog in this race so I'm not on either side", an aggravated Payne countered adding that he felt Panish was being aggressive. "I'm just saying I don't want to be painted as somebody who's trying to mask anything".

After several hours of testy exchanges with Panish, his voice quivered and he dabbed his eyes with a tissue.

"I'm just trying to have a conversation with you and tell the truth."

Panish asked Payne if defendants' attorney approached him during lunch to show him some documents. He said yes, he saw parts of his deposition
Under cross examination, Payne acknowledged that some of Jackson's behavior, including grogginess, lethargy, insomnia and occasional paranoia, were possible symptoms of prescription drug abuse. He also said that despite testifying earlier that he worked with Jackson one-on-one five days a week, he couldn't recall how many rehearsals the singer actually attended
Panish after lunch break got Travis Payne to concede Jackson wasn't present for a May 19, 2009 rehearsal. Payne also conceded that Jackson was a no-show for a June 22, 2009 rehearsal. Panish confronted Payne saying that yesterday he said he was with MJ at a dance studio on May 19, that they were up on their feet & danced.

Panish: "Sir, Michael was not with you May 19, 2009, was he?"
Payne: "No"
Panish: "He was at the doctor"
Payne: "If you're saying, I'm not disputing"

Panish said that on May 19, Michael was having a cyst removed at Dr. Klein's office, so he could not have been rehearsing with Payne.
Panish then said on Jun 22 MJ wasn't there either, "was he?"
Payne said he didn't know.
Panish said MJ was at another doctor's office
Payne said he may have made a mistake about Jackson's whereabouts & he didn't know his personal schedule. Travis Payne had testified yesterday that he and Jackson ran through certain songs on May 19th. He said today he was testifying based on the schedule and notes he compiled and that his recollection might be wrong

"We're human, sometimes we make mistakes," Payne explained, saying he's not disputing that Michael was or wasn't there on those dates.

Payne said there was always something for Michael to do.

"He needed to come to rehearsal, it was part of the job"

Payne said Michael had a hard time picking up some of the material. He was having trouble learning dances, Payne says. Email from Ortega to Gongaware:

"He has been slow at grabbing hold of the work"

Jackson was having trouble learning dances, choreographer Travis Payne says

"Prior to June, I noticed Mr. Jackson was thinner than I recognized him," Payne said, noting he never saw sudden weight change in MJ.

Second time Payne saw Dr. Murray was the night before Michael died at Staples Center.

"I wanted Michael to go home and go to sleep" Payne recalls. Payne said something about Murray felt off, Payne said. "He didn't feel like an official doctor"

Payne knew MJ had sleeping problems and that Dr. Murray was treating him for that. Ortega also knew; Payne thought Gongaware was aware too. Payne also said he and Ortega knew that Jackson was having sleep problems. Attorney Brian Panish asks if AEG executives knew. There were several objections, and Payne was only allowed to answer "No" as to whether Paul Gongaware knew about Michael's sleep problems
Panish asked Payne about choosing Jackson's dancers for This Is It. Payne says they were whittled down from 5,000 applicants. Applicants submitted video clips and their submissions were used to cull down potential dancers from there. Payne said they received 5,000 applications for dancers, about 2,500 showed up for the audition.He taught them some dance moves, and the pool was further narrowed down. Michael chose the dancers
Panish then asked Payne whether he knew how many doctors AEG interviewed to work with Jackson on This Is It. "No", Payne says. Payne also says he isn't aware how much interviewing or investigation into Murray that AEG did.(Panish's point appears to be that there was more scrutiny of backup dancers than Conrad Murray)
During preparations for This Is It, Michael at times seemed "under the influence of something" and once couldn't take the stage because he appeared incoherent, Payne testified.
Payne said he was aware that Jackson had problems sleeping and chalked up the singer's sometimes erratic behavior to sleep aids or sedatives from his dermatologist visits.

"You have to understand that one always says hindsight is 20/20. In the moment I had no inkling of what, ultimately, what was revealed until Mr. Jackson's passing", he said

Payne saw Michael tired and fatigued. He agreed that those symptoms could be signs of drug addiction. Payne was aware that MJ was losing weight during rehearsals and he had not seeing him lose weight like that before.

"He was not in great physical shape and was sore,working up his stamina. Lack of sleep and proper nourishment were starting to show", Payne said.

Payne says at one point, he told Kenny Ortega that Jackson appeared "assisted" (meaning that he thought he was on drugs\meds)
Payne said some people were concerned about the goals not being met, including Randy Phillips and Paul Gongaware. Payne learned what Demerol was after MJ died. He also remembers a mention of Demerol in the song "Morphine".
Panish asked if MJ knew the lyrics of his songs.

"I think he did, he knew most of them, but he wanted to have a Teleprompter for safety.He didn't want to make any mistakes, to refresh his memory. Also to use for sequence of songs",Payne said.

Payne agreed that it was very unusual for Michael to have a Teleprompter with the lyrics of his own songs. He never used it before. Payne didn't specify which songs Jackson wanted the teleprompter for
Payne said a body double was requested for Michael. Misha Gabriel was his body double, but shorter than him. Some of the scenes in the documentary are with the body double, Payne testified. Payne remembers at the Culver Studios in Smooth Criminal there was a stunt and Misha was asked to jump through a glass plate
Payne said most the time, MJ was present at rehearsals. "It wasn't a big deal," he expressed
Panish showed an email from the band leader Michael Bearden:

"Michael is not in shape enough yet to sing this stuff live and dance at the same time. He can use the ballads to sing live and get his stamina back up, Once he's healthy enough and has more strength I Have full confidence he can sing the majority of the show live. His voice sounds amazing right now, he needs to build it back up. I still need all big dance numbers to be in the system so we can concentrate on choreography."

Payne was aware that AEG was considering in mid June pulling the plug on the show. He said Michael looked exhausted & paranoid on Jun 19. Jackson's condition and missed rehearsals led to talk within the last 10 days of Jackson's life that AEG Live LLC, which was promoting "This Is It," might cancel the concert series.

"It was 'We've got to get this together or the plug may be pulled,'" Payne says

Payne was working for AEG and said he relayed his concerns about Jackson's possible prescription drug use and that he was exhibiting troubling signs of insomnia, weight loss and paranoia in his final days to tour director Kenny Ortega. Jackson was struggling to get into shape for the shows, and Payne said his voice coach suggested using a voice track for fast-paced songs until the singer's stamina improved.
Payne went to Michael's house on June 20. He was cold and had to light the fireplace and rub his hand and feet to warm himself up
Panish showed a picture of Michael on June 24 rehearsing "Thriller"; Payne said MJ improved but was not at his best yet.

Panish: "Around June 20, was Ortega in the mindset that Michael Jackson was not ready for this?" Payne: "Yes"

Payne said Michael was not ready, it was not the Michael he knew. He died four days later. But he didn't see anything that alarmed him on June 23/24

Panish:" Did you see that Michael was getting pressured to get everything done in the last days?" Payne: "Yes"

Payne said he could sense something was wrong, but didn't know what it was. He said Jackson's performances in the final days of his life were impressive, and it felt

"like we were definitely on an upswing"

​

"I never doubted Michael because he was the architect of this and he wanted to do it, so part of my responsibility was to help him get there", Payne said, his voice racked with emotion.

Panish ended his direct examination of choreographer Travis Payne with three questions.

Panish: "Did you see that Michael Jackson appeared to be pressured to get everything done at the Staples last rehearsals?"
"Yes," Payne said
Panish: "The pressure about the shows started to manifest itself physically in Michael Jackson?"
"Yes," Payne replied.
Panish:" You could sense that something was wrong, you just didn't know what it was?"
Payne responded "Yes."

AEG re-direct
Payne's demeanor changed after Panish finished questioning him. He was holding back tears when the AEG attorney started re-direct examination. For the next several moments, Payne blinked and dabbed both eyes with a tissue. It was the first time he'd gotten emotional on the stand.

Bina in re-direct asked: "Do you think you could get him there?"
Payne: "Absolutely!"

Bina asked Payne again about how many rehearsals Jackson attended. Payne said MJ was present a significant amount of the days he was scheduled to work but he couldn't recall dates, precisely how many that Jackson attended.
As to Gongaware's email regarding what was expected of Dr. Murray, Payne said the inconsistencies with Michael missing rehearsals warrant a talk. Payne said he thought Dr. Murray was there to care for his patient, making sure right nutritionist was there, to get him ready for the show. Payne never discussed with MJ about his doctors or personal affairs. Payne and Faye were professionals with each other, but not friends.

"Production felt he wasn't coming to rehearsals enough, and that was frustrating to some of the staff," Payne testified. "I had a concern we needed to create a show Michael would enjoy doing it," Payne explained

She also showed Payne photos from the This Is It premiere. First photo is of Payne shaking Jermaine Jackson's hand at the movie premiere. Bina also showed another image of smiling Jermaine, Tito, Jackie and Marlon with Payne at the premiere. Payne cried saying he had been through so much and the rough part was behind them. He was pleased to show the fans what the show was to be.
Jackson re-cross
In re-cross, Panish notes that none of Michael's brothers are part of this lawsuit.
Panish then asked Payne whether Katherine Jackson and Michael's kids went to the premiere. Panish says Katherine Jackson & her grandchildren didn't go to the premiere because they weren't over Jackson's death. Payne said he didn't think anyone was over Jackson's death when the film premiered in late 2009.
Court Transcript

Hi - I'm Paul and I follow the e-commerce industry closely for my Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter. Each week I post a summary recap of the week's top stories, which I cover in depth with sources in the full edition. Let's dive in...
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STAT OF THE WEEK: Kohl's sales have shrunk by $2.3B since 2019. During that same period of time, the company lost 1.3M customers who no longer shop with the retailer.
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BigCommerce is exploring a sale after attracting takeover interest, according to sources who chose to remain anonymous due to the confidentiality of the information. The sources said that BigCommerce asked investment bank Qatalyst Partners to solicit interest from potential buyers that include private equity firms, but that the discussions are at an early stage and no deal is certain.
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Squarespace announced that it will be going private in a $6.9B all-cash deal with private-equity firm Permira, who agreed to pay $44 per share (a roughly 30% premium). Although Squarespace never lost 90% of its share price like BigCommerce, it has experienced a tumultuous time on the market since its IPO in May 2021 — opening around $49.50 and at times trading in the low $20s. Shares rose nearly 13% to $43 in pre-market trading upon release of the news.
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ByteDance filed a lawsuit in US federal court seeking to block the new law that would force the sale or ban of the app within the country. The lawsuit challenges the law on constitutional grounds, also citing commercial, technical, and legal hurdles, as well as opposition from Beijing. Legal experts say the legal battle will play out in the courts in coming months and likely will reach the Supreme Court.
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OpenAI unveiled its newest model, GPT-4o, designed to turn ChatGPT into a digital personal assistant that can engage in real-time, spoken conversations and interact with users using text, screenshots, photos, documents, and charts. The new version of ChatGPT also has memory capabilities, which means it can learn from previous conversations. It will be available to both unpaid and premium customers alike. OpenAI also announced that it would be launching a desktop app with the GPT-4o capabilities, giving users another platform to interact with the technology outside of a web browser.
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Amazon launched in South Africa last week, marking its first marketplace in sub-Saharan Africa, and bringing its total number of marketplaces worldwide to 22. To launch the new marketplace, Amazon is offering free delivery on first orders and on subsequent orders above R500 (about $27), access to 3,000 pick-up points, status updates via WhatsApp to track orders, 30 day refunds, and 24/7 customer support. The marketplace was supposed to launch in the country in 2023, but got delayed due to changes in priorities within Amazon.
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In an unlikely partnership, Instacart is partnering with Uber Eats to expand into the restaurant delivery business. Instacart will add a new tab for restaurant delivery to its app in the coming weeks, the listings will be provided by Uber, and the food will be picked up and delivered by Uber Eats drivers. Customers will receive the same prices on both apps and Instacart will receive an affiliate commission on orders. It's a strange partnership though given that Instacart and Uber Eats actively compete on grocery delivery. Are they planning to merge? Uber says no.
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Apple's advertisement for its latest iPad Pro sparked criticism for showing an animation of musical instruments, paint cans, cameras, record players, and other symbols of creativity being crushed by a giant machine, with the output being the new iPad Pro, which the company says is the thinnest Apple product ever. In this context, “crushing” was supposed to symbolize “consolidating” and “compacting” — with the visuals meant to showcase how the new iPad Pro puts the power of all these tools into the hands of creators in one thin device. However online commenters criticized the ad as insensitive and as symbolizing a “destruction of the human experience.” The ad hit the web on Tuesday, and by Thursday, Apple issued a mea culpa and apologized for the campaign.
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Google is encouraging merchants to enable conversion annotations on their Google Shopping ads, which offer social proof that highlight a product's popularity. Conversion annotations like “best selling” or “3K shopped here recently” would provide visual cues about a product’s popularity or sales performance directly in the ad unit. Annotations like these are par for the course with e-commerce retailers including Amazon, Walmart, and Temu, which all employ similar tactics. They can provide valuable info for shoppers and also help with conversions. However they also open data privacy concerns, given that Google is not the actual retailer or marketplace selling the items, so a merchant would have to share this purchase history data from their e-commerce platform with Google — which technically most already do by giving access to GA4.
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Shein is attempting to join the National Retail Federation as it pursues regulatory approval to go public in the US. The company believes that NRF membership would boost its chances of receiving SEC approval. However so far, Shein has been rejected numerous times. An anonymous source familiar with the matter said someone with heavy influence at the NRF is strongly against the Shein's admittance. However board members who spoke to CNBC said that Shein's membership application hadn't come up in meetings, and that they aren't involved in deciding which companies are granted access.
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Amazon is leading the way with selling home goods, capturing 18.8% of consumer home furnishings spending, compared to Walmart's 7.3% market share. Notably, Amazon’s gains in the furniture category come in spite of the company’s decision to phase out two of its three furniture brands last year.
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Stanley, which is projected to do $750M in sales this year, up from $73M in 2019, after seeing its water bottles become a status symbol thanks to TikTok, is now expanding into trendier accessories. The company is launching a line of bags called the All-Day Collection which include a mini cooler, backpack cooler, and Quencher Carry-All, designed for someone to sling their Stanley over their hip.
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Jack Dorsey left the Bluesky board and deleted his account on the service he helped kickstart, claiming that Bluesky was “literally repeating all the mistakes” he made while running Twitter. Dorsey says he never intended Bluesky to be an independent company, but rather, an open source protocol that Twitter was supposed to be the first client of. He also confirmed that he is financially backing Nostr, another decentralized Twitter-like service popular among crypto enthusiasts and run by an anonymous founder.
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Amazon is deploying 50 electric trucks in California, which it claims is the largest EV fleet in the country, as part of its mission to eliminate pollution from its global operations. The trucks will be integrated into first-mile operations, moving goods from container ships at the ports to fulfillment centers, as well as middle-mile operations, transporting packages from fulfillment centers to delivery centers.
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Wix launched a new tool called AI Portfolio Creator, which allows a user to upload and organize large-scale image collections, select the type of portfolio they want, and then have the AI tool sort and generate a portfolio with clustered images, recommended titles and descriptions, and personalized layout options.
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Amazon is now requiring all dietary supplements to be verified by a third-party testing, inspection, and certification organization — which is something that not even the FDA requires. Amazon is the largest supplement retailer in the US ahead of Walmart and Target, and its new requirements are expected to put more pressure on the industry, which is being scrutinized more than ever.
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Alibaba is revamping its flagship retail website Taobao for the first time in seven years with a focus on providing a smoother search and buying process. The website overhaul comes ahead of the 618 sales event, China's second-largest annual shopping event. A few weeks ago I reported that Eddie Wu, the CEO of Alibaba Group, would now be directly overseeing its domestic e-commerce arm which includes Taobao and Tmall Group, and it sounds like he's hitting the ground running with his new responsibilities.
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Amazon is hosting its first-ever Amazon Book Sale, a new shopping event starting on May 15th that offers up to 50% off print best sellers and up to 80% off Kindle Books. The six day shopping event will exclusively run in the US, and Prime-membership is not required to take advantage of the deals.
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FTX reported that nearly all of its customers will receive the money back that they are owed, two years after the cryptocurrency exchange imploded. The company owes about $11.2B to its customers and estimates that it has between $14.5B and $16.3B to distribute to them. The caveat is that customers will receive the USD value of their holdings at the time of the exchange collapse, and not the actual crypto holdings themselves, which means that they'll miss out on all gains during the past two years during which BTC went from around $16k to now over $60k. Better than nothing though, that's for sure.
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800,000 consumers in Europe and the US were duped into sharing card details and other sensitive personal data with a network of fake online designer shops operated from China, which comprised one of the largest scams of its kind with 76,000 fake websites created. The scammers used expired domains to host its fake shops in order to help avoid detection by websites or brand owners, and more than 1M orders were processed in the past three years alone.
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Beyond Inc, which owns Bed Bath & Beyond, Overstock, and Zulily, reported that its Q1 net loss swelled to $72M from $10M a year ago, while its operating loss widened to $58M from $8M. The company's active customers grew to 6M, up 26% from nearly 5M a year ago, however, its average order value dropped to $173 from $220 a year earlier.
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TikTok will begin automatically labeling AI generated content when it is uploaded from certain platforms like DALL.E 3, Adobe Firefly, Photoshop, and Microsoft Copilot. TikTok will also start attaching Content Credentials to content, which will remain on the media when downloaded, allowing other platforms to read the metadata.
___
eBay is testing an Add To Cart button in search results that opens a Quick View window, allowing buyers to skip the listing page. Technically the button should probably not be labeled “Add To Cart” since it doesn't perform that action, but rather, displays a quick view window with three buttons: Buy It Now, Add To Cart, View All Details. Sellers are worried that buyers will miss crucial details in the product description that may lead to increased returns and negative feedback.
___
Amazon is planning to launch its fleet of drones in Tolleson, Arizona, but the city's extreme temperature is hampering its efforts. Drones can't operate in temperatures exceeding 104 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature that Tolleson crosses for a full three months of the year.
___
A US district judge dismissed X's lawsuit against Bright Data, a data-scraping company accused of improperly accessing X system and violating X terms and state laws when scraping and selling data. The judge basically said that if X owned the data, it could perhaps argue that it has exclusive rights to control it, but then X wouldn't be able to enjoy the safe harbor of Section 230, which allows the platform to avoid liability for third-party content. Can't have it both ways!
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Nintendo is discontinuing its X integration for the switch on June 10th, which means users will no longer be able to post screenshots or videos to the platform from their device. The drop in support also affects games like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which had game-specific options to send out tweets. Microsoft Xbox dropped support for X in April 2023 and Sony Playstation dropped the service in October 2023 due to the increase in X's API access fees.
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Amazon claimed that its recordable incident rate — a metric that comprises all injuries requiring “more than basic first-aid treatment” — at its US warehouses has improved by 24% since 2019. However the National Employment Law Project challenged Amazon's injury data in a report last week, claiming that Amazon's overall injury rate in 2023 was 71% higher than that of other employers in the sector at 6.5 cases per 100 workers.
___
Amazon Ads announced three new advertising formats for streaming TV including shoppable carousel ads, interactive pause ads, and interactive trivia ads. Amazon did not say when the new ad types would officially launch, but noted that it will formally present them at a presentation on May 14th.
___
Meta is rolling out an expanded set of generative AI ad tools that can create full image variations with text overlays, expand images to fit across different aspect ratios, and generate alternate versions of headlines and other ad text. The features will become available globally to advertisers by the end of the year.
___
Square introduced a tool called Square Kiosk to allow self-service ordering at fast food restaurants. The device is a combined software, hardware, and payment solution that allows customers to select exactly what they want with customization options, upgrades, and add-ons.
___
The European Parliament announced new measures to make packaging more sustainable and reduce packaging waste in the EU, including reduction targets of 15% by 2040 — which sounds far away but is only 16 years away?! As part of the new rules, the EU will set maximum empty space ratios for e-commerce transportation, ban certain single-use plastic packaging types, and beverage distributors and take-away food will have to offer consumers the option of bringing their own container.
___
Indians who pre-ordered Teslas in 2016 are giving up and seeking refunds of their deposits after Elon Musk canceled another visit to the country last month. Disillusioned Tesla enthusiasts in India say they will now buy a car from the company only if they see it in a showroom, or they'll buy a different electrical vehicle from a company that actually exists in the country.
___
Target is limiting its Pride Month collection to select stores this year instead of rolling out the merchandise nationwide like it typically has for the past decade, due to backlash the retailer experienced last year. Last May customers in certain stores knocked down LGBTQ+ merchandise displays, angrily approached store employees, and posted threatening videos on social media from inside the stores.
___
E-commerce spending from Jan 1 to April 30, 2024 rose 7% YoY to $331.6B, according to Adobe Analytics. One trend Adobe identified during the period is a shift of online spending to purchasing the cheapest goods across personal care, electronics, apparel, home & garden, furniture, and grocery.
___
Plus 7 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest, including Shopify's acquisition of Peel, a tool that integrates with a merchant's tech stack including Klaviyo and Recharge and helps them analyze their sales data to improve customer retention.
___
I hope you found this recap helpful. See you next week!
PAUL Editor of Shopifreaks E-Commerce Newsletter
PS: If I missed any big news this week, please share in the comments.

Hi - I'm Paul and I follow the e-commerce industry closely for my Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter. Each week I post a summary recap of the week's top stories, which I cover in depth in the newsletter. Let's dive in...
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STAT OF THE WEEK: Kohl's sales have shrunk by $2.3B since 2019. During that same period of time, the company lost 1.3M customers who no longer shop with the retailer.
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BigCommerce is exploring a sale after attracting takeover interest, according to sources who chose to remain anonymous due to the confidentiality of the information. The sources said that BigCommerce asked investment bank Qatalyst Partners to solicit interest from potential buyers that include private equity firms, but that the discussions are at an early stage and no deal is certain.
___
Squarespace announced that it will be going private in a $6.9B all-cash deal with private-equity firm Permira, who agreed to pay $44 per share (a roughly 30% premium). Although Squarespace never lost 90% of its share price like BigCommerce, it has experienced a tumultuous time on the market since its IPO in May 2021 — opening around $49.50 and at times trading in the low $20s. Shares rose nearly 13% to $43 in pre-market trading upon release of the news.
___
ByteDance filed a lawsuit in US federal court seeking to block the new law that would force the sale or ban of the app within the country. The lawsuit challenges the law on constitutional grounds, also citing commercial, technical, and legal hurdles, as well as opposition from Beijing. Legal experts say the legal battle will play out in the courts in coming months and likely will reach the Supreme Court.
___
OpenAI unveiled its newest model, GPT-4o, designed to turn ChatGPT into a digital personal assistant that can engage in real-time, spoken conversations and interact with users using text, screenshots, photos, documents, and charts. The new version of ChatGPT also has memory capabilities, which means it can learn from previous conversations. It will be available to both unpaid and premium customers alike. OpenAI also announced that it would be launching a desktop app with the GPT-4o capabilities, giving users another platform to interact with the technology outside of a web browser.
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Amazon launched in South Africa last week, marking its first marketplace in sub-Saharan Africa, and bringing its total number of marketplaces worldwide to 22. To launch the new marketplace, Amazon is offering free delivery on first orders and on subsequent orders above R500 (about $27), access to 3,000 pick-up points, status updates via WhatsApp to track orders, 30 day refunds, and 24/7 customer support. The marketplace was supposed to launch in the country in 2023, but got delayed due to changes in priorities within Amazon.
___
In an unlikely partnership, Instacart is partnering with Uber Eats to expand into the restaurant delivery business. Instacart will add a new tab for restaurant delivery to its app in the coming weeks, the listings will be provided by Uber, and the food will be picked up and delivered by Uber Eats drivers. Customers will receive the same prices on both apps and Instacart will receive an affiliate commission on orders. It's a strange partnership though given that Instacart and Uber Eats actively compete on grocery delivery. Are they planning to merge? Uber says no.
___
Apple's advertisement for its latest iPad Pro sparked criticism for showing an animation of musical instruments, paint cans, cameras, record players, and other symbols of creativity being crushed by a giant machine, with the output being the new iPad Pro, which the company says is the thinnest Apple product ever. In this context, “crushing” was supposed to symbolize “consolidating” and “compacting” — with the visuals meant to showcase how the new iPad Pro puts the power of all these tools into the hands of creators in one thin device. However online commenters criticized the ad as insensitive and as symbolizing a “destruction of the human experience.” The ad hit the web on Tuesday, and by Thursday, Apple issued a mea culpa and apologized for the campaign.
___
Google is encouraging merchants to enable conversion annotations on their Google Shopping ads, which offer social proof that highlight a product's popularity. Conversion annotations like “best selling” or “3K shopped here recently” would provide visual cues about a product’s popularity or sales performance directly in the ad unit. Annotations like these are par for the course with e-commerce retailers including Amazon, Walmart, and Temu, which all employ similar tactics. They can provide valuable info for shoppers and also help with conversions. However they also open data privacy concerns, given that Google is not the actual retailer or marketplace selling the items, so a merchant would have to share this purchase history data from their e-commerce platform with Google — which technically most already do by giving access to GA4.
___
Shein is attempting to join the National Retail Federation as it pursues regulatory approval to go public in the US. The company believes that NRF membership would boost its chances of receiving SEC approval. However so far, Shein has been rejected numerous times. An anonymous source familiar with the matter said someone with heavy influence at the NRF is strongly against the Shein's admittance. However board members who spoke to CNBC said that Shein's membership application hadn't come up in meetings, and that they aren't involved in deciding which companies are granted access.
___
Amazon is leading the way with selling home goods, capturing 18.8% of consumer home furnishings spending, compared to Walmart's 7.3% market share. Notably, Amazon’s gains in the furniture category come in spite of the company’s decision to phase out two of its three furniture brands last year.
___
Stanley, which is projected to do $750M in sales this year, up from $73M in 2019, after seeing its water bottles become a status symbol thanks to TikTok, is now expanding into trendier accessories. The company is launching a line of bags called the All-Day Collection which include a mini cooler, backpack cooler, and Quencher Carry-All, designed for someone to sling their Stanley over their hip.
___
Jack Dorsey left the Bluesky board and deleted his account on the service he helped kickstart, claiming that Bluesky was “literally repeating all the mistakes” he made while running Twitter. Dorsey says he never intended Bluesky to be an independent company, but rather, an open source protocol that Twitter was supposed to be the first client of. He also confirmed that he is financially backing Nostr, another decentralized Twitter-like service popular among crypto enthusiasts and run by an anonymous founder.
___
Amazon is deploying 50 electric trucks in California, which it claims is the largest EV fleet in the country, as part of its mission to eliminate pollution from its global operations. The trucks will be integrated into first-mile operations, moving goods from container ships at the ports to fulfillment centers, as well as middle-mile operations, transporting packages from fulfillment centers to delivery centers.
___
Wix launched a new tool called AI Portfolio Creator, which allows a user to upload and organize large-scale image collections, select the type of portfolio they want, and then have the AI tool sort and generate a portfolio with clustered images, recommended titles and descriptions, and personalized layout options.
___
Amazon is now requiring all dietary supplements to be verified by a third-party testing, inspection, and certification organization — which is something that not even the FDA requires. Amazon is the largest supplement retailer in the US ahead of Walmart and Target, and its new requirements are expected to put more pressure on the industry, which is being scrutinized more than ever.
___
Alibaba is revamping its flagship retail website Taobao for the first time in seven years with a focus on providing a smoother search and buying process. The website overhaul comes ahead of the 618 sales event, China's second-largest annual shopping event. A few weeks ago I reported that Eddie Wu, the CEO of Alibaba Group, would now be directly overseeing its domestic e-commerce arm which includes Taobao and Tmall Group, and it sounds like he's hitting the ground running with his new responsibilities.
___
Amazon is hosting its first-ever Amazon Book Sale, a new shopping event starting on May 15th that offers up to 50% off print best sellers and up to 80% off Kindle Books. The six day shopping event will exclusively run in the US, and Prime-membership is not required to take advantage of the deals.
___
FTX reported that nearly all of its customers will receive the money back that they are owed, two years after the cryptocurrency exchange imploded. The company owes about $11.2B to its customers and estimates that it has between $14.5B and $16.3B to distribute to them. The caveat is that customers will receive the USD value of their holdings at the time of the exchange collapse, and not the actual crypto holdings themselves, which means that they'll miss out on all gains during the past two years during which BTC went from around $16k to now over $60k. Better than nothing though, that's for sure.
___
800,000 consumers in Europe and the US were duped into sharing card details and other sensitive personal data with a network of fake online designer shops operated from China, which comprised one of the largest scams of its kind with 76,000 fake websites created. The scammers used expired domains to host its fake shops in order to help avoid detection by websites or brand owners, and more than 1M orders were processed in the past three years alone.
___
Beyond Inc, which owns Bed Bath & Beyond, Overstock, and Zulily, reported that its Q1 net loss swelled to $72M from $10M a year ago, while its operating loss widened to $58M from $8M. The company's active customers grew to 6M, up 26% from nearly 5M a year ago, however, its average order value dropped to $173 from $220 a year earlier.
___
TikTok will begin automatically labeling AI generated content when it is uploaded from certain platforms like DALL.E 3, Adobe Firefly, Photoshop, and Microsoft Copilot. TikTok will also start attaching Content Credentials to content, which will remain on the media when downloaded, allowing other platforms to read the metadata.
___
eBay is testing an Add To Cart button in search results that opens a Quick View window, allowing buyers to skip the listing page. Technically the button should probably not be labeled “Add To Cart” since it doesn't perform that action, but rather, displays a quick view window with three buttons: Buy It Now, Add To Cart, View All Details. Sellers are worried that buyers will miss crucial details in the product description that may lead to increased returns and negative feedback.
___
Amazon is planning to launch its fleet of drones in Tolleson, Arizona, but the city's extreme temperature is hampering its efforts. Drones can't operate in temperatures exceeding 104 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature that Tolleson crosses for a full three months of the year.
___
A US district judge dismissed X's lawsuit against Bright Data, a data-scraping company accused of improperly accessing X system and violating X terms and state laws when scraping and selling data. The judge basically said that if X owned the data, it could perhaps argue that it has exclusive rights to control it, but then X wouldn't be able to enjoy the safe harbor of Section 230, which allows the platform to avoid liability for third-party content. Can't have it both ways!
___
Nintendo is discontinuing its X integration for the switch on June 10th, which means users will no longer be able to post screenshots or videos to the platform from their device. The drop in support also affects games like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which had game-specific options to send out tweets. Microsoft Xbox dropped support for X in April 2023 and Sony Playstation dropped the service in October 2023 due to the increase in X's API access fees.
___
Amazon claimed that its recordable incident rate — a metric that comprises all injuries requiring “more than basic first-aid treatment” — at its US warehouses has improved by 24% since 2019. However the National Employment Law Project challenged Amazon's injury data in a report last week, claiming that Amazon's overall injury rate in 2023 was 71% higher than that of other employers in the sector at 6.5 cases per 100 workers.
___
Amazon Ads announced three new advertising formats for streaming TV including shoppable carousel ads, interactive pause ads, and interactive trivia ads. Amazon did not say when the new ad types would officially launch, but noted that it will formally present them at a presentation on May 14th.
___
Meta is rolling out an expanded set of generative AI ad tools that can create full image variations with text overlays, expand images to fit across different aspect ratios, and generate alternate versions of headlines and other ad text. The features will become available globally to advertisers by the end of the year.
___
Square introduced a tool called Square Kiosk to allow self-service ordering at fast food restaurants. The device is a combined software, hardware, and payment solution that allows customers to select exactly what they want with customization options, upgrades, and add-ons.
___
The European Parliament announced new measures to make packaging more sustainable and reduce packaging waste in the EU, including reduction targets of 15% by 2040 — which sounds far away but is only 16 years away?! As part of the new rules, the EU will set maximum empty space ratios for e-commerce transportation, ban certain single-use plastic packaging types, and beverage distributors and take-away food will have to offer consumers the option of bringing their own container.
___
Indians who pre-ordered Teslas in 2016 are giving up and seeking refunds of their deposits after Elon Musk canceled another visit to the country last month. Disillusioned Tesla enthusiasts in India say they will now buy a car from the company only if they see it in a showroom, or they'll buy a different electrical vehicle from a company that actually exists in the country.
___
Target is limiting its Pride Month collection to select stores this year instead of rolling out the merchandise nationwide like it typically has for the past decade, due to backlash the retailer experienced last year. Last May customers in certain stores knocked down LGBTQ+ merchandise displays, angrily approached store employees, and posted threatening videos on social media from inside the stores.
___
E-commerce spending from Jan 1 to April 30, 2024 rose 7% YoY to $331.6B, according to Adobe Analytics. One trend Adobe identified during the period is a shift of online spending to purchasing the cheapest goods across personal care, electronics, apparel, home & garden, furniture, and grocery.
___
Plus 7 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest, including Shopify's acquisition of Peel, a tool that integrates with a merchant's tech stack including Klaviyo and Recharge and helps them analyze their sales data to improve customer retention.
___
I hope you found this recap helpful. See you next week!
For more details on each story and sources, see the full edition: https://www.shopifreaks.com/bigcommerce-for-sale-openai-gpt-4o-instacarts-unlikely-partnership/
What else is new in e-commerce? Share stories of interesting in the comments below (including in your own business) or on shopifreaks.
-PAUL Editor of Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter
PS: Want the full editions delivered to your Inbox each week? Join free at www.shopifreaks.com

I searched first and read through the posts from the past year ish and still have questions, so unfortunately I am making a new post about termites.
Background: In Feb 2023 we relocated from Columbus, OH to St Pete by my spouse’s company to fill an open role. I work remote from home, and he travels all around the state when not working locally. We rent a 3/2 ranch in Euclid St Paul, no garage. Found out too late that our rental company is one of those behemoth corporations with terrible service, there’s lawsuits against them in many states, and they basically put everything on the tenant. They put bandaids on bullet wounds of repairs to cover it up or get it by until you give up or the next person moves in unaware. Hard lesson learned. But, here we are in the middle of a lease.
I was working this morning and saw a couple winged bugs on the window by my desk, killed them. Suddenly, during a meeting, there were dozens on the 2 windows by my desk flying around (google says they’re termites). By time my meeting was over, they’ve magically disappeared and now I’m spooked 👀 where did they go?!? Where did they come from?!
Checked out lease and it doesn’t cover termites. It’s on the tenant which is terrible news for us. Trying to wrap my head around this and figure out how urgently to handle this and how to make it as economical as possible since my guess is, this house will be sold and torn down and replaced with a new build when our lease is up anyway due to it’s already deterioration from lack of proper maintenance.
So my questions are: 1. Saw many people say not to tent. What companies do you use for Non-tenting treatment and other than the subterranean things they bury, what do those companies do? I personally am not planning to pay even $1000 up front to tent an old poorly maintained house I am renting, and from what I see it costs way more than that anyway.

1. Will it hurt the pollinators, geckos and lizards we have all over and love? Probably a dumb q. I just try to minimize harsh chemicals when I can due to decline in monarch and bee populations, plus run off pollution in water ways etc.
   
2. How much does non-tenting usually run? I saw most say tenting is going to be $2,000+ easily.
   
3. If you do tent, do you have to move things out? Seems like you wouldn’t want the chemicals to get on clothes, makeup, food etc. so how long do you leave and what kind of prep is involved? We have 2 dogs so yet another reason I’m annoyed this is on us vs the property owner, since we don’t have family or somewhere we’d just up and go stay with. Again, I’m not sure it’s even possible with my budget right now, or if I would even if I budget for it. Feels super wrong.
   
4. Probably a longshot but if these things have been here in the roof or walls since before we moved in. I wonder if I can push back for them to cover it/how can we determine if this is a new or long time infestation?
   

Thanks all!

GameStop shares jump 30% as trader ‘Roaring Kitty’ who drove meme craze posts online again
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/13/gme-jumps-as-trader-roaring-kitty-who-drove-meme-craze-posts-again.html
​
GameStop shares rallied more than 37% in premarket trading Monday after “Roaring Kitty,” the man who inspired the epic short squeeze of 2021, posted online for the first time in roughly three years.
The post, a picture on X of a video gamer leaning forward on their chair as if to indicate he’s taking the game seriously, marked Roaring Kitty’s first post on the platform — or on Reddit — since 2021.
Roaring Kitty, whose legal name is Keith Gill, is a former marketer for Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance. Also known as DeepF------Value on Reddit, Gill drew an army of day traders who cheered each other on and piled into the brick-and-mortar video game stock, and GameStop call options, between 2020 and 2021.
The “meme stock” frenzy involved individual investors taking aim at short sellers and hedge funds who were pessimistic about the outlook for GameStop and other companies, forcing them to cover their short positions and drive up the price of the target stocks. Currently, the short position in GameStop shares amounts to more than 24% of all its shares that are freely-available to trade, also known as the float.
The poster child was hedge fund Melvin Capital, which was heavily shorting GameStop and became a target of the army of amateur traders, suffering huge losses that prompted an arm of Ken Griffin’s Citadel, as well as Point72, to backstop Melvin’s finances with close to $3 billion in support.
The GameStop mania that drove its stock above $120 a share, split-adjusted, in early 2021 from as little as $3 in the space of three months, forced brokerages including Robinhood to limit trading in heavily shorted stocks. In response, one Robinhood user filed a class-action lawsuit following the app’s decision to restrict GameStop trading on its platform. The suit was dismissed in August 2023.
Another class-action lawsuit brought against Gill alleged that he pretended to be a novice trader despite being a licensed professional.
The volatility spawned a series of Congressional hearings around brokers’ practices and gamifying retail trading, and testimony from leaders of Robinhood, Melvin Capital, Reddit and Citadel, as well as Gill. The entire episode finally inspired the 2023 movie “Dumb Money,” in which Paul Dano played Gill.
In January 2021, GameStop shares hit an all-time high of $120.75 intraday, adjusted for a subsequent 4-for-1 stock split in the summer of 2022. But as interest from individual investors eventually faded, the stock collapsed along with other meme stocks such as AMC Entertainment Holdings
. GameStop last month hit a three-year low of $9.95.
Recently, the stock has started to move higher, which may have rekindled Gill’s interest, along with the enormous amount of short interest in the stock. GameStop has soared 57% so far in May, closing Friday at $17.46.
But the fundamental business at GameStop, evidenced by its most recent earnings report, shows a discouraging picture at the video game company. In late March, GameStop said it had cut an unspecified number of jobs to reduce costs, and reported lower fourth-quarter revenue amid rising competition from e-commerce-based competitors.
GameStop posted revenue of $1.79 billion in the fourth quarter, compared with $2.23 billion in the same quarter a year earlier.

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TLDR: The Atlanta Braves baseball team is the only publicly traded baseball team. DFV just posted a picture that was already tweeted by Gamestop, difference being he drew some Red Socks on the image. The Braves played the Red Sox last Tuesday and Wednesday, which led me down an incredible rabbit hole.
I am not a smart man. Just a man, who thinks too much. Even now, I should be getting my last minute Mother’s day gifts together but this won’t leave my brain. Neil Gaiman’s “American God’s” sits unfinished on my dresser but weighs heavily on my mind. This movement feels like the New God’s fighting the Old Gods. Operating software being forcefully updated to keep up with growing technology. It’s still big business and time is money.
Wednesday, Odin’s day of magic, The Braves played the Boston Red Sox and won 5-0 but there was an ill feeling in the air as the message above was broadcast on all the tv’s in the stadium including the big screen over centerfield and for those of us watching from home. Feels like a message was being sent but something caught my eye in the very first sentence. “Bankruptcy”, Cohencidence #1. I started asking myself questions and the most important was, “Who, own’s Bally network?”. The Sinclair Group and Allen Media Group.
The Sinclair Group wasn’t really eye catching for me until I saw Dr. Ben Carson is on the board of directors. Cohencidence #2 as he’s close to Trump, who’s potentially part of this new entity being created. I could taste the tin foil slowly twisting my brain like a hamster named Algernon running non-stop on a hamster wheel, while high thinking “why am I running?”. I click on the about page and see this:
Our Values
Love What You Do
Be inspirational
Be communicative
Be part of something important
Make a difference
Live What You Do
Be a person of integrity
Be customer focused
Be transparent
Drive results
Embrace What You Do
Be forward thinking
Be adaptive
Be a strategic thinker
Challenge the status quo
This really opened my eyes as it reminded me of GameStop’s motto:
Power to the Players (Love What You Do)
Power to the Creators (Live What You Do)
Power to the Collectors (Embrace What You Do)
I click on Interactivity and see that they have a NFT Marketplace. This message pops up:
“Through Sinclair’s OWNMINE store, NFTs and physical goods can be purchased on Shopify, with no digital currency required.”
Shopify? They work very closely with Flexport, who’s potentially handling the new companies shipping. Shopify also has a commercial that has a neon rocket blasting off on the wall and ice cream. Cohencidences #3.
Allen Media Group is owned by Byron Allen. Yes, the owner of The Weather Channel. Byron, successfully sued AT&T, Comcast and Charter Communications seperately in a Racial Discrimination Lawsuit that went all the way to the Supreme Court for the Comcast case.
I overheard a Braves Fan say “the owner’s of Bally Sports Network don’t like CNN”. Why? Who own’s CNN?
Warner Bros. Discovery and they own all the good entertainment shows. HBO, Cartoon Network, TNT, TBS, etc.
Here’s an article from January 25, 2024 talking about Comcast potentially merging with Warner Brother’s Discovery. The CEO of Comcast denies of course but the owners of Warner have made it known that everything is up for sale. America’s for sale. The way this country has been run economically has got everybody’s money “fucked up” and people are pissed. Which is hard to fathom, when it comes to people who have way more money than the combined generational wealth accumulated by your family.
One such man is Ted Turner. Like Ryan Cohen, he learned lessons from his father, who built a successful billboard company. He started off with CNN before turning into a media mogul and then he bought, The Atlanta Braves. He managed the team for one day May 11, 1977. He owned all of Atlanta’s sports teams at one time. Time Warner would eventually sell off the teams. He’s been through economic downturn before as he watched the company he built be sold off after making decisions to merge with Time Warner in the 90’s and AOL-Time Warner in 2001. It’s estimated the deals cost him 7 Billion dollars. I wonder who advised him.
Ted is a philanthropist. At one time Ted was the largest private landowner in the United States until John C. Malone surpassed him in 2011. Ted brought Buffalo back from dwindling numbers. What once was 30k now boasts numbers well over 400k. He knows how to take things, create something new and make them grow. He’s a 2013 recipient of the Lone Sailor Award, given to Sea Service veterans, who have excelled with distinction in their respective careers during or after their service. Another recipient of this award, President Theodore Roosevelt at the turn of the millennia in 2000. Cohencidence # 4
My acting teacher often said “There are two types of people. Creators and takers.” There has to be balance otherwise there’s not enough to go around.
Still, the question remains, who would buy Warner Bros?
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/nbcuniversal-plus-warner-bros-discovery-comcast-ceo-1235806791/amp/
I wonder who would be interested? Jeff Bezos, nope he has a “small” position in Diamond Media Group, a subsidiary of the previously mentioned Sinclair Group, who runs Bally Sports. Is he hedging a Bet on a company going through bankruptcy?
What does Comcast have to do with this? Comcast/NBC Universal has headquarters at The Battery, where the Braves Play. A friend, of my friend, is my friend. Right?
Lets zoom out:
Well, that’s weird. These two neighbors can’t get along. In fact Comcast responded to Bally Sport’s message with their own:
"Bally Sports chose not to exercise a right to extend their contract and they declined multiple offers so now we no longer have the rights to their programming," Comcast said in a statement to the News earlier this week”- Per the Detroit press.
That statement sounds an awful lot like someone chose to turn the buy button off. Like they’re making a point. But why point to Comcast? What do they own?
Comcast owns NewsCorp and so much more.
It doesn’t get interesting until you scroll down to “Former Assets-Divested” under Warner Brothers Discovery.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_Warner_Bros._Discovery
Five bullet points down you’ll see the Atlanta Braves:
WTF?!
With renewed vigor, I keep going.
Who the hell is Liberty Media? Why were the Braves transferred and not sold?
John C. Malone started Liberty media and he’s been dubbed “Darth Vader” in business dealings, allegedly by Al Gore. Makes that Dumb Storm Troopers line hit differently from RC. Malone and Ted Turner are really good friends with similar ideals. Malone has said “I would never step on his toes” for the sake of business. Both have a contentious relationship with media mogul Rupert Murdoch, founder of News Corp. Ted and Rupert have beef from a boating incident and of course John has his good friends back. So, much so, that he starts buying up shares of News Corp. I keep searching until I find these two paragraphs on Liberty’s Wiki page:
[“In June 2002, Liberty Media acquired Wink Communications, a maker of set-top boxes founded by Brian P. Dougherty (of GEOS) fame), for $100 million.[33] Liberty Media subsequently spent $5 billion on nine German regional cable networks. Apart from television distribution it held major interests in other groups. For example, it was the largest shareholder in News Corporation (though the founding Murdoch family owns more voting shares), and had a 4% stake in Time Warner. In June 2005, Liberty Media International combined with UnitedGlobalCom, creating Liberty Global. In May 2006, Time Warner acquired Liberty Media's 50% stake in Court TV, for $735 million.[34] On May 16, 2006, IDT sold its IDT Entertainment division to Liberty Media "for all of Liberty Media's interests in IDT, $186 million in cash and the assumption of existing indebtedness". IDT Entertainment's assets and Starz Entertainment Group's line of premium television channels combined to produce content for all distribution platforms, and IDT Entertainment was later renamed as Starz Media.[35][36]
Liberty negotiated an asset swap with News Corp. and Time Warner that would give it control of DirecTV and the Atlanta Braves baseball team.[37] On February 12, 2007, the deal was completed with Time Warner wherein Liberty would receive the Atlanta Braves and a group of craft magazines, along with $1 billion in cash in exchange for 60 million shares of Time Warner stock (valued at $1.27 billion as of market close on February 12, 2007).[38] The deal was approved by Major League Baseballand then completed on May 16, 2007.[39] On February 20, 2008, the Federal Communications Commission approved the exchange of 16.3% of News Corp. for 38.4% of DirecTV, an $11 billion deal that also gave Liberty sports networks in Denver, Pittsburgh and Seattle plus $550 million in cash.[40]”]
Did you catch that Honey Nut Cheerio??
February 12, 2007 The deal was done for the Braves but wasn’t completed until May 16, 2007, once approved by the MLB.
This article published April 3, 2007 talks about the asset swap but makes no mention of the Braves as an asset but it does talk about Murdoch:
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/03/technology/03iht-liberty.4.5133859.html
Why did it take MLB so long to approve the sale?
https://www.savannahnow.com/story/sports/2007/05/17/mlb-approves-sale-braves/13801856007/
You know who else has a problem with Comcast other than Allen Media Group?
https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2020/03/01/trump-attacks-comcast-vows-to-destroy-their-image.cnn
Thanks to Edwin Barnes it all begins to make sense. He was the first to mention the connection to Trump and $DJT, which allowed me to question everything. He often says MGGA=MAGA, which does nothing to reinforce what I’m trying to drive home until I realize, The Atlanta Braves were once, The Boston Braves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Braves
“The Boston Braves were a Major League Baseball club that originated in Boston, Massachusetts, and played from 1871 to 1952. Afterwards they moved to Milwaukee (and became the Milwaukee Braves). Then in 1966 they were relocated to Atlanta, where they were renamed the Atlanta Braves.^\5])
During its 82-year stay in Massachusetts, the franchise was known by various nicknames, including the Red Stockings, Red Caps, Rustlers, Bees, and "Braves”.”
Red Stockings, Red Caps. What about Red Coats? Thus sparking a whole new dig.
“The Boston Tea Party was an American political and mercantile protest on December 16, 1773, by the Sons of Liberty in Boston in colonial Massachusetts. The target was the Tea Act of May 10, 1773, which allowed the British East India Company to sell tea from China in American colonies without paying taxes apart from those imposed by the Townshend Acts. The Sons of Liberty strongly opposed the taxes in the Townshend Act as a violation of their rights. In response, the Sons of Liberty, some disguised as Native Americans, destroyed an entire shipment of tea sent by the East India Company.
“Foley, sees the Tea Party as a movement of principles over politics. She identifies three “core principles” of American constitutional law that bind the decentralized, wide-ranging movement: limited government, unapologetic U. S. Sovereignty, and constitutional originalism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party
Liberty Media Group makes more sense now. But why? What are they up to?
This:
https://www.libertymedia.com/news/detail/502/liberty-media-corporation-completes-split-off-of-atlanta
ENGLEWOOD, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Liberty Media Corporation (“Liberty Media”) (Nasdaq: LSXMA, LSXMB, LSXMK, FWONA, FWONK) announced that it completed the split-off (the “Split-Off”) of Atlanta Braves Holdings, Inc. (“Atlanta Braves Holdings”) (Nasdaq: BATRA, BATRK) at 5:00 p.m., New York City time, today. As a result, Liberty Media and Atlanta Braves Holdings are now separate publicly traded companies. Atlanta Braves Holdings Series A common stock and Series C common stock will begin trading on Wednesday, July 19, 2023 on the Nasdaq Stock Market, under the symbols “BATRA” and “BATRK”, respectively. Atlanta Braves Holdings Series B common stock will be quoted on the OTC Markets under the symbol “BATRB.”
Liberty Media’s Liberty SiriusXM common stock and Liberty Formula One common stock will continue trading following the Split-Off until the completion of its previously announced reclassification of its existing common stock and the creation of the new Liberty Live common stock on August 3, 2023 after market close (the “Reclassification”). For additional details regarding the Reclassification, please see the press release issued by Liberty Media earlier today, July 18, 2023.
IS RC REALLY TRYING TO BUY ALL THE STOCKS, I MEAN GOT DAMN THE YOUNGEST HOTTEST TEAM IN BASEBALL….YEAH I’LL TAKE A COUPLE THOUSAND SCOOPS PLEASE!!!!
Once you start down this path you can’t unsee it. I feel like Charlie from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia pointing to the map meme. Once again, Why Atlanta? It’s the same thing I thought when the PP seeds show came to town. The same thing I thought when I saw Trump on TV at my local gym while walking thoughtlessly on the treadmill for a nice warmup. The tv next to him is showing an image from the Atlanta Botanical Garden’s, whose theme this year is “Alice In Wonderland”. Follow the white rabbit indeed. The exhibit is from May 11- September 15.
Yes, Atlanta is the busiest airport in the world. Yes, Atlanta Is becoming the Hollywood of the South. But Why Atlanta? The answer comes to me as I turn around:
Remember 84 years ago when GameStop was shipping Diet Coke along with packages. I’m reminded of Quincy, Florida, a small town that at one time had the most millionaires per capita because of Coca-Cola. Whose home is Atlanta, Georgia. Also, founded in Atlanta on May 8, Odin’s Day 1886.
But why did they choose The Braves? I mean I’m sure the Yankees are worth more. I look on Fidelity and I can’t find them. What about the Los Angeles Dodgers? Can’t find them either. I google how many baseball teams are publicly traded? The Braves. Just the Braves. It’s the WuTang Album dividend all over again. We did it!!!!
I truly know what it means to be a “GMErican”. I look forward to doing my part in making this country great again.
Last question: Why the bread crumbs? Because the people are needed. Yes, you and me. Progressive thinkers who can make shit happen and aren’t afraid to take a chance on something new. Whether, your ancestors were born here, immigrated here or forcefully brought here, were all here and have the opportunity to take advantage of this once in a generational opportunity.
The Braves won 5-0. The number 5 represents the center point which unifies these four extremes.
1 - Unity
2 - Dualism and multiplicity
3 - The unity between two extremes
4 - Multiplicity in two directions, like the cardinal directions.
Someone asked “What song would you play when you knew it was done?” Here’s another cohencidence for you, on May 8, Odin’s day, 1970 the Beatles released the album “Let it Be”. From Wiki:
“Concerned about recent friction within the band, Paul McCartney had conceived the project as an attempt to reinvigorate the group by returning to simpler rock ’n’ roll configurations.” Sounds a lot like trying to make something great again.
I think I’ll do the same while vibing to the albums single “Let It Be”.
Happy Mother’s Day!!!!
Updates as I edit: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/05/09/sinclair-explores-selling-30percent-of-broadcast-stations.html
This was published the morning after the Braves game and you know what they say, once it hits the news it’s already too late.
Allen Media Group has made several bids to purchase Paramount, which means they’re for sale: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/05/09/sinclair-explores-selling-30percent-of-broadcast-stations.html
Another cohencidence, I stopped counting LOL. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a bunch of companies going through bankruptcy that will soon emerge better for us all.
P.S. - If I made you smile and you want to make a donation to this struggling artist please DM me because rent is past due and if you think I need to pull myself up by the boot straps ill be slanging drinks all day Monday and Tuesday for Burn By Rocky Patel, at the Battery, where the Atlanta Braves play.
P.P.S. I think we go this week. No way I find this without them being ready.
Thank You For Reading.
Thank You to my loved ones, who put up with me wile I worked through this.
Links:
Sinclair Group: https://sbgi.net/who-we-are/
Sinclair Group Sale: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/05/09/sinclair-explores-selling-30percent-of-broadcast-stations.html
Ownmine NFT Marketplace: https://shopownmine.com/collections/john-cole-baseball-nostalgia-collection/Nostalgia
Allen Media Group Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Media_Group
Own Mine https://shopownmine.com/collections/nfts
Liberty Wiki: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Media
Liberty: https://www.libertymedia.com/about/company-history
Liberty asset swap: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/03/technology/03iht-liberty.4.5133859.html
Boston Tea Party: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party
Boston Braves: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Braves
Warner Bros: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_Warner_Bros._Discovery
Hollywood Reporter: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/nbcuniversal-plus-warner-bros-discovery-comcast-ceo-1235806791/amp/

VULCAN ZAS
WILLIAM D. COHAN
May 12, 2024
Could the Paramount mess actually provide an unexpected benefit to David Zaslav and Warner Bros. Discovery?
Now that the battle for Paramount has entered the black box phase, wherein everyone stays quiet and the bankers and lawyers help Shari Redstone decide to sell her company to either RedBird and Skydance (and face shareholder lawsuits aplenty) or Apollo and Sony (and face months of government scrutiny) or just say Fuck it, and keep going it alone (without much of a strategy, or an individual C.E.O., and down four board members). There aren’t any brilliant solutions at this point, particularly with her potential partners all likely feeling some level of deal fatigue amid this indecisive and self-destructive auction process. That’s in part why I think the person most likely to walk away with some of the most interesting, and potentially strategic, spoils of this war will be our friend David Zaslav at Warner Bros. Discovery.
Now that the battle for Paramount has entered the black box phase, wherein everyone stays quiet and the bankers and lawyers help Shari Redstone decide to sell her company to either RedBird and Skydance (and face shareholder lawsuits aplenty) or Apollo and Sony (and face months of government scrutiny) or just say Fuck it, and keep going it alone (without much of a strategy, or an individual C.E.O., and down four board members). There aren’t any brilliant solutions at this point, particularly with her potential partners all likely feeling some level of deal fatigue amid this indecisive and self-destructive auction process. That’s in part why I think the person most likely to walk away with some of the most interesting, and potentially strategic, spoils of this war will be our friend David Zaslav at Warner Bros. Discovery.
After all, both Sony/Apollo and Skydance/RedBird are primarily interested in the Paramount studio; neither cares as much about Paramount+ and CBS. Meanwhile, Zaz has long coveted CBS, as he told me years ago, before he did the deal for WarnerMedia. My bet is that he would still love to get his hands on the asset and combine it with CNN to create a news-gathering behemoth, and then unleash C.F.O. Gunnar Wiedenfels and his team of synergy experts to jettison costs left and right. Would Zaz also be interested in the local CBS stations? I don’t know, but if WBD doesn’t want them, chances are they could find a home at Tegna, Nexstar, Gray, or Sinclair. The sale of CBS and its affiliated stations would likely have significant tax implications, but their value is much lower than it was years ago, so I suspect that can be managed.
What about Paramount+? No matter who wins, Paramount+ has to be shut down or merged with another streamer. Losing $1.6 billion a year on a streaming service is not tenable (although the company hopes Par+ will be profitable by next year). Former Paramount Global C.E.O. Bob Bakish famously nixed a joint venture opportunity between Par+ and Peacock for reasons that apparently miffed Shari. But Max might be a better dance partner than Peacock. According to Zaz’s comments during last week’s earnings call, Max was profitable in the first quarter “despite heavy launch investments” in Latin America, and its subscriber base increased by 2 million, bringing the total subscribers into the range of 100 million. Zaz has also said that he believes the streaming service is on track to earn $1 billion, or more, in EBITDA—note he didn’t say “adjusted EBITDA”—in 2025.
Obviously, Max still has less than half of Netflix’s 220 million subscribers, for which the market has rewarded Netflix with a value of $262 billion, or more than 10 times WBD’s market value of $20 billion. (It’s worth noting, of course, that Netflix makes money—$5.4 billion of net income in 2023, compared with a $3.1 billion loss for WBD. Perhaps combining Max’s 100 million subscribers with Paramount+’s 67 million will allow WBD to not only better compete with Disney+, Prime Video, and Netflix, but maybe even begin to capture a fraction of Netflix’s extraordinary earnings multiple of 48x its 2023 net income.
Between a Rock and a Zas Place
Now that the battle for Paramount has entered the black box phase, wherein everyone stays quiet and the bankers and lawyers help Shari Redstone decide to sell her company to either RedBird and Skydance (and face shareholder lawsuits aplenty) or Apollo and Sony (and face months of government scrutiny) or just say Fuck it, and keep going it alone (without much of a strategy, or an individual C.E.O., and down four board members). There aren’t any brilliant solutions at this point, particularly with her potential partners all likely feeling some level of deal fatigue amid this indecisive and self-destructive auction process. That’s in part why I think the person most likely to walk away with some of the most interesting, and potentially strategic, spoils of this war will be our friend David Zaslav at Warner Bros. Discovery.
After all, both Sony/Apollo and Skydance/RedBird are primarily interested in the Paramount studio; neither cares as much about Paramount+ and CBS. Meanwhile, Zaz has long coveted CBS, as he told me years ago, before he did the deal for WarnerMedia. My bet is that he would still love to get his hands on the asset and combine it with CNN to create a news-gathering behemoth, and then unleash C.F.O. Gunnar Wiedenfels and his team of synergy experts to jettison costs left and right. Would Zaz also be interested in the local CBS stations? I don’t know, but if WBD doesn’t want them, chances are they could find a home at Tegna, Nexstar, Gray, or Sinclair. The sale of CBS and its affiliated stations would likely have significant tax implications, but their value is much lower than it was years ago, so I suspect that can be managed.
What about Paramount+? No matter who wins, Paramount+ has to be shut down or merged with another streamer. Losing $1.6 billion a year on a streaming service is not tenable (although the company hopes Par+ will be profitable by next year). Former Paramount Global C.E.O. Bob Bakish famously nixed a joint venture opportunity between Par+ and Peacock for reasons that apparently miffed Shari. But Max might be a better dance partner than Peacock. According to Zaz’s comments during last week’s earnings call, Max was profitable in the first quarter “despite heavy launch investments” in Latin America, and its subscriber base increased by 2 million, bringing the total subscribers into the range of 100 million. Zaz has also said that he believes the streaming service is on track to earn $1 billion, or more, in EBITDA—note he didn’t say “adjusted EBITDA”—in 2025.
Obviously, Max still has less than half of Netflix’s 220 million subscribers, for which the market has rewarded Netflix with a value of $262 billion, or more than 10 times WBD’s market value of $20 billion. (It’s worth noting, of course, that Netflix makes money—$5.4 billion of net income in 2023, compared with a $3.1 billion loss for WBD. Perhaps combining Max’s 100 million subscribers with Paramount+’s 67 million will allow WBD to not only better compete with Disney+, Prime Video, and Netflix, but maybe even begin to capture a fraction of Netflix’s extraordinary earnings multiple of 48x its 2023 net income.
Between a Rock and a Zaz Place
Now that the Reverse Morris Trust restrictions are off, WBD can do deals again without fear of tax consequences. And I would not be the least bit surprised to see Zaz walk off with CBS, its local stations, Paramount+, or some combination of the three, if Paramount ends up in Apollo's hands. He may, in fact, be the savior that each of Sony/Apollo, Ellison/RedBird, and CBS chief George Cheeks are looking for to guide them through the regulatory and financial thicket that may result if Shari finally picks one of her suitors.
Part of why I think Zaz emerges a winner in the Paramount follies has to do with him having thrown off the Reverse Morris Trust shackles, but I also think the market is truly underestimating WBD’s first-quarter performance and the growing momentum at the company. (This is not investment advice.) First of all, WBD is making money, even if it’s not yet producing net income. And by that I mean free cash flow, one of the most important metrics on Wall Street—and, yes, the key factor in Zaz’s endlessly fascinating compensation calculus. In the first quarter of 2024, historically WBD’s weakest of the year, the company generated $400 million of free cash flow, a turnaround of $1.4 billion from a $1 billion loss a year earlier.
What’s more: In the last trailing 12 months, WBD has produced $7.5 billion in free cash flow. Thanks to the free cash flow generation, WBD has paid down more than $6 billion of debt in the last 12 months, including debt reduction of $1 billion during the first quarter, which featured the clever move of buying $400 million of its own debt in the market at a discount. Since the start of the WBD experiment, the company’s net debt has been reduced to less than $40 billion from $55 billion. WBD management remains “committed,” Gunnar said on the first-quarter earnings call, to reducing the leverage ratio to between 2.5x and 3x.
According to Gunnar—and I find this most interesting—the average cost of WBD’s debt is 4.6 percent. That means the company’s cost of capital is relatively low, especially since the debt has an average maturity of 15 years. That also means, in the current rate environment, that WBD’s debt trades at a discount to par because interest rates on newly issued and similarly rated BBB debt are much higher than 4.6 percent. According to Gunnar, the spread between the actual cost of WBD’s debt and what it would cost WBD if that debt were issued or refinanced today is a “$6 billion asset in our debt stack.” He added that WBD would try to capture the value of that asset by continuing to buy WBD’s debt at a discount, using up to $1.75 billion of WBD’s cash. That’s just smart.
Equity investors may not like WBD’s stock price or its prospects—the stock is down 67 percent since WBD started trading publicly in April 2022—but WBD’s creditors seem to be pretty happy. WBD is a publicly traded L.B.O., and when its debt gets paid down and its cash flow increases, equity value is created (or should be). I understand why equity investors are still skeptical of the WBD story, but Zaz’s longtime mentor John Malone didn’t get to be a multibillionaire by making big mistakes, and he is still a big shareholder and on the WBD board. At some point, equity investors are going to clue into the fact that as the WBD debt gets paid down, the company’s equity value should increase.
In addition to the ongoing financial engineering, there are other green shoots. Warner Bros. is currently one of the hottest movie studios in Hollywood, amid a run that includes Barbie, Wonka, and Dune 2. So far this year, Warners has generated $1.8 billion in box office revenue and was the first movie studio to generate more than $1 billion in revenue in 2024. Not for nothing, I assume, are all of Ryan Coogler, George Clooney, Tom Cruise, Peter Jackson, and Paul Thomas Anderson in the Warners fold. HBO had a big year in 2023, with House of the Dragon, White Lotus, The Last of Us, etcetera, and Warner Bros. Television remains one of the most important producers of TV shows in Hollywood, with some 110 in its repertoire, including Abbott Elementary, Shrinking, Ted Lasso, and the Chuck Lorre portfolio on CBS.
I also want to take the other side of the NBA debate. I have no idea whether WBD will be able to make a deal with the NBA or not. But if Brian Roberts and NBCU get the NBA rights, it will be because they paid up big time for them. And if Zaz loses the NBA, I suspect he will find a profitable alternative use for that $25 billion-plus that he would have spent over the next decade on NBA content. Perhaps he’ll go after UFC rights, or deploy the cash elsewhere. While it’s obvious that the NBA would shore up TNT’s and WBD’s cable leverage with distributors in the near term, who knows what the future value of those advertising packages will be after all the biggest players build out their AVOD tiers.
Zaz also has the right to match Amazon’s offer of $1.8 billion a year for 11 years for a different package of NBA games, including games on Saturday nights, the in-season tournament and some postseason games. And as he said on the earnings call, “We’ve had a lot of time to prepare for this negotiation, and we have strategies in place for the various potential outcomes. However, now is not the time to discuss any of this. Since we are in active negotiations with the league and under our current deal with the NBA, we have matching rights that allow us to match third-party offers before the NBA enters into an agreement with them.”
I get that in its first two years, WBD has unquestionably been a loser stock. But I think equity investors are missing the bigger picture here. As the WBD debt continues to get paid down, the equity value has no choice but to go up. After all, we are in an age when content is just as important as distribution. (That’s certainly what we believe at Puck.) And there’s little doubt that WBD continues to produce some of the best content anywhere on the planet. Does it have the best distribution? Probably not. But Zaz is doing everything he can think of to solve that problem, too, including the Spulu sports bundle deal he made with Lachlan Murdoch and Bob Iger and the streaming partnership he just forged with Iger and his Disney+ and Hulu. And if he somehow ends up with CBS or Paramount+ and unleashes Gunnar? Well, then, we may just find out what the whole WBD narrative that Zaz and Malone have been cooking up is all about.

TLDR: The Atlanta Braves baseball team is the only publicly traded baseball team.
I am not a smart man. Just a man, who thinks too much. Even now, I should be getting my last minute Mother’s day gifts together but this won’t leave my brain. Neil Gaiman’s “American God’s” sits unfinished on my dresser but weighs heavily on my mind. This movement feels like the New God’s fighting the Old Gods. Operating software being forcefully updated to keep up with growing technology. It’s still big business and time is money.
Wednesday, Odin’s day of magic, The Braves played the Boston Red Sox and won 5-0 but there was an ill feeling in the air as this message was broadcast on all the tv’s in the stadium including the big screen over centerfield and for those of us watching from home:
" Bally Sport is no longer available. The owner of Bally Sports is in bankruptcy proceedings and we have offered them multiple options to continue carrying their networks. They have declined each one and we no longer have the rights to continue carrying their content. As a result, we'll be issuing proactive monthly credits to customers for the loss of this network."
That statement sounds an awful lot like someone chose to turn the buy button off. Feels like a message was being sent but something caught my eye in the very first sentence. “Bankruptcy”, Cohencidence #1. I started asking myself questions and the most important was, “Who, own’s Bally network?”. The Sinclair Group and Allen Media Group.
The Sinclair Group wasn’t really eye catching for me until I saw Dr. Ben Carson is on the board of directors. Cohencidence #2 as he’s close to Trump, who’s potentially part of this new entity being created. I could taste the tin foil slowly twisting my brain like a hamster named Algernon running non-stop on a hamster wheel, while high thinking “why am I running?”. I click on the about page and see this:
Our Values
Love What You Do
Be inspirational
Be communicative
Be part of something important
Make a difference
Live What You Do
Be a person of integrity
Be customer focused
Be transparent
Drive results
Embrace What You Do
Be forward thinking
Be adaptive
Be a strategic thinker
Challenge the status quo
This really opened my eyes as it reminded me of GameStop’s motto:
Power to the Players (Love What You Do)
Power to the Creators (Live What You Do)
Power to the Collectors (Embrace What You Do)
I click on Interactivity and see that they have a NFT Marketplace. This message pops up:
“Through Sinclair’s OWNMINE store, NFTs and physical goods can be purchased on Shopify, with no digital currency required.”
Shopify? They work very closely with Flexport, who’s potentially handling the new companies shipping (Teddy). Shopify also has a commercial that has a neon rocket blasting off on the wall and ice cream. Cohencidences #3.
Allen Media Group is owned by Byron Allen. Yes, the owner of The Weather Channel. Byron, successfully sued AT&T, Comcast and Charter Communications seperately in a Racial Discrimination Lawsuit that went all the way to the Supreme Court for the Comcast case.
I overheard a Braves Fan say “the owner’s of Bally Sports Network don’t like CNN”. Why? Who own’s CNN?
Warner Bros. Discovery and they own all the good entertainment shows. HBO, Cartoon Network, TNT, TBS, etc.
Here’s an article from January 25, 2024 talking about Comcast potentially merging with Warner Brother’s Discovery. The CEO of Comcast denies of course but the owners of Warner have made it known that everything is up for sale. America’s for sale. The way this country has been run economically has got everybody’s money “fucked up” and people are pissed. Which is hard to fathom, when it comes to people who have way more money than the combined generational wealth accumulated by your entire family.
One such man is Ted Turner. Like Ryan Cohen, he learned lessons from his father, who built a successful billboard company. He started off with CNN before turning into a media mogul and then he bought, The Atlanta Braves. He managed the team for one day, May 11, 1977. He owned all of Atlanta’s sports teams at one time. Time Warner would eventually sell off the teams. He’s been through economic downturn before as he watched the company he built be sold off after making decisions to merge with Time Warner in the 90’s and AOL-Time Warner in 2001, which resulted in him losing the majority vote to the board. It’s estimated the deals cost him 7 Billion dollars. I wonder who advised him.
Ted is a philanthropist. At one time Ted was the largest private landowner in the United States until John C. Malone surpassed him in 2011. Ted brought Buffalo back from dwindling numbers. What once was 30k now boasts numbers well over 400k. He knows how to take things, create something new and make them grow. He’s a 2013 recipient of the Lone Sailor Award, given to Sea Service veterans, who have excelled with distinction in their respective careers during or after their service. Another recipient of this award, President Theodore Roosevelt at the turn of the millennia in 2000. Cohencidence # 4
My acting teacher often said “There are two types of people. Creators and takers.” There has to be balance otherwise there’s not enough to go around.
Still, the question remains, who would buy Warner Bros?
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/nbcuniversal-plus-warner-bros-discovery-comcast-ceo-1235806791/amp/
I wonder who would be interested? Jeff Bezos, nope he has a “small” position in Diamond Media Group, a subsidiary of the previously mentioned Sinclair Group, who runs Bally Sports. Is he hedging a Bet on a company going through bankruptcy?
What does Comcast have to do with this? Comcast/NBC Universal/xfinity has headquarters at The Battery, where the Braves Play. A friend, of my friend, is my friend. Right? Well, that’s weird because these friends can’t get along.
But why point to Comcast? What do they own?
Comcast owns NewsCorp and so much more.
I started looking through the investments of Warner Bros and Comcast. It doesn’t get interesting until you scroll down to “Former Assets-Divested” under Warner Brothers Discovery.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_Warner_Bros._Discovery
Five bullet points down you’ll see the Atlanta Braves.
WTF?!
With renewed vigor, I keep going. Who the hell is Liberty Media? Why were the Braves transferred and not sold?
John C. Malone started Liberty media and he’s been dubbed “Darth Vader” in business dealings, allegedly by Al Gore. Makes that Dumb Storm Troopers line hit differently from RC. Malone and Ted Turner are really good friends with similar ideals. Malone has said “I would never step on his toes” for the sake of business. Both have a contentious relationship with media mogul Rupert Murdoch, founder of News Corp. Ted and Rupert have beef from a boating incident and of course John has his good friends back. So, much so, that he starts buying up shares of News Corp. I keep searching until I find these two paragraphs on Liberty’s Wiki page:
[“In June 2002, Liberty Media acquired Wink Communications, a maker of set-top boxes founded by Brian P. Dougherty (of GEOS) fame), for $100 million.[33] Liberty Media subsequently spent $5 billion on nine German regional cable networks. Apart from television distribution it held major interests in other groups. For example, it was the largest shareholder in News Corporation (though the founding Murdoch family owns more voting shares), and had a 4% stake in Time Warner. In June 2005, Liberty Media International combined with UnitedGlobalCom, creating Liberty Global. In May 2006, Time Warner acquired Liberty Media's 50% stake in Court TV, for $735 million.[34] On May 16, 2006, IDT sold its IDT Entertainment division to Liberty Media "for all of Liberty Media's interests in IDT, $186 million in cash and the assumption of existing indebtedness". IDT Entertainment's assets and Starz Entertainment Group's line of premium television channels combined to produce content for all distribution platforms, and IDT Entertainment was later renamed as Starz Media.[35][36]
Liberty negotiated an asset swap with News Corp. and Time Warner that would give it control of DirecTV and the Atlanta Braves baseball team.[37] On February 12, 2007, the deal was completed with Time Warner wherein Liberty would receive the Atlanta Braves and a group of craft magazines, along with $1 billion in cash in exchange for 60 million shares of Time Warner stock (valued at $1.27 billion as of market close on February 12, 2007).[38] The deal was approved by Major League Baseball and then completed on May 16, 2007.[39] On February 20, 2008, the Federal Communications Commission approved the exchange of 16.3% of News Corp. for 38.4% of DirecTV, an $11 billion deal that also gave Liberty sports networks in Denver, Pittsburgh and Seattle plus $550 million in cash.[40]”]
Did you catch that Honey Nut Cheerio??
February 12, 2007 The deal was done for the Braves but wasn’t completed until May 16, 2007, once approved by the MLB.
This article published April 3, 2007 talks about the asset swap but makes no mention of the Braves as an asset but it does talk about Murdoch:
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/03/technology/03iht-liberty.4.5133859.html
Why did it take MLB so long to approve the sale?
https://www.savannahnow.com/story/sports/2007/05/17/mlb-approves-sale-braves/13801856007/
You know who else has a problem with Comcast other than Allen Media Group?
https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2020/03/01/trump-attacks-comcast-vows-to-destroy-their-image.cnn
Thanks to Edwin Barnes it all begins to make sense. He was the first to mention the connection to Trump and $DJT, which allowed me to question everything. He often says MGGA=MAGA, which does nothing to reinforce what I’m trying to drive home until I realize, The Atlanta Braves were once, The Boston Braves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Braves
“The Boston Braves were a Major League Baseball club that originated in Boston, Massachusetts, and played from 1871 to 1952. Afterwards they moved to Milwaukee (and became the Milwaukee Braves). Then in 1966 they were relocated to Atlanta, where they were renamed the Atlanta Braves.^\5])
During its 82-year stay in Massachusetts, the franchise was known by various nicknames, including the Red Stockings, Red Caps, Rustlers, Bees, and "Braves”.”
Red Stockings, Red Caps. What about Red Coats? Thus sparking a whole new dig.
“The Boston Tea Party was an American political and mercantile protest on December 16, 1773, by the Sons of Liberty in Boston in colonial Massachusetts. The target was the Tea Act of May 10, 1773, which allowed the British East India Company to sell tea from China in American colonies without paying taxes apart from those imposed by the Townshend Acts. The Sons of Liberty strongly opposed the taxes in the Townshend Act as a violation of their rights. In response, the Sons of Liberty, some disguised as Native Americans, destroyed an entire shipment of tea sent by the East India Company.
“Foley, sees the Tea Party as a movement of principles over politics. She identifies three “core principles” of American constitutional law that bind the decentralized, wide-ranging movement: limited government, unapologetic U. S. Sovereignty, and constitutional originalism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party
Liberty Media Group makes more sense now. But why? What are they up to?
This:
https://www.libertymedia.com/news/detail/502/liberty-media-corporation-completes-split-off-of-atlanta
ENGLEWOOD, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Liberty Media Corporation (“Liberty Media”) (Nasdaq: LSXMA, LSXMB, LSXMK, FWONA, FWONK) announced that it completed the split-off (the “Split-Off”) of Atlanta Braves Holdings, Inc. (“Atlanta Braves Holdings”) (Nasdaq: BATRA, BATRK) at 5:00 p.m., New York City time, today. As a result, Liberty Media and Atlanta Braves Holdings are now separate publicly traded companies. Atlanta Braves Holdings Series A common stock and Series C common stock will begin trading on Wednesday, July 19, 2023 on the Nasdaq Stock Market, under the symbols “BATRA” and “BATRK”, respectively. Atlanta Braves Holdings Series B common stock will be quoted on the OTC Markets under the symbol “BATRB.”
Liberty Media’s Liberty SiriusXM common stock and Liberty Formula One common stock will continue trading following the Split-Off until the completion of its previously announced reclassification of its existing common stock and the creation of the new Liberty Live common stock on August 3, 2023 after market close (the “Reclassification”). For additional details regarding the Reclassification, please see the press release issued by Liberty Media earlier today, July 18, 2023.
IS RC REALLY TRYING TO BUY ALL THE STOCKS, I MEAN GOT DAMN THE YOUNGEST HOTTEST TEAM IN BASEBALL….YEAH I’LL TAKE A COUPLE THOUSAND SCOOPS PLEASE!!!!
Once you start down this path you can’t unsee it. I feel like Charlie from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia pointing to the map meme. Once again, Why Atlanta? It’s the same thing I thought when the PP seeds show came to town. The same thing I thought when I saw Trump on TV at my local gym while walking thoughtlessly on the treadmill for a nice warmup. The tv next to him is showing an image from the Atlanta Botanical Garden’s, whose theme this year is “Alice In Wonderland”. Follow the white rabbit indeed. The exhibit is from May 11- September 15.
Yes, Atlanta is the busiest airport in the world. Yes, Atlanta Is becoming the Hollywood of the South. But Why Atlanta? The answer comes to me as I turn around:
Remember 84 years ago when GameStop was shipping Diet Coke along with packages. I’m reminded of Quincy, Florida, a small town that at one time had the most millionaires per capita because of Coca-Cola. Whose home is Atlanta, Georgia. Also, founded in Atlanta on May 8, Odin’s Day 1886.
But why did they choose The Braves? I mean I’m sure the Yankees are worth more. I look on Fidelity and I can’t find them. What about the Los Angeles Dodgers? Can’t find them either. I google how many baseball teams are publicly traded? The Braves. Just the Braves. It’s the WuTang Album dividend all over again. We did it!!!!
I truly know what it means to be a “GMErican”. I look forward to doing my part in making this country great again.
Last question: Why the bread crumbs? Because the people are needed. Yes, you and me. Progressive thinkers who can make shit happen and aren’t afraid to take a chance on something new. Whether, your ancestors were born here, immigrated here or forcefully brought here, were all here and have the opportunity to take advantage of this once in a generational opportunity.
The Braves won 5-0. The number 5 represents the center point which unifies these four extremes.
1 - Unity
2 - Dualism and multiplicity
3 - The unity between two extremes
4 - Multiplicity in two directions, like the cardinal directions.
Someone asked “What song would you play when you knew it was done?” Here’s another cohencidence for you, on May 8, Odin’s day, 1970 the Beatles released the album “Let it Be”. From Wiki:
“Concerned about recent friction within the band, Paul McCartney had conceived the project as an attempt to reinvigorate the group by returning to simpler rock ’n’ roll configurations.” Sounds a lot like trying to make something great again.
I think I’ll do the same while vibing to the albums single “Let It Be”.
Happy Mother’s Day!!!!
Updates as I edit: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/05/09/sinclair-explores-selling-30percent-of-broadcast-stations.html
This was published the morning after the Braves game and you know what they say, once it hits the news it’s already too late.
Allen Media Group has made several bids to purchase Paramount, which means they’re for sale: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/05/09/sinclair-explores-selling-30percent-of-broadcast-stations.html
Another cohencidence, I stopped counting LOL. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a bunch of companies going through bankruptcy that will soon emerge better for us all.
P.P.S. I think we go this week. No way I find this without them being ready.
Thank You For Reading.
Thank You to my loved ones, who put up with me wile I worked through this.
Links:
Sinclair Group: https://sbgi.net/who-we-are/
Sinclair Group Sale: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/05/09/sinclair-explores-selling-30percent-of-broadcast-stations.html
Ownmine NFT Marketplace: https://shopownmine.com/collections/john-cole-baseball-nostalgia-collection/Nostalgia
Allen Media Group Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Media_Group
Own Mine https://shopownmine.com/collections/nfts
Liberty Wiki: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Media
Liberty: https://www.libertymedia.com/about/company-history
Liberty asset swap: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/03/technology/03iht-liberty.4.5133859.html
Boston Tea Party: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party
Boston Braves: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Braves
Warner Bros: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_Warner_Bros._Discovery
Hollywood Reporter: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/nbcuniversal-plus-warner-bros-discovery-comcast-ceo-1235806791/amp/

Note: I tried to book this as I would if somehow I had a Time Machine and would be able to do this
Note: I signed wrestlers as soon as they began wrestling in the indies
Wrestlers Theme Songs * Stg Slaughter- “Born In The U.S.A” Bruce Springsteen * Mike Rotundo - “Melo Don’t Miss” INNESX * Rocky Johnson/S.D. Jones/Tony Atlas- “Locked In” INNESX * Tito Santana- “Eyes On The Prize” INNESX * Dynamite Kid- “Rock And Roll” INNESX * Bob Orton “Fighter” INNESX * Paul Orndorff- “Done With That” INNESX * Barry Windham- “Stars In The Night” INNESX * Doink The Clown “Satans Sister” INNESX
(New Signings) Woman Wrestlers 1. Desiree Peterson 2. Jamie west 3. Linda Dallas 4. Debbie Irons
Tag Team Wrestlers 1. Legion Of Doom 2. The rockers
Single Wrestlers 1. Mick Foley 2. Rick Rude 3. Rick Steiner 4. William Regal 5. Jushin liger 6. Macho man (Miss Elizabeth) 7. Undertaker
Other Roles 1. Mike Chioda (Ref) 2. Scott Armstrong (Ref) 3. Tony Schiavone (Commentator) 4. Nancy Beniot (Manager)
Note: Doink The Clown is a joker Inspired Character
Note: I rebranded the name WWE Since it would have to be changed anyways because of the 2002 Lawsuit
Note: (c) Means Champion
Note: - Means Winner
Note: Doink The Clown has joker inspired character
Summerslam 1984 (Show Theme: “Rebel Heart” INNESX)

1. Nikolai Volkoff Vs Greg Valentine-
   
2. Ricky steamboat vs jimmy snuka- Intercontinental championship
   
3. S.D. jones/Tony Atlas/Rocky Johnson(c)- Vs Hart Foundation Tag team Championships
   
4. Junkyard Dog- Vs Paul Ordorff
   
5. Doink The Clown- Vs Stg Slaughter dog collar match
   
6. Andre the giant(c) Vs Roddy Piper- Vs Hulk Hogan WWE Championship
   

Note: Survivor Series Main Event Will be the first ever War Games Match, This match will happen since it will put a end to the rivalry’s
Survivor Series 1984 (Show Theme: “Dream Warriors” INNESX)

1. S.D. jones/Tony Atlas/Rocky Johnson(c) Vs Hart Foundation- Tag team Championships street fight
   
2. Ricky Steamboat- vs jimmy snuka(c) Intercontinental championship
   
3. Roddy Piper(c)- vs junkyard Dog WWE Championship
   
4. Paul Orndorff/Bob Orton/big John Studd/Doink The Clown/Nikolai Volkoff Vs Stg slaughtegreg valentine/cactus Jack/Andre the giant/barry windham-
   

Last night, 163 Democratic representatives joined 196 Republicans to stop far-right Republicans from removing House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene led the effort to remove Johnson, but her motion received only 43 votes: 32 Democrats and 11 Republicans. Twenty-eight representatives either did not vote or voted present.
Greene promptly excoriated the “uniparty,” saying that “the Democrats now control Speaker Johnson. That was something that everybody’s suspected all along. They just voted to save him.”
But the majority of the House Republican conference appears to be tired of the chaos in their ranks that has made this Congress one of the least productive in American history. Jordain Carney and Olivia Beavers of Politico reported today that House Republicans who are not aligned with Greene and her cohort want to change House rules to create punishments for the extremists who keep stopping House business by, for example, voting against letting bills come to the floor of the House.
Greene and Thomas Massie (R-KY), her main ally in trying to oust Johnson, urged their colleagues to bring it on. Massie said that anyone trying to stop them was going to “take an ass-whooping from their base.”
Since the 1990s, right-wing media hosts have directed the Republican base, telling them what to think and urging them to put pressure on Republican lawmakers to do what the media hosts wanted. Talk radio host Rush Limbaugh was so influential in the 1990s that when Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in 1995 for the first time since 1954, they made him an honorary member of their incoming congressional freshman class. And what Limbaugh did for radio, Fox News Channel hosts like Bill O’Reilly did for television.
But Limbaugh died in February 2021, and after the Fox News Channel (FNC) had to pay a $787 million settlement to Dominion Voting Systems for the lies the network’s hosts told about the company’s voting machines in the 2020 election, it let go of main host Tucker Carlson. There are indications that FNC founder and former chair Rupert Murdoch hoped to center Republican messaging around young activist Charlie Kirk, but Kirk has slid into MAGA extremism, too.
The Republican extremists no longer have a centralized messaging center. Instead, as CNN’s Oliver Darcy noted today, Murdoch’s outlets themselves—the Fox News Channel, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post—stood behind Johnson.
Yesterday, FreedomWorks, the right-wing organization that was backed by the Koch family at its start in 2004 and that was behind the Tea Party movement, abruptly shut down. FreedomWorks attacked Democratic measures for business regulation and social welfare because it embraced libertarian principles. Its revenue had dropped by half since 2022, its president, Adam Brandon, told Luke Mullins of Politico. But in the end, what did the organization in was the party’s split over Trump.
That split was crystal clear in Tuesday’s Republican primary election in Indiana. Trump won that election, but with only 78.3% of the vote. Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who suspended her campaign in early March and has not campaigned since, won 21.7%.
Before the Indiana primary, on May 2 political statistician Tom Bonier debunked the idea that Haley’s support came from Democratic-leaning voters flooding the primary vote to hurt Trump. Crunching the numbers in North Carolina showed that Haley voters there “were not substantially younger than the GOP voters (41% over 65 vs 45% among reg[istered Republicans]). They were overwhelmingly white (94% of Ind[ependent]s vs 97% of [Republicans]), and were actually more likely to be men (51% of Ind[ependent Republican] primary voters vs 50% of [Republicans]).” In short, he wrote, “[e]very indicator suggests these Independents voting in [Republican] primaries are more likely [Republican] voters. They just don't like Trump.”
Political commentator Chris Cillizza today called attention to the numbers that landed before Tuesday. On March 12, Haley won 13.2% of the vote in Georgia (or 78,000 votes). On March 19 she won 17.8% of the vote in Arizona (111,000 votes), 13.9%* of the vote in Florida (155,000 votes), and 14.4% of the vote in Ohio (161,000 votes). On April 2 she won 12.8% of the votes in Wisconsin (77,000 votes). And on April 23, Haley won 16.6% of the votes in Pennsylvania (158,000 votes).
If Biden picks up even one in five of these votes, Cillizza noted, “it matters bigly.”
Three high-level Republicans this week told media they would not vote for Trump, helping to pave an off-ramp for other Republicans. Former House speaker Paul Ryan told Yahoo Finance that he would write in another Republican rather than vote for Trump. “Character is too important to me,” he said.
Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, also cited character when she said she would not vote for Trump. “I’ve never voted for a Democrat in my life, but I would absolutely consider voting for Joe Biden this upcoming November because he will not seek to destroy our nation [or] our Constitution, and he has the statesman character that we need in an elected official.”
Georgia’s former lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan went further on Monday night, endorsing Biden, whom he had called in an op-ed a “decent person I disagree with on policy,” over Trump, whom he described as “a criminal defendant without a moral compass.” “Sometimes the best way to learn your lesson is to get beat, and Donald Trump needs to get beat. We need to move on as a party. We need to move on as a country,” he said.
Meanwhile, as Khaya Himmelman noted in Talking Points Memo, MAGA Republicans are already blaming a potential loss in 2024 on illegal voters. On Wednesday, Speaker Johnson and other Trump Republicans held a press conference to promote their new bill to make it illegal for people who are not U.S. citizens to vote in federal elections.
This is a political stunt: It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, and there is no evidence that this is happening. In 2017, Trump created a commission to root out the illegal voting he claimed had affected the 2016 election; less than a year later, he disbanded it when it could find no evidence of his claims. Johnson admitted there was no evidence of voting by undocumented immigrants when he told reporters: "We all know, intuitively, that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections. But it's not been something that is easily provable. We don't have that number."
Pulitzer Prize–winning author T.J. Stiles retorted: “People terrified of contact with government because they don’t want their lives destroyed by deportation don’t register to vote illegally and then vote illegally for the reward of having a tiny tiny influence on federal electoral outcomes.”
For his part, Trump appears to have tried a more direct approach to reelection. According to Josh Dawsey and Maxine Joselow of the Washington Post, last month at Mar-a-Lago, Trump told about two dozen top oil executives that if they gave him $1 billion to get reelected, he would immediately reverse the environmental regulations the Biden-Harris administration has put into place and stop any new ones. A $1 billion gift would be a “deal,” according to Trump, because the tax cuts he plans to enact and the regulatory cuts would be worth far more than that. Since then, Ben Lefebvre wrote yesterday in Politico, oil executives have been drawing up executive orders that Trump can sign as soon as he takes office.
Yesterday, in an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett, President Biden said the U.S. would continue to supply defensive weapons to support the Iron Dome over Israel, but it would not send offensive weapons to Israel if it went forward with its controversial invasion of the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, where more than a million Palestinians have taken shelter from Israeli strikes. The administration has publicly opposed that invasion since Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced it. “If they go into Rafah, I'm not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah,” Biden said. “Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers.”
Trump and other Republicans promptly accused President Joe Biden of “taking the side of these terrorists, just like he has sided with the Radical Mobs taking over our college campuses.”
“We’re not walking away from Israel’s security,” Biden told Burnett. “We’re walking away from Israel’s ability to wage war in those areas.”
—
*EDITED AT 9:30 AM EASTERN, MAY 10, 2024: A typo had this number as 3.9%. It is now correct.
—
Notes:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2024/05/08/house-speaker-vote-mike-johnson-motion-to-vacate/
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2024/05/09/congress/consequences-on-the-table-00157040
https://www.newsweek.com/charlie-kirk-flips-martin-luther-king-jr-attacks-growing-myth-1860839
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/09/media/rupert-murdoch-mike-johnson-marjorie-taylor-greene/index.html
https://apnews.com/article/fox-news-dominion-lawsuit-trial-trump-2020-0ac71f75acfacc52ea80b3e747fb0afe
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/05/08/freedomworks-is-closing-and-blaming-trump-00156784
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4650934-paul-ryan-donald-trump-2024-election-voting/
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/gopers-desperate-to-pin-blame-for-potential-trump-2024-loss-on-non-citizen-voters-wherever-they-are
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/09/trump-oil-industry-campaign-money/
https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/rupert-murdoch-charlie-kirk-and-future-right-wing-media-extremism
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/05/09/trump-gop-weapons-israel-biden-rafah/73625195007/
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/background-trumps-voter-fraud-commission
https://apnews.com/article/f5f6a73b2af546ee97816bb35e82c18d
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/08/politics/joe-biden-interview-cnntv/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/us/politics/trump-voter-fraud-commission.html
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/08/oil-industry-orders-trump-day-one-00156705
https://www.axios.com/2024/05/06/geoff-duncan-endorses-biden-trump-2024
https://www.thedailybeast.com/ex-georgia-lt-gov-geoff-duncan-on-backing-biden-trump-is-a-fake-republican
Twitter (X):
tboniestatus/1786049906332823636
ChrisCillizza/status/1788574868474073401
BidenHQ/status/1788654963452776882
atrupastatus/1788231185174311165
tjstiles_authostatus/1788235180655911121
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-9-2024

One of Britain’s top hedge fund managers lost a legal fight over the salvage of $40 million of silver from the wreck of a ship sunk by a Japanese submarine in World War II.
The UK’s Supreme Court on Wednesday dealt a blow to a company controlled by Paul Marshall, ruling that South Africa, the silver’s owner, wouldn’t need to get embroiled in a case because it enjoys state immunity.
At stake was a cargo of 2,364 bars of silver, once destined for the South African Mint, that lay hidden two and a half kilometers below the surface of the Indian Ocean for decades until it was found and lifted by Marshall’s Argentum Exploration Ltd.
The firm had argued it was owed a substantial salvage figure and said it wanted a court to “fix an award,” but the judges dismissed the claim. They said they were informed that the two sides had recently agreed to a confidential settlement.
“The court has firmly sent a message to those hoping to find and claim ownership of lost treasure that finders are not always keepers,” said Jonathan Goulding, a lawyer for the South African government at HFW.
A lawyer for Argentum declined to comment.
The treasure haul was aboard the SS Tilawa, which was sailing from Mumbai on its way to Durban in 1942 when it was struck by two torpedoes and sunk with the loss of 281 passengers and crew. The sinking has been dubbed “India’s Titanic” for the scale of the tragedy.
Marshall has been pursuing the riches of the deep alongside a younger executive at his hedge fund Anthony Clake, who may be the most successful shipwreck hunter of modern times, a Bloomberg Businessweek investigation reported in November. Clake has taken advantage of underwater technology to open up the ocean floor to exploration in a way that has never happened before.
Deep-Sea Treasure Hunt Hooks London Hedge Fund Manager
Clake said he’d conducted about 30 wreck salvages in all, sometimes as the main investor, sometimes as a minority investor and often with his companies working on behalf of a client.
Among them is the SS Tilawa. The vessel was first discovered at the bottom of the Indian Ocean in 2014, before being salvaged in a secret expedition three years later. The silver was brought to the British port of Southampton before being locked up in a secure warehouse, where it has remained ever since.
The South African government had argued that that it not only still owns the silver, but insisted that it shouldn’t have to submit to the lawsuit at all.
The Supreme Court judges agreed, saying that the silver was a non-commercial cargo and the government was entitled to immunity.
The ruling overturned two prior court decisions, with a judge previously saying that the government had probably “forgotten” about the bullion. UK Companies House filings record that Marshall controls Argentum.
The case shows that if a salvaged cargo was originally intended to be used by a state, then it can be recovered by that same government, HFW’s Goulding said.
“As we continue to learn more about the ocean seabed, many more historic wrecks have already been targeted,” Goulding said.
“In light of this ruling, anyone hoping to recover valuable lost cargo, and bring it to the UK to claim ownership of it, will need to first need to take steps to identify the original owner and make contractual agreements with them to salvage cargo before attempting to do so,” he said.
SOURCE: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/hedge-fund-chief-loses-fight-over-40-million-shipwrecked-silver-1.2070257

One of Britain’s top hedge fund managers lost a legal fight over the salvage of $40 million of silver from the wreck of a ship sunk by a Japanese submarine in World War II.
The UK’s Supreme Court on Wednesday dealt a blow to a company controlled by Paul Marshall, ruling that South Africa, the silver’s owner, wouldn’t need to get embroiled in a case because it enjoys state immunity.
At stake was a cargo of 2,364 bars of silver, once destined for the South African Mint, that lay hidden two and a half kilometers below the surface of the Indian Ocean for decades until it was found and lifted by Marshall’s Argentum Exploration Ltd.
The firm had argued it was owed a substantial salvage figure and said it wanted a court to “fix an award,” but the judges dismissed the claim. They said they were informed that the two sides had recently agreed to a confidential settlement.
“The court has firmly sent a message to those hoping to find and claim ownership of lost treasure that finders are not always keepers,” said Jonathan Goulding, a lawyer for the South African government at HFW.
A lawyer for Argentum declined to comment.
The treasure haul was aboard the SS Tilawa, which was sailing from Mumbai on its way to Durban in 1942 when it was struck by two torpedoes and sunk with the loss of 281 passengers and crew. The sinking has been dubbed “India’s Titanic” for the scale of the tragedy.
Marshall has been pursuing the riches of the deep alongside a younger executive at his hedge fund Anthony Clake, who may be the most successful shipwreck hunter of modern times, a Bloomberg Businessweek investigation reported in November. Clake has taken advantage of underwater technology to open up the ocean floor to exploration in a way that has never happened before.
Deep-Sea Treasure Hunt Hooks London Hedge Fund Manager
Clake said he’d conducted about 30 wreck salvages in all, sometimes as the main investor, sometimes as a minority investor and often with his companies working on behalf of a client.
Among them is the SS Tilawa. The vessel was first discovered at the bottom of the Indian Ocean in 2014, before being salvaged in a secret expedition three years later. The silver was brought to the British port of Southampton before being locked up in a secure warehouse, where it has remained ever since.
The South African government had argued that that it not only still owns the silver, but insisted that it shouldn’t have to submit to the lawsuit at all.
The Supreme Court judges agreed, saying that the silver was a non-commercial cargo and the government was entitled to immunity.
The ruling overturned two prior court decisions, with a judge previously saying that the government had probably “forgotten” about the bullion. UK Companies House filings record that Marshall controls Argentum.
The case shows that if a salvaged cargo was originally intended to be used by a state, then it can be recovered by that same government, HFW’s Goulding said.
“As we continue to learn more about the ocean seabed, many more historic wrecks have already been targeted,” Goulding said.
“In light of this ruling, anyone hoping to recover valuable lost cargo, and bring it to the UK to claim ownership of it, will need to first need to take steps to identify the original owner and make contractual agreements with them to salvage cargo before attempting to do so,” he said.
SOURCE: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/hedge-fund-chief-loses-fight-over-40-million-shipwrecked-silver-1.2070257