Pirate Wires - Alito's False Flag, Vivek's Buzzfeed Makeover, Infrastructure Bill Fail, & How SF Ruined Fintech

Episode Date: May 31, 2024

EPISODE #55: Welcome back to the pod! This week we get into controversy over flags. Specifically, the ones that Justice Alito hung from his house and how Dems are using this to force Alito to recuse himself from Jan 6th hearings. Vivek purchased 8% of Buzzfeed and offers a grand vision for the company. The problem? He doesn’t understand brand at all. Pete Buttigieg face plants on live television after the discovery that we’ve only built 8 electric chargers. Sanjana breaks down her piece on the complete fail of Prop C in San Francisco and how it pushed Fintech companies out of the city. Finally, a sense of normalcy is returning?! Harvard announced this week that it will now be mission first. Tech leads the way once again.. Note: Yes, we know there's no Trump verdict reaction. The verdict was announced a few hours after we finished recording. Featuring Mike Solana, Brandon Gorrell, Sanjana Friedman Sign Up To Pirate Wires For Free! https://piratewires.co/free_newsletter Topics Discussed: https://www.piratewires.com/p/sf-fintech-prop-c?f=home Pirate Wires Twitter: https://twitter.com/PirateWires Mike Twitter: https://twitter.com/micsolana Brandon Twitter: https://twitter.com/brandongorrell Sanjana Twitter: https://twitter.com/metaversehell TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Welcome Back To The Pod! 1:25 - Flag Controversy! Should Justice Alito Recuse Himself? 19:25 - When Were You Radicalized? 26:00 - Vivek's Vision For Buzzfeed - Knows Nothing About Brand 41:20 - Trillion Dollar Paint Job -  Pete Buttigieg Admits That Only 8 EV Charges Have Been Built From Infrastructure Bill 58:30 - SF Taxed Fintech to Solve Homelessness - 6 Years Later, the Problem's Worse 01:10:00 - Vibe Shift - Harvard Is Now Mission First  1:15:00 - Thanks For Watching! Like & Subscribe! Tell Your Friends! #podcast #mikesolana #technology #politics #culutre

There was an upside down American flag in front of one of Alito's houses. What is the originalist position on trying to imprison the frontrunner political candidate from the opposition party? I was radicalized once or a couple of times, actually. I love to be radicalized. I try it on every few years. He's like, what if you guys get all these different YouTube content creators? And it's like, dude, they can just go to YouTube for that.

Only seven to eight EV chargers have actually been built. How is it possible that you guys received $7.5 billion to build these EV chargers and you've built fewer than 10? I don't know how we persist in this world of just failed policy after failed policy and more money printed and nothing gets better. It has to change eventually, right? Like there has to be a moment where we stop. I feel like it's even more depressing than how you're describing it. Oh no. What's up guys. Welcome back to the pod. I want to talk just like immediately out of the gate, especially because we have, I think we have a scoop. We got to talk about the Alito flag controversy, which sounds

and maybe even presents classically as incredibly stupid. This is if you really just boil it down, a controversy over not just one, but two flags. But I do think there's an important piece of the puzzle here, which concerns the future of the American presidency and the courts. So let's talk about it. Last week, the controversy blew up over a pine tree flag discovered in front of Alito's house. It actually happened a couple of years ago, but the New York Times wrote about it. I believe it was last week or was it two weeks ago? The story really begins in January 2021, when there was reporting on a different flag in front of Alito's house. So directly following what some would allegedly call, not me and not the New York Times, by the way, so I'm safe,

an insurrection, there was an upside-down American flag in front of one of Alito's houses. It's, I think, the... Sanjana, was it the one... Is it the... I feel like he has, like, a rich, like, a Virginia house. It's the Virginia house. Yeah, I believe so. It's, like, the nice Virginia house.

So he's got this upside-down flag. Now, years later, everyone's like, this is a pro-insurrection flag. He's like, no, no, no, it's not. It's just because we later learn my wife got in a fight with some neighbors. And so she turned the flag upside down, which, I mean, we could talk about in a minute. I don't fully understand that. I'm curious.

I would like to know more. Maybe you guys know more. I'm curious. I would like to know more. Maybe you guys know more. But for me, where the thing really comes to life is this fucking pine tree flag. So this is the, with the appeal to heaven flag, the pine tree flag. This is a flag that George Washington flew back during the revolution. It's a flag that's been popular among, it's a flag that's been popular among small-c conservatives for, at this point, like hundreds of years. And it reminds me, really,

a lot of the Gadsden flag, which is that join-or-die flag that became really popularized or repopularized in the John Adams sort of miniseries on HBO that blew up a handful of years back. It became associated with the Tea Party because it's like a sort of mini series on hbo that blew up a handful of years back uh it became associated

with the tea party because it's like a sort of live free or die type flag i myself loved it and i remember even back then with the gadsden flag it was like you had a lot of journalists trying to link it to truly nefarious concepts to sort of demean the entire movement of people who just wanted lower taxes really is what like that flag was all about uh and and i think that this specific flag which was flying in front of alito's house it gives a lot of the same energy and it has a lot of the same sort of historical importance and has for years and years and years now the broader picture here why did the new york times write an enormous exhaustive piece written by there are three bylines on this fucking flag piece, to demean or not demean, to I guess front of Alito's house means that Alito should have to recuse himself from January 6th related trials featuring the president

of the United States. And so sort of my, before we get into the actual flag stuff, my take of what's really happening here is just boiled down to its basics. You have a lot of really powerful people on the Democratic Party side who want to prevent someone who is currently leading in the polls in the race for the presidency from running. They want to prevent the front runner candidate from running. And they want to do this

because they feel that he is a danger to democracy. So just like one more time slowly we are subverting democracy in the name of saving democracy i think it's super up to make it stick they have to do crazy things like this and what we just discovered i just discovered a moment ago when i was googling around i was curious um i'm always curious at the definitions of things and the sort of um like encyclopedia entries of things and the way that they change in real time in the middle of heated moments. I went and checked out the Appeal to Heaven Flags Wikipedia page and I toggled over to the edits. There have been more edits on this flag, this flags page in the last month, not even month, just since the New York Times piece came out on.

Sanjay, you said it was the 22nd of May, I believe. Yeah. There have been more edits since the 22nd of May than there have been to that page in the preceding eight years, over the preceding eight years combined, okay? More edits to the fucking flag in less...

over a week than eight years. That says to me that we're in the middle of an information war. I think it's really interesting. And I want to know what you guys think about it. Well, I'll also say the edits, if you look at the revision history, the edits go from basically these kind of minor clarification of information, tweaking quote formatting to all of these clarifications,

quote unquote, about modern usage and squabbles over whether or not something is not representing a neutral point of view and all these different things. This is what happened to Amy Coney Barrett in her Supreme Court justice here in her hearing for the Supreme Court justice where she used the phrase sexual preference. And then in real time, a piece goes up saying that we don't use that phrase anymore. It's bigoted. The definitions of these of that phrase then changes immediately following the piece. Right. It's like clearly you have people who are

politically motivated editing this stuff we see it again and again and again um yeah i mean it's just a classic information war stuff so i'm gonna sorry i cut you off there i mean i was just gonna say like i think we we will get into the clownish details of like the alito specific neighbor squabble i guess guess at some point, but I've never understood. I think you're right. Like this is clearly a certain faction of the political left is trying to employ like every tool in their arsenal to try to get Trump off the ballot. And I've really never understood this recusal argument, uh, at, because the claim is that, so basically they're trying to get elitists to not vote on this case that's related to Trump, where they're trying to like invoke this

white collar crime statute that dates back to Enron to prosecute some of the January 6th rioters or whatever. And the idea is that like maybe if they if they can say that they can use this statute then trump could also be implicated uh in in the crime um but it's like weird to me that they think that the justices don't all already have like a preconceived idea about whether or not the 2020 election was influenced by unfair mail-in ballots or anything like that. Like this whole idea that just because Alito or his wife flew a flag that somehow like he's going to be more biased than like Sonia Sotomayor or something just doesn't make any sense. I've always thought like recusal makes sense in cases where you know the judge

maybe has like a financial interest in the defendant or the plaintiff or something if it's if it's that kind of case or if they know they personally have a relationship with the defendant um but it's it's like such a stretch and yet they keep like bringing up these weird tabloid stories uh and trying to legitimize them with insane quotes which we can get into but uh yeah it is really interesting because the illusion of the neutral judge has not really existed for a long time. Right? I mean, this is what the war is always about. Every single house is totally divided now on the question of whether or not to say yes to a justice. That's new. That wasn't like this 30 years ago. Okay? This is very new. The war is clearly happening in the courts. This is where legislation is being really... It's not

supposed to be, but that's where legislation is happening now. And these people are all totally partisan. I mean, you know what? I'm biased. So maybe that's where this comes. I clearly, I'm in favor of a more traditional reading of the law. I like the concept of justices who really try to just understand what was meant by the law. Maybe I'm a little bit naive in that I think that that could still exist. I do feel like the ACBs of the world are a little closer there than... I mean, Sotomayor seems fucking crazy to me. That's just like a college activist.

As I see her, I don't see any... Whereas Kagan, who I often come down on the wrong side... I disagree with her all the time. I don't see any. Whereas Kagan, who I often come down on the wrong side. I disagree with her all the time. I don't know. I guess maybe I am just naive. Because I feel like she's more, I guess, integrity adjacent than some of the newer ones. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I feel like Alito, you know you're getting originalism with him. Like, he's not, I don't know, the sort of implication that, like, somehow he's going to, what, put out, like, a specious legal argument because his wife put up this flag just doesn't make sense. I mean, he's going to put out an originalist argument, most likely. And so it's, yeah yeah it's just so weird um what is the originalist position on

trying to imprison the front runner political candidate from the opposition party directly before an election i'm sure it's complicated i'm sure there is like you know what they're gonna do the work they're gonna they're gonna look into it brandon what do you think about before we get into the actions, we have to actually talk about the flag. The upside down one really just- The story is hilarious. Like Sanji, I'm kind of mystified by the,

what logic is at play here? I really don't think that, so first there's no legal mechanisms for getting a justice to recuse themselves from a decision. So it's not like this is going to sort of all culminate in some kind of like congressional hearing where Alito is just forced not to vote

on some Supreme Court case that concerns Trump and allowing him to run. It seems just like a really unserious sort of attempt to, I don't know, shame Alito, who's not going to be shamed because he really had nothing to do with any of this anyways. This is all his like weird wife and these two lived hearts who moved in their mom's house.

Tell the story of this. Explain to us how this flag turned upside down. Cause now we're not talking about the, the, the pine tree flag, which again was like a normie boomer conservative flag up until a week ago apparently but the upside down american flag is strange to me okay she mrs alito turned the flag upside down the normal american flag that they have she turned it upside down because that is traditionally a symbol of just of like the country in distress and that okay that is it's it's actually in the u.s flag code unless gpt

is hallucinating to me right now like there is a code which it was it really was after january 6th whether or not you enjoyed it sure it's a different question you didn't have to read it as like a conservative thing though it seems pretty conservative to do that. But I was under the impression that that's why she did that. But I think in the, like you said, Solana, she maybe had done it because she was reacting to these neighbors. I don't know. Do you know, Sanji? Like, I'm kind of confused about.

Well, that's the the that came up today i saw in in news there was this weird detail about her her she had this like theater woman in her 30s who moved back home and had a boyfriend and the two of them were super angry about politics and they were like always taunting them with signs and stuff but i don't know what that has to do with an upside down flag in the new york times two days ago um so yeah because the the upside down flag was displayed outside the the alito residence uh in in 2021 and but and and everyone assumed this was in reaction to the quote unquote insurrection, but this piece now says, um,

so this is from the New York times during the gloomer gloomy summer of COVID summer of 2020, this woman who was a 35 year old actor and restaurant server in New York moved to her mother's home in Alexandria, which is where the Alito. You already know she sucks. You already know. If you say actor and restaurant server,

you're actually a server. Sorry, but go ahead. But also true. Um um so she and her boyfriend uh i guess move into her mother's house i guess they're in their 30s um there's a lot of color in here they adopted a pandemic puppy they took walks around the neighborhood they provided company for this woman's mom and they were also really into black lives matter um so they like used their ripped up amazon prime boxes to uh like put up fuck trump signs and things like that and i guess this really antagonized mrs alito um who apparently like pulled up next to them in a car and glared at them, and they may or may not have exchanged words.

And then a few days later, the upside-down flag is hanging outside of the Alito residence. And so it's unclear whether or not the upside-down flag was in reference to January 6th, or if it was just to piss off the aspiring actor, actress, sorry, down the street. But it's definitely, I think, important context. I just don't know why you would do that. I just don't know why you would do that in response to a fight. I just don't know what she's proving there. I could understand.

Here's the two scenarios I could understand. And they're both sort of about the insurrection. So I could understand in response to the insurrection, not even necessarily supporting the insurrection, but just saying, whoa, given Brandon's context on what the flag meant, whoa, the nation's in distress. Cool, got it.

I could also understand having an exchange with the annoying mid thirties theater woman, theater woman about politics that was so tedious and obnoxious to you that it made you want an insurrection. And then you go and you turn the flag upside down. You're like, you know what what we're bringing trump back we're gonna we're gonna give them something to be really mad about um and i mean maybe in like in a moment it was a heated moment she thought maybe for a second she wanted an insurrection i wouldn't hold it against her and i certainly wouldn't hold it against her husband a real story here is like the the mom you know the mom this bait. So this 35 year old millennial lived hard. She, she's living at her mom's house. She's doing all of this at her mom's house. So she went and like blew up her home, her mom's whole social scene. In my opinion, that's probably what happened. So she like moves in with her boyfriend to this house. And then she starts putting up these tacky signs. to this house and then she starts putting up these tacky signs one of which says fuck trump on her mom's lawn and her mom is even in the new york times saying i didn't really like the signs

but like they you know she was being a good mom i'd be like but they had good intent so i let them keep it up and then so they get in this antagonistic fight with the Alitos or with Mrs. Alito, and they create all this conflict between basically the mom's neighbor and the kids. And then when Roe v. Wade drops, of which Alito wrote the opinion, they went out and protested outside of his house. Like, it's so cringe. I would be so embarrassed if I was the mom, you know, that's, I feel like that's, that's a real victim here is the mom. Yeah. Who's just silently bearing it all. I mean, she's also support they're in her house. So we know what kind of kids these are in their

thirties who are living with mom. I think when I go to my mom's, I'm like, I still feel like a guest, you know, like I would never do anything like that. You anything like that. I respect the fact that she's letting me stay in her house. She's my mom, and she would let me stay in her house until the day I died. But I would never feel so entitled to her house that I would start putting up fucking political signs in her yard. That's psychopathic. Yeah, but these people are – when you become that obsessed with politics and you can't help yourself you just you can't and you need you need everyone around you to agree you need your family to agree you have to have they have to agree it comes on like a fever that you can't shake and i've been

radicalized i was radicalized once or a couple of times actually i'd love to be radicalized i tried on every few years you're out there i move on i was no i haven't been radicalized in that way for a while the whoa i just saw a bolt of lightning strike a building and smoke is now coming up for the first time i was radicalized uh in high school by libertarians then i became radicalized by marxists in college like radicalized in a different direction then i became radicalized again in my early 20s by anarcho-capitalists which are like the purest form of libertarians um i was already like i was more like i got out of the marxism stuff very fast it was was like a six-month period. It was like some kids died their hair blue.

I was a Marxist. We don't talk about it. But the sort of purer form of intellectual libertarianism came later, and that was very radical. I was a difficult person to be around, I would say. I was not accepting of other people's opinions. I was radicalized in college against consumerism. And I was like, do you guys remember AdBusters?

Yes. Consumerism was like the number one evil thing for like two years in around 2001. It was like consumerism is really bad. It's the worst thing ever. You were a big thrift store guy. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I was a thrifter. That's for sure. Sajid, have you ever been radicalized?

Oh, yeah. I mean, I was really radical. I actually went to an indoctrination camp when I was in high school, like a social justice indoctrination camp. I mean, it was sort of like... It wasn't called that, was it? It wasn't called an indoctrination camp, but it was meant to sort of like it wasn't called an indoctrination camp but it was meant to sort of like inculcate quote-unquote south asian youth with leftist ideals um and it was this like insane sort of summer camp um but yeah i mean i was just purposely you wanted to do or your parents like i don't know you know i mean i guess i found out about it and kind of wanted to go um and it was like in new jersey at this somewhat cool forest foresty area um

met some of the most insane people i've ever met in my life um but yeah i mean i was pretty i i think leftism was just like in the air in, you know, Philly in the 2000s, 2010s. Yeah, I was, I actually went to the Women's March. I have a lot of friends went to the Women's March. That was still, it was, there was still an expectation i think i couldn't even make fun of it really even among my friends it was like very i was politely disagreeing with a lot of people and it's like i'm like i can't make fun of this at all like they're wearing the pink hats like come on like i can't say anything about this and people would give me

they were like this is an important moment for women in this country. And I was like, all right, off you go to the women's, put your hat on to the women's march. It was very crazy. The BLM thing was even crazier where I had a lot of friends even like donating and to an organization that is now not our topics today. But I mean, just falling apart. It's like one controversy after another. I think people are definitely going to go to prison. Wild. So you went to the, I don't think women's march is a radical thing though i feel like women's march was a mass it's it wasn't a radical thing but i think it was just the kind of like stupid uh sort of sjw type thing that because the women's march was was premised on this idea that

like somehow women were going to face this historic takeaway of their rights. And I know that Roe was overturned and, you know, whatever. But I think that the hysteria around the Women's March, where it was like women are going to have all their rights stripped of them and all this stuff, was kind of the motivating animus. And that's why I think it was, I don't know if I totally bought into it at the time, but I was certainly like saying the right slogans at the event. They had those three portraits there. And what was pretty radical to me was the idea that I was ever going to accept as in some way, in any way whatsoever, sensible, the notion that a woman in a hijab was going to tell me about feminism.

It was a star-spangled banner full, like, I'm being forced to wear this by my literally patriarchal faith, and we're fighting for what exactly? I was like, what is this? This is not even like a standard. These aren't even radfems saying, like, you know, violence has a gender which

i'm open to i'm like that's true i agree with that actually we could talk about radfem stuff that's not that that's not like i am a feminist and that's why i don't believe that women should drive and shit which is what's happening throughout the entire muslim world it's just that was that one was crazy to me the the weird shit you were supposed to accept it's we're seeing a shadow of or a glimmer of that now with all these kids who are at these like muslim prayer things in in uh support of palestine which is always this is really the way of palestine um or not really of palestine but of of like muslim conversion every evangelical faith does it a little bit differently the christ Christians bring you in with their fake rock music and their fun little, you know, 4-H club or whatever.

The Muslims are like, come to our angry left-wing protest. And everyone's like, yeah, we're mad about stuff. And they're like, and let's stop for prayers, right? And you're white and you don't want to be racist, so you better do it. And then everyone just fucking does it. It's crazy. And it always works. This is literally like like there's a name for it in france

this like islamo-leftism basically that they talk about this alliance between like actual islamists theocrats and socialists uh and it's basically the premise of of how like the theocratic muslim party gets to power and in submission by welbeck but i do think it's true the premise of of how like the theocratic muslim party gets to power and in submission by welbeck but i do think it's true and you actually see it you see it mostly in europe now like in england i think they've just elected some uh local politicians basically on the palestine issue who seem to be explicitly aligned with like islamist parties but it wouldn't be surprising to me if it starts happening in the u.s uh well you'll definitely get it up in minnesota maybe michigan i think it'd be it'll i guess it'll be interesting to see i think you need a lot more

muslims in the country for it to have real power i can't imagine a karen like a sort of classically presenting Karen, really accepting Muslim dominance. It seems strange, but then so have the last 10 years. So I guess we'll see in a few more. Speaking of all sides are relevant. I guess we weren't speaking about that and I don't believe in it, but we should talk about someone who does. Something pretty funny, interesting, important, some would say, happened this week in the world of media. And that was Vivek, who had already, I believe, amassed an 8.2-something percent stake in BuzzFeed, announced his intentions for the company,

or his hopes for the company, let's say, but it was really his intentions for the company or his hopes for the company, let's say, but it was really his intentions for the company. He's now, I think, the second largest shareholder in the company. And he outlined a whole long thing on X where he sort of explains in his mind what went wrong with media and then outlines a path forward for Buzzfeed. It's incredibly arrogant. I don't think you have to have had worked in media. I think that you should have thought about it before today. And the things he outlined are dated, frankly. So the big three are, one, we got to be doing AI generated content or be using AI tools to be creating more content. Two, doing more stuff with creators.

That's the future of media. And three, we're going to tell the truth is how he frames it, but also diversity of thought. So all three of, first of all, BuzzFeed sort of famously, infamously has already been doing AI generated content. This is like they're letting people go. They're talking about the future of AI generated content. We've all talked about AI generated content and tools for AI generated content. It's not clear to me that how they can even be used at this moment. I think they will be used. I'm not sure what that looks like in this current media landscape. Very excited about it, but it's a conversation we've been having for years. And certainly BuzzFeed, to give them some credit, they've been doing more than I have. We're a media startup and we're not using these tools nearly as much. Well, you know what? I know

they talk about it a lot. I'm not sure exactly what they've been doing, but one, kind of stale conversation. Two would be the creator economy. We're talking about the creator economy in 2024. I mean, Taylor Lorenz invented the creator economy and that was like five years ago, right? I mean, it was a long time ago. The idea that creators are important in media and we should do more with that in media is not only no longer an interesting idea, it has been proven out by companies like Substack, where most of this has been litigated over the past four years. And it's not like these big companies aren't aware of these trends. Everyone is trying to basically survive as a media company in a world with no ad revenue, which has been completely swallowed up by companies

like two companies, really, Google and Facebook. That's the tension. It's been like this for a long time. We all know what the tension is. There are different, much smaller audiences that you can try and reach and shape and find interesting ways to sell to them. But we're not going to sell to them, but we're not going to AI generate and influence economy our way to a new media model here. In fact, those things are not new. And then finally, three, all sides are worth talking to and we should be honest, we should tell the truth. Telling the truth and got to hear both sides are not the same thing. Okay. They're totally different things. In fact, do you have a perspective on the world or not? Um, if you're telling your perspective and if you're searching for the truth there, that there's, that's, you presumably believe

there is a truth to tell. Like, why would you have a, there's not like a second, a third, a fourth or fifth opinion on it. It's not like all sides are relevant. So I just think that these two concepts are sort of fundamentally at odds. And so if you want to go the take of like, let's listen to everybody, which was popular among sort of like the IDW again, I think what, five, six years ago, that's going to get, in my opinion, pretty boring, pretty fast. That was really interesting back when people weren't allowed to talk back then when the IDW was first forming and talking about it. But today, the Overton window has sufficiently broadened to the point where you can no longer

talk about talking. You have to say something compelling. And that kind of relates back to position two, the sort of influencers who are working and driving media forward. My take on this is the people who succeed in media today are biased and sort of own their bias. And you know what their perspective is. And that builds trust. And trust is the thing that's lacking right now, not the truth. Like the truth, how do you get to the truth? I don't believe that Vivek, who's a political candidate, was five seconds ago, is telling me the truth. I think he has an agenda, which is actually fine. Everybody has an agenda to some degree. But once you tell me that you're not giving me an agenda, but you're just giving me the truth,

I don't fucking trust you. And you already failed at the new media game. What was your make of really any of this? I guess media tries generally, but I'm interested in this BuzzFeed play in particular because it's pretty widely celebrated and I don't like to make a lot of predictions. I think this is going to fail. This is not going to work for him. Yeah. I guess my take is I'm confused. I'm mostly thinking about what Vivek's motives are. Does he actually want to get a seat on the board of the company or get a position on the C-suite. I noticed that in his memo or letter to BuzzFeed, he carves out this whole section in his letter to essentially just criticize BuzzFeed for having published the Steele dossier

and some of the other reporting that they did at the time that didn't actually pan out to be totally truthful like i don't know if that's normal for letters like these but it just it seemed strange to me that he's you know he's like um nominally you know like suggesting a lot of you know business strategy in this in this email but but really he's just he's just like trying to i feel like he's just trying to put points on the board for Trump or something with this letter and that's all it is.

He was just trashing the media. But again, that's another thing that is old. Trump was doing it in 2016. Years later, this is like you have niche versions of this. You have this war between the tech press and the tech industry in throughout covet right years ago four years ago um i don't

understand it's like he hasn't been i'm getting bill ackman from this yeah like i've been living in a cave for four years five years and now And now I'm going to show up and tell you something that you already know and no longer matters. He also suggests, he suggests something that I think Buzzfeed did and led to their downfall sort of, which was, he's like, what if you guys get all these different YouTube content creators and just take a portion of their money that they would normally make from YouTube? Like that's basically the suggestion. And it's like, dude, they can just go to YouTube for that. You realize that's literally an ad rev share. You get a portion of the advertising that YouTube gets on your videos.

I guess he's saying, you're going to leverage the brand of BuzzFeed to grow. And it's like, do you not think that's what media people are doing at the New York Times and at CNN and all these other places? What do you think is happening? And the simple answer is he just has no idea. He just doesn't like the way the press covered him. And so his assumption is, well, I guess it's bad for all these reasons me and my friends talk about in our group chats and they just haven't talked to a media person who's obsessed with this. And it's like, they're right that media is fucked and it's not just fucked. It's not just ideologically. It's like the model is totally not good. And if you're going to succeed, BuzzFeed... So it's easy for PirateWire to

succeed, right? We're starting from zero and we're growing in the new media landscape. A company like BuzzFeed, which was worth billions of dollars, now has to somehow recover in a world where ad revenue can no longer be relied on like that. They used to consistently garner more traffic than anybody else on the internet. They were incredible at this. And that just now that the internet is Google, Facebook, like these portals that you go to discover things, that gravy train has sort of ended. I guess they were using those windows actually before when it was like freer to do that. So they were really capitalizing on like Facebook's free traffic for years and years and years. And that's just over. But again, like I don't know how... First of all, obviously, none of the things that

Vivek said are going to help. But I don't know what could possibly help. If you're trying to build something like what we thought was possible in the early 2000s, when again, traffic was free. And it's like, until that changes, media companies are going to look a lot different. And it's just the way it's going to be. I think that there are probably interesting things coming, weird things like sort of, it's a media company, but it's also a private club. And it's like a media company, but it's also a football team. It's a media company, but it's also a venture capital firm, like that kind of stuff where the media is like integrated into other stuff um and maybe even sprawling in some i don't know what the conglomerate huge version of that looks like it'll be weird though

like the rules of of of of uh of the information ecosystem now are incredibly weird they're weirder than they were a while ago um you're not gonna get by with an old world strategy plus AI and the creator economy. It doesn't work that way. Yeah. I was going to say, when I was reading his letter, I kept thinking about your interview with Jack Dorsey, actually. And just like, how would this BuzzFeed that's basically on one hand pumping out AI slop content, it sounds like, which is sort of giving both sides perspectives and probably doesn't have, honestly, that much of an audience these days. Because people already sort of, like, it's cheap and easy to get the actual facts of what's happening. But, you know, people are looking for analysis, I think, in a lot of cases. And then also has, I guess, this, like,

diverse, quote, unquote, all sides collection of creators that they're syndicating. What does that look like in a world where, you know, you potentially have like a decentralized platform that people are opting into on the basis of their, you know, wanting to find like-minded people or that kind of thing? they're, you know, wanting to find like-minded people or that kind of thing. And I do think that in that world, you're increasingly going to see people attracted to, as you're saying, like brands driven by a very strong, very clearly stated perspective and bias that people are owning and that allows you to opt into a smaller community of like-minded people.

Because I think everyone's just exhausted by this kind of like global town square that we currently have on social media and increasingly looking to like group chats, signal chats, whatever, smaller sort of more self-selected spaces. And I think that's probably where media will be heading in the next 10 years. Yeah, I completely agree, especially on that other... And I don't quite know how that snaps in, how the group chat thing snaps in, how the private gated community thing snaps in. It's hard to wrap your head around because everything in business and media so like tech

and media but business generally over the last 20 years has been how do you scale to enormous levels right and now things that are working are subscription based so you still want scale there but then also the rise of like private groups and private clubs and things. I don't quite know. I can sort of feel us kind of approaching this, but I don't think we've seen a really banger example of this just yet. And it's certainly the opposite of what BuzzFeed was, which didn't die because I think conservatives really want to believe that BuzzFeed died because they were woke. And that is just really stupid. That's like a very dumb thing to say out loud. It's not what happened.

All media died because of the model. It does not... That model no longer works. It's very simple. And for a businessman, that's his whole thing, right? He's like a less good version of Trump. So it's like business-based businessman. You've got to know that.

You have to know that that thing failed for that reason. And until you figure out a new model, I don't know what to tell you. But it's certainly not like, oh, we're not going to be doing woke content anymore. First of all, there are plenty of people who love woke content. Threads did not die. They're all out there talking about nonsense. There are going to be places where people disseminate woke content and make a living off of it probably. I don't want to meet those people, but they're out there. It's hard to know what will the typical business model for media be in five years. But it's really easy to know that it won't be driven by super high volumes of clicks.

And thus, the business models just won't be reliant on programmatic advertising. That's the easiest thing to do to monetize a business that's getting lots of traffic is just to slap programmatic ads on your site. And that's how you make money. That's just not going to happen anymore. Ironically, in part, because the media went on a 10 year long, you know, sort of campaign against Facebook for, you know, making the world a horrible place and blaming them for misinformation in the election of Donald Trump. And so they shut the spigot off of all the page views

that they were sending to these sites that were shitting on them. So there's a part of this where it's like you kind of play stupid games, win super prizes thing. I'm not saying that's exactly why this whole thing happened,

but I'm sure that the future of media will not be programmatic ads because there will just not be high volume clicks. That will just not happen anymore. millions and millions of email addresses to send their content to um which is just going to be like the top top top one percent including new york times i think they'll always be able to rely on tons of traffic but i don't know if they and pirate wires of course yes yes um i want to talk about the trillion dollar paint job so uh stanzer why don't you break this one down for us pete got into a little bit of hot water i believe believe it was last weekend on Face the Nation, over electric vehicle charging stations, which opens up really like a whole world of things that I want to talk about. But why don't you break down the story for us? Face the Nation, and is asked by this journalist very straightforwardly about this new report that's come out of the Federal Highway Association, I think it's called, the federal organization

that basically monitors and runs highways. And this organization found that in the past three years after the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill was passed by the Biden administration, which allocated $7.5 billion to the construction of EV chargers, only seven to eight EV chargers have actually been built. And so the interviewer asks Pete Buttigieg, how is it possible that you guys received $7.5 billion to build these EV chargers and you've built fewer than 10? The Federal Highway Administration says only seven or eight charging stations have been produced with a $7.5 billion investment

that taxpayers made back in 2021. Why isn't that happening more quickly? So the president's goal is to have half a million chargers up by the end of this decade. Now in order to do a charger it's more than just plunking a small device into the ground. There's utility work and this is also really a new category of federal investment. But we've been working with each of the 50 states. Every one of them is getting formula dollars to do this work, engaging them and the first handful again by, by 2030, 500,000 chargers, and the very first handful of chargers are now already being physically built. This obviously blows up because it is a pretty shocking clip where he offers no meaningful explanation for this huge, I guess, shipping delay or implementation delay in these chargers. And for context,

Tesla has over 2,500 EV chargers currently in North America. They've got over 400 in California alone. They've got 50,000 worldwide. So it's not as if no one knows how to build an EV charger quickly i mean i think i was looking up online uh that tesla nowadays can build some ev chargers in seven to ten days um so it's like this really shocking incompetence i guess on the part of the federal government so to give them a little bit of the tiniest shred of a defense here, part of this is just the procurement process.

I really did like an exhaustive reading of everything to get a sense of what actually goes into the bill, how it's divided out, like what is the timeline here? And everything is given out in chunks, first of all, like you don't even get all 7 point whatever billion. It's divided regionally. You get it over, it's like every, I believe it's like, it might be be it's in quarters and i'm not

sure what the period of time is but 70 over 75 of it wouldn't have even have been allocated at this point um still what the seven chargers that means some of it's being allocated bill at least a couple billion and they're not able to do it that's a huge problem i would say it's not nearly as big of a problem as the fact that $1.2 trillion was spent on infrastructure. And when I first read through that disaster, the charging stations were the thing that I liked the most. I thought that's a paltry seven billy in $1.2 trillion, but at least it's a physical change to the world. There is some kind of a vision there. I don't know if it's the correct vision

and I'm sure people are gonna be blowing up our comments saying gas is the only way. And I think there's an interesting argument for that actually. I understand there's a lot on electric vehicles that I think a little bit complicated but it is certainly a vision of the world that we're gonna have electric cars

and we're gonna need electric vehicle charging stations. And so to do that, we need them all across the country, this big, huge gesture. It's going to be jobs. And we're going to really change the way that Americans drive. I think at least that's something, right? There's at least somewhat of a strategy. There's certainly an end destination. And then they're just failing at it, which, of course, they fail at everything.

But the rest of the bill, we're talking like over half of this thing is just total bullshit just like random grants to random organizations to study random aspects of the country there was stuff in there on equity grants that i had read you can go and just look at this was a huge now it's being discussed because obviously everybody runs to defend pete after this interview and they're like oh well there's so much infrastructure. I got into a little bit with, what's his face from Axios? Conrad, is it Conrad? No, no.

Who is it from Axios? Primic, who was like, I see a lot of infrastructure here. There's almost no infrastructure. There's no new bridge being built. It's literally paint. There's new paint being put on different buildings. There are refurbishments of this or that random port there's nothing being created nothing being paved that has never been paved before it's all just stuff we've already done and actually invented from scratch for less money

1.2 trillion dollars is more adjusted for inflation than the Manhattan Project, the Apollo Project, and the Interstate Highway System combined. Those are three totally transformative projects in the history of America that cost less than this combined. What are we getting? It's just really crazy. And there's no accountability at all. Of course, they're failing on one of the few bright spots um but the bigger failure is the stuff that we're never going to hear about because there was never anything promised in the first place it was just we're going to give money to this random democrat in the middle of the country who we want to vote for us and that's just a crime in my

opinion i think the chips bill is better but a a different topic. It's still bad, largely bad. But there are chunks of it that are really good, I think, or better than usual. Brandon, what do you make of this? I was just doing some research before the podcast, and it looks like SpaceX has probably been funded to about $3 or $4 billion total, and they're sending more payload to orbit

than the rest of the world combined that is right now crazy that is a crazy way to think to frame it that is crazy and they're landing rockets yeah they're reusing it's not like you can't do stuff with money right right it's not even like the government can't do stuff with money so tesla you know you mentioned Sanji. I think we're coming out at this. I have numbers around Tesla too, Sanji. There's a distinction between chargers and stations. So my stats, I have 6,000 stations worldwide that Tesla's put up.

So 50,000 chargers, let's say. And it's hard to find the numbers on this, but that probably costs between one and $2 billion for Tesla, 6,000 stations. Um, Microsoft funded open AI with 10 billion bucks and they haven't even given it all to open AI. It's like given it's given out in trenches and we all know what open AI did. They created an AI that literally passes the Turing test. This is like the Manhattan project for the Project for AI. And it's not even worth $10 million.

Maybe it's a funding before that. Let's say, you know, let's say, I'm not sure what the funding was totally, but that was certainly a huge round. And it was like, the work was kind of done at that point. I would say maybe it's even a better case to be made because they would have taken way less funding before that when they did most of it. They were paying Microsoft for what, compute, right?

A lot of the funding just goes to compute and not to employees and stuff. But yeah, I just wanted to highlight this. It's just like, obviously you can get stuff done. It's not impossible, but it's not happening with the government, of course. Physical things are harder, but not that hard, right? I mean, you can- Robert Moses did it. Well, you have to be- You have to be a Robert Moses.

You have to be willing to piss some people off. If you want real infrastructure, Robert Moses is the guy to look to, right? I mean, we're talking about huge highway projects, just that neighborhood's in the wrong spot. Sorry, guys. Gotta go. We've got, we have an on-ramp to build.

Have you guys read the entire Power Broker? Sorry. I've read about half of the Power Broker before. I was like, I think I've got enough. Yeah. Yeah. I've read a bit of it. I always think like, what would Robert Moses do if put on the planning commission in San Francisco?

Nothing, because he wouldn't be empowered to do it. You needed real, he has to have authority to do the kinds of things that he wants. And we are frozen in amber, right? Every single city in the country is frozen because of the power that is given to people to resist change. And that's good in some ways,

right? There are some changes that are bad that everybody famously hates, but it also just makes progress impossible. I don't think it would make building a bridge or something impossible that needs to be built. That, especially when you are the actual government and you're writing the check for it and there's the local governments on your side and you need the bridge, you're not paving anything over. The problem there is just everything costs more money. So if you look at just the cost of rail, the cost to build the subway in New York, again, adjusted for inflation is so much higher than it was that separate from all of this, just people don't want things to change. I guess the social dynamic there that has frozen us in place, it's just, yeah, it's

like union money. It is the cost of labor. It is government regulations. And so we're kind of just stuck. So I would really just for the infrastructure, it would've been cool if they paired it with, I don't know, some kind of like, if you're using this money to build like an infrastructure bill approved project, you get this sort of Mario bouncing star thing that makes you immune from government regulation

and you can just go ham. Like you just build the thing. The EPA no longer applies to you for a period of like a month or two months, give them six months. Zoning laws, gone. Let's say what is it? Community review? Abolished forever. It's just

you're building. It is off you go with ability to build a bridge. Would it even cost that? I don't know. I forget. Someone, can you look up what the cost to build the Golden Gate Bridge was? I'm looking. I don't know what the cost is but i was looking so we have an article called 12 epic feats of american engineering and golden gate bridge is one of them it was completed ahead of schedule and under budget though uh the board of supervisors at the time opposed it always bad yeah always bad the sierra club opposed it and

like local local ferry and shipping businesses were like no this is going to hurt our bottom line it's not happening the lead engineer joseph strauss he hired a political fixer who like worked for like months to like basically bribe everybody to get this thing going and it ended up taking and it was done 16 years after it was first proposed um but most of the most of the issues were bureaucratic and not like they weren't trying to figure out the laws of physics you know they had they had the technology they knew how to build the bridge um but how much does it cost i don't know well so it was 35 million in in 1937 um but adjusted for inflation that's less than 700 million dollars in 2024 dollars which i will say is less than the homeless department in san francisco gets annually per year uh per year yeah yeah so so basically um yeah if we just that's fucking crazy

we just took their budget for one year that's if if we were to just build only golden gate bridges with the 1.2 trillion dollar infrastructure bill we could build 17,714 Golden Gate Bridges. We would have more Golden Gate Bridges than you could. I don't even know. I'd never even imagined that many Golden Gate Bridges before, but that's how many we could have if we were actually building bridges. We would be the country with the most Golden Gate Bridges. We would definitely be the country with the most.

No one. We would have the best, the most, the best. Donald Trump would have so much more to brag about if we had 1700 golden gate bridges but instead what we have is seven electric vehicles charging stations which is honestly a crime so unfathomable that i think that we have a hard time grasping it it's it's actually a robbery so extreme that there is no way to really understand the magnitude of it because our brain is not built to comprehend a scale that large. It's just not how we're wired. And so they're getting away with really like a shocking level of this has to be, it's fraud, right? I was tweeted the other day, I would have less of a problem with fraud if everything worked or even most things work, right? Like I would have less of a problem with fraud if everything worked,

or even most things worked, right? I would have less of a problem with fraud. Brandon, you were describing bribery. I would have less of a problem with bribery if it meant that we got Golden Gate Bridges, but it doesn't mean that anymore. Now we don't get anything. And random people, it's not even like our politicians are that rich. I mean, yeah, Nancy Pelosi's stock market, but where's the actual money going? It's not even going to the politician's pocket it's not like straight up theft it's going to all of their friends it's going to the non-profits it's bleeding into like random people to do work that never happens like we saw for the what is it the high-speed rail situation or in new york during the subway the second avenue subway line where people are billing

hours that they could not possibly have worked um that's in every single corner of the country and it is a goddamn shame and probably nothing's going to be done about it ever like no one's going to answer for this it's just we have to just change the way we think about it that's the only way people have to just really be like no we need infrastructure and we need to empower people to do it. And this sort of pure democracy for every single aspect of our world thing that we've been doing for the last few decades has just crippled us and allowed the worst people alive to seize power. The kind of people who really flourish in these socially chaotic situations. And that's, yeah, we're at the mercy of them. Nothing changes. i feel like it'd be cool

if these kind of infrastructure projects came with like iconic uh buildings or statues or something that like somehow could be voted on uh or there was some sort of like competitive bidding process to build some some kind of like i don know, some monument that would be representative of this supposedly once-in-a-generation investment instead of just this stuff that most people aren't, like these EV chargers and this repainting buildings and stuff that most people aren't even going to notice. I think that would kind of reinvigorate people's interest

in the built environment and caring about the aesthetics and quality of, you know, buildings and monuments that go up and infrastructure and all that kind of stuff. We don't, yeah, it's, I don't think, we don't really build memorable monuments in this country anymore. I always say that I would really love a gladiator. Why don't we have one of those? One of the giant, or the Colossus, I'm sorry, the Colossus. It should be in the San Francisco Bay. It's the perfect place to have it. Just a giant, people always say it should be the justice,

it should call it the justice statue. So you have liberty and justice on the coasts. It would be epic to have, because justice is very not san francisco right but it would make sense if it was on alcatraz island or something and he's just a giant colossus like with a sword looking very like i'm gonna fuck shit up if it tries to invade um that would be cool but i would accept just like a very well built I think a male since isn't the statue of Liberty, a woman. Yeah. So I think that would be fair to make it a man.

That'll never happen in today's environment. But would be cool to see like a jacked dude on Alcatraz. I mean, imagine the things that we could build if I were in charge. Speaking of San Francisco, Sajana, you need to take me through this sort of haunted hellscape that is Prop C. Now, you know, in retrospect, one of the great policy failures of the modern era. was this bill that passed in San Francisco in 2018, which basically levied an additional gross receipts tax on businesses generating over $50 million

in gross receipts annually and allocated all of the proceeds to homeless services. And so the idea at the time was that, you know, San Francisco has this seemingly intractable homeless crisis. We've tried to fund it to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars over the past decade. That hasn't worked. So maybe if we just throw a couple more hundreds of millions of dollars at the problem, we'll have fewer homeless people on the streets. And as you might expect, that didn't work out. And there's new data that's just come out of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing that shows that homelessness,

total homelessness is up 7% over the past two years and has risen since 2019. And in general, there's basically been no dent. And if anything, the numbers have just increased over the past decade. So that's kind of the context for Prop C. The promise was homelessness is going to be reduced. It wasn't reduced. But the piece that we published this week looks at the measure from a slightly different angle, which is kind of a sort of tech slash business story angle, because one of the more interesting dimensions of the Prop C debate was who supported it. You had Mark Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, who apparently, because of a phone call with this crazy socialist, which Solana, you get into in your piece, Doomloop,

that you published a few months ago, which I encourage people to read because that really breaks down the insane human dynamics behind Benioff's decision to go all in on Prop C. But basically, Benioff was convinced to support this gross receipts tax and went on this war campaign where he was writing op-eds in the New York Times and talking to CNN and going to rallies and basically haranguing any and all tech executive who came out and spoke against Prop C. And Benioff, of course, is head of a software, an S-A-A-S company, Salesforce. And the people who spoke out, the people in the tech world who spoke out against Prophecy most, I don't want to say vociferously, but they spoke out like the strongest against it were people like Jack Dorsey and Patrick Collison, who worked at payment processing companies. And what they tried to explain to people is that Prop C would kind of disproportionately affect

a lot of payment processing companies. And this had to do with several reasons, some of which are kind of technical, and they had to do with like San Francisco's gross receipts tax was higher for companies that were classed as financial service companies than for companies that were classed as information technology companies. And within those categories, you also had the payroll tax being calculated differently. And I sort of get into the details of this in the piece. But I think people's eyes glazed over as soon as Jack Dorsey was making this point publicly and saying, you know, Stripe, which is, or not Stripe Square, which is now called Block, which is like four times smaller than Salesforce is going to be paying potentially double the amount that Salesforce would pay if this measure passes. You know, people sort of ignored it and the measure ended up passing.

And then you had this tremendous exodus of payment processing fintech companies and tech companies more generally from the city, some of which probably had to do with COVID, I'll grant, but a lot of which had to do with Prop C. So you had, you know, we sort of laid out in the article, but Stripe left, Square left the city, Credit Karma moved to Oakland, tons of fintech companies leased office space in the city. And, you know, tech jobs cratered.

They're down like 14,000 in the past year, I think, in SF and San Mateo County. So yeah, it really just basically sacrificed San Francisco's sort of burgeoning fintech industry for a homeless promise that never came true. that never came true. There's always a homeless promise that never comes true. I moved to San Francisco in 2011. And every ballot, I feel there was something about homeless on there. And every time it was like, we're going to solve it with the following things. And the things were always more money. But Prop C was unique. And what you framed is correctly. I mean, the piece was great. It was enormous. It was an enormous amount of money. It is more money than has ever been raised in San Francisco for homelessness. And that really became a conversation about whether or not you care about homeless people or you don't. And it was a total witch burning situation. It was not like now. People really are, I think it's hard to explain to people who didn't live through it,

how different the climate was in like 2019 in San Francisco than today. And we have maybe the opposite idea that things are worse now than ever before. And they're better now than I can remember than ever before in terms of being able to speak your mind, certainly in San Francisco. And this is like on this issue, who is defending Prop C at this point? Nobody. But on all political issues, I mean, today we see like, David Sachs is joking about the Trump fundraiser that he's throwing, and it's fine, and people are laughing and many disagreeing, but it's doubt. When Peter endorsed Trump, it was as if he had murdered someone worse raped someone raped and killed someone because he was like run out of town it was just a complete witch burning the

climate was very very very different and in that climate which was you know uniquely hostile to people with any kind of divergent view on really like a left-wing orthodoxy um patrick collison and jack dorsey were like really viciously attacked one of our commenters were like i had to walk by picket lines to get into my building at stripe um it was wild and mark benioff is one of the big reasons it was wild he was writing op-eds he was attacking these people online he was ginning everybody up and and he was you know the billionaire who made it valid he said you know i'm a billionaire and i'm paying more tax and that's all he just kept hammering that point again and again and again um it is

credit i'm not sure if it's like did he know what he was doing is he really just that stupid it's you can't really tell with him it could he could authentically just be that dumb. But the damage has been considerable and there have been no consequences. No one goes back. No one says, remember when you said that homelessness would be solved and that's what justified your behavior and your sort of total maligning of these people and you're driving all of fintech out of the city. What happened to that? Where did the money go? Do you take it back? Do you apologize? Are you going to fight to reverse it? Of course not. We just move on. And that's the kind of thing. Maybe it's worse than even these disaster policies is that we don't revisit them.

It's like almost, I wonder if it's not worth just baking into every single piece of legislation, worth just baking into every single piece of legislation, some kind of two-year review where you check in and see how it's going. And if it's totally the opposite of what you intended, then it just automatically nullifies the bill or something. And all the future money that was marked to be paid back is just like, or to be spent on the task is given away and you start over. Certainly people who are responsible for the legislation should have some kind of skin in the game. Like, why is nobody who supported that on the board of supervisors answering for it?

And I think they should probably answer for it with their job when it's something that's that big. You should just be automatically fired. It's like another, it's like a trigger. Like, okay, great. You're going to solve homelessness. So zero homelessness, let's just say you have it. Maybe you divide by 75% less homelessness, let's say. If that's the goal and you don't hit it, you automatically lose your job and you're sort of number two steps up temporarily until there's an emergency vote

or something. Because there just have to be, I don't know how we persist in this world of just failed policy after failed policy and more money printed after more money printed and nothing gets better it has to change eventually right like there has to be a moment where we stop I keep waiting for that moment I don't know maybe that moment doesn't happen maybe people just give it up it's I feel like it's even more depressing than how you're describing it Michael I feel like it's even more depressing than how you're describing it, Michael. Oh, no. When they were talking about Prop C, the advocates were making a lot of noise about oversight and accountability of it.

They set up a committee, an oversight committee for these funds. And number one, it was full of conflicts of interest. Jennifer Friedenbach was on it. Or is she still on it? I don't know. But for those who don't know who that is, she's the director or she's at the top of an organization called Coalition on Homelessness. And this coalition basically sues the city anytime an encampment is cleared. So I'm not sure that person should be on this oversight committee that is she also got money from it didn't she doesn't she get money from the government yeah she's used

her authority to green light grants to her non-profit or at least that's what sanji's how is that not a prison sentence it's just crazy to me so the second was cleared by the board of supervisors that's the only way we're getting out of this the worst everybody goes to prison that the worst part though is there there is an oversight committee but there was an audit of the homeless of the hsh that was published earlier this month i think it was on May 4th. And it found that the HSH is not adequately tracking where it's spending its money. So like we, we did set up accountability, but then we did, we didn't do it. And it was full of people who used it to funnel money into their own, um, firms that use the money to increase homelessness pretty much. Just like crazy.

It's totally f***ed up. Sorry to swear. Well, I don't know how to solve it without installing a dictator. And because I'm not ready to advocate for that just yet, I think we're going to call this episode today. I want to end on something, I guess, like a moment of happiness for all of us, which is that Harvard University is now a mission-first company. Very quickly, because we're over time.

Brandon, you want to break that story down for us? Yeah. So Harvard um put together in the wake of the October 7th attacks and all of the uh sort of social turmoil on campus that happened um they they had a committee essentially it's called the institutional voice working group look into this idea of whether or not Harvard as an institution should be making statements every time there's some kind of conflict and should be taking a position on one or another side of that conflict. On Tuesday, this working group recommended to Harvard they should should not do that they should basically not take

sides um and what they said was um their their logic which is pretty sound just kind of like no shit but they said in issuing official statements of empathy the university runs the risk of appearing to care more about some places and events than others and because few if any world events can be entirely isolated from conflicting viewpoints issuing officials empathy statements runs the risk of alienating some members of the community by expressing implicit solidarity with others so basically like they are it's just not a good idea to do this is what they're saying. I mean, and it's good. Harvard is Harvard has responded to that or,

or I guess saying that they will be taking this committees, this working groups recommendations, and we'll stop making statements about conflicts, which are just like, you know, have nothing to do with Harvard. Yeah. Which is almost explicitly what was outlined by Brian Armstrong in his mission first manifesto years ago, for which he was brutally attacked by

everybody in the press. And the reason he was attacked was because they knew, I think the reason the real reason is they looked at that decision to sort of not be involved in the politics of the world. And they understood that it was the only way that any institution could survive. And so it represented the future. That was going to be every company was going to have to do this. It was, you were going to have to do this or dissolve because you were going to be eaten alive by crazy people who worked at your place of work. And that is now, that was a trend in tech first, right? It's a totally table state. I wouldn't say every tech company does it, but enough giants do it that anyone is free to do it or free to fail,

really. I mean, Google does it, Facebook does it, most small companies do it. Certainly, some of them have an unofficial, I mean, every Elon company does it, but doesn't call it that. It's just like, if you're not working, you're fired. So he's maybe always done it, but doesn't call it that it's just like if you're not working you're fired so he's like maybe always done it but didn't call it anything um but Brian really paved the way here in tech at least and tech paved the way for the rest of the country it looks like because once Harvard's gone that trend is just over I don't know if next time around we're gonna see Johnson and Johnson well probably Johnson and Johnson will be making another BLM statement. But I don't know that we'll see sort of more serious academic institutions. I don't know that we'll be seeing

any like huge important companies. I think, God, I'm going to look so stupid if I'm wrong about this. But I think things are a little bit better, I would say. I think you phrased it, Brandon, you said the Claudine Gay era of Harvard is over. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, MIT just banned diversity statements for faculty hiring. That happened this month. Well, that was super egregious. That was not just, that was compelled speech. That was you standing up to get a job and saying, That was you standing up to get a job and saying, I accept the notion that my job is to incorporate race into the way that I hire and structure my classes. Who I allow into work with me, I will use race as a determining factor. It's crazy. Not only are they racist, they're demanding that you be racist or you don't hire. So yeah, congratulations for getting rid getting rid of that it's like university of chicago has done it too stanford and northwestern

have done this so i think it's still not bullish on harvard why why not because they had to get a weird ass committee to tell them to do this obvious thing like why did they have to cite this insane cabal of consultants it is funny to be like justifying this they're like listen the consultant said the consultants told us to do it and you know how it is in america when a mckinsey guy says you gotta do something it is what it is sorry guys the blm shit's over the palestine shit really it's not the blm shit it's the palace they're like we gotta stop this palestine stuff and it's very funny and that's a whole other podcast about like why it was this one and specifically this one that they just could not tolerate after years of just like the most deranged insanity we've ever

seen in public but it was and it's over and I'm grateful for it. Thank you, Harvard University for following in Brian Armstrong's footsteps. As ever, the tech industry is happy to pave the way for reasonable people into the future. Rate, review, subscribe, tell all of your friends and keep an eye out for some very sick PirateWire swag that will be coming your way like any moment now possibly within the next week probably but just keep your eyes peeled Mojabe Estate

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