Category: Business

Ask Not For Whom The Bell Tolls Etc.

Business, Watermelons

Stephen Moore has an excellent “story of the film so far” about the Net Zero / Green energy / no more cars with engines / unicorn fart-based energy initiative:

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that “clean energy” investment funds are tanking, with some down as much as 70% in recent months. Solar has been one of the worst-performing industry stocks this year.

This collapse is happening right when Exxon and Chevron have engineered a combined $110 billion blockbuster acquisitions to expand oil and gas drilling in the Permian Basin in Texas, one of the biggest oil fields in the world. This year, they both reported their largest profits ever.

They and their investors are looking at the real-world data, not green energy propaganda. In 2023, the world is guzzling oil and gas like never before. Global consumption of fossil fuels was higher in 2022 than at any time in human history, even as the developed countries spend hundreds of billions of dollars trying to stop oil, gas and coal.

As they say:  follow the money.  All the politicians’ wishful thinking won’t change the nature of the world (i.e. reality), as much as they’d like to think it can.

Common Thread

Business, Drive Time, Eco-Crap

Here are some headlines, all talking about the same thing.  See if you can guess what it is (no links):


Of course, there’s always someone who missed the memo:

Yeah, that makes sense:  cutting production of gas-powered cars to concentrate on EVs… when all signs point to growing consumer rejection of the latter. Nice one, Ford:

…when you should, in the words of some famous guy, just keep on truckin’.

Without the Lightning.

Man Takes Woman’s Job

Marketing / Advertising, Perverts

This is just the best:

Gay lifestyle magazine Attitude is facing backlash after naming transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney as its ‘Woman of the Year.’

The US TikTok star, who documented her transition on the video sharing platform last year, accepted the title this week at the Virgin Atlantic sponsored awards bash in London.

But critics slammed the decision, accusing the awards of ‘gaslighting women everywhere’ with prominent feminist campaigner Maya Forstater calling it an ‘insult.’

I have to hand it to this little fegeleh:   first he/she toppled the #1 beer brand in the U.S., and now she/he is doing the same to some fegeleh publication, in essence taking the cover girl/boy’s position away from, shall we  say, a more-deserving homo/dyke.

If your head is spinning, join the (heterosexual) club.

And then there’s this one:

Two transgender cyclists have taken the top spots on the podium at the Chicago CycloCross Cup after triumphing in a women’s race.

Sheesh, even the actual chick who placed third looks kinda iffy.

Still, despite all the confusion, there’s only one thing left to say:

Want Ads With That?

Business

How nice:

Amazon Prime to streaming customers: pay $2.99 per month or go back to watching commercials

Streaming services are in a heated tug-of-war over viewers and users are growing more adept at jumping in and out of those services, often depending on price. The platforms risk losing customers with price hikes, but they could lose them if they don’t generate new content that wins over users.

Disney will begin charging $13.99 a month in the U.S. for ad-free Disney+ in mid-October, 75% more than the ad-supported service. Netflix already charges $15.49 per month for its ad-free plan, more than twice the monthly subscription for Netflix with ads.

Amazon said limited advertisements will be aired during shows and movies starting early next year so that it can “continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time.”

I haven’t seen much evidence that Amazon has created much in the way of “compelling content” (i.e. stuff that we actually want to see), so I’m not sure how I’m going to respond to this new little bit of Shylockian chiseling.  We don’t buy that much from Amazon anyway, unless there’s absolutely no local shopping alternative or the products’ manufacturers don’t offer online sales, so our shipping costs aren’t that high to begin with, ergo  there’s not much in the way of saving through Prime.

And am I the only one who spends almost as much time looking for something decent to watch as actually watching a show?  (Ditto Netflix, by the way.)

I understand the business model — there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch TV show — but included in the business model is the fact that some consumers won’t go along with the latest pricing structure.  And in fact I don’t really mind if ads play before a show, even though they’re irritating.  But during a show?  Forget that shit.

What I’ll most probably do is suspend our Prime subscription altogether after Christmas, and if we absolutely must shop through Amazon thereafter, wait and consolidate our purchases into one delivery.

I guess we’ll see how all this plays out.

Roost, Chickens Coming Home To

Corporate Wokism, Crime

Well, well, well.  Here’s the macro event:

Hours after murder charges against a former Philadelphia police officer were dropped on Tuesday, large groups, mostly made up of teenagers, looted multiple stores in the city. 

Police started receiving calls around 8 p.m. Tuesday night about a large crowd moving into Center City, the main dining and shopping scene in downtown Philadelphia, NBC 10 reported. The crowd eventually turned riotous, ransacking a Foot Locker, Lulumelon, and an Apple store, among other businesses, before at least 20 were arrested. 

Note that Philly has one of those “Soros-style” prosecutors who distinguish themselves by not prosecuting anyone for crimes like this.  There’s also evidence that, far from being “spontaneous”, the raids are being coordinated and targets established via social media — almost the very definition of organized crime.

And speaking of targets, here’s a micro event:

Target is closing nine stores in major cities across four states, claiming theft and organized retail crime have made the environment unsafe for staff and customers – and unsustainable for business.

The big box chain is part of a wave of retailers – both large and small – that say they’re struggling to contain store crimes that have hurt their bottom lines. Many have closed stores or made changes to merchandise and layouts.

…which is likely to cause an epidemic of Schadenböners among conservatives because the Minneapolis retailer is easily one of the wokest corporations in the world.

The only good thing about the Philly situation, by the way, is that unlike the Portland OR police, some Philly cops are getting into the spirit of the thing.

Try to contain your guffaws of delight.  I couldn’t.

Broken Neighborhoods

Business, Crime

I was interested, although not surprised, to see this development:

High-end retail shops in California’s iconic Beverly Hills have reportedly begun to shutter their doors amid an epidemic of smash-and-grab robberies.

To be fair, a whole bunch of them had already closed because of California’s stringent WuFlu lockdown a couple years back.  But this latest “epidemic of smash-and-grab robberies” is absolutely the fault of the politicians and the voters who put them there.

Yup:  being soft on crime, whether allowing overt riots of the BLM genre or having the “shoplifting isn’t really a crime” mindset, can only lead to more and yet more lawlessness — something you’d think would be blindingly obvious to the dumbest of the dumb.

Clearly, Californians fall even below the above definition.

Let Beverly Hills sink — and the rest of that poxy state along with it.