thebradbain

6 ms·

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by thebradbain 3y ago
Been to a few destination weddings (Mediterranean coast, India, Montana), and I think they’re the most fun, by far. All 3 of them being for close friends and family, I have come to understand the expectation to be: If it’s too much, or you
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by thebradbain 3y ago
Police will forcefully evict you from a home. They will not guard the entrance to a restaurant and refuse entry to the owners until they pay their servers stolen wages/tips.
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by thebradbain 3y ago
TIL, wow. Thanks for clarifying. Regardless, given the fact they were close / within the same order of magnitude as Figma, it's interesting that the prospect of them IPOing is apparently considered a nuclear option.
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by thebradbain 3y ago
According to Harvard Business school (2017): the median market cap of a publicly traded company is $832m. Even at half its valuation, Figma is way, way, way above that. https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2017/05/18&#x
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by thebradbain 3y ago
? An IPO allows every employee and shareholder to be as liquid as they like, and optimize to your individual tax and risk situation. An exit is a one time thing. At most, you get to elect how much cash and how much converted stock you want.
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by thebradbain 3y ago
Yes, this sucks for employees in the short term who thought their equity was potentially worth 2x what it is (and more importantly, liquid!). But also, if their numbers are good enough to plausibly command that price, it’s probably better f
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by thebradbain 3y ago
The active duty military vote is not actually a solid republican voting block, contrary to popular belief: in 2020, they swung +8 for Biden [1]. It’s the veterans who are solidly (2/3) conservative, currently, but even that’s lessenin
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by thebradbain 3y ago
Separate any discussion about the "tone" of the article, could someone who is better at reading between the lines better than I explain the changes to Out-Of App Store payments? Is it a 10-max 20% fee to Apple, no matter the distr
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by thebradbain 3y ago
It’s actually in LA now, which to me is a testament to its ability
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by thebradbain 3y ago
That’s actually really helpful context, and absolutely swayed the needle from “no track record vaporware company salesman” to “maybe he actually has the experience to pull this off”
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by thebradbain 3y ago
As an early employee at a startup from seed through a healthy Series B last year, I would have serious concerns about the company’s bookkeeping and how-up-to-date the shareholder information is if it were kept in an excel spread sheet on Go
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by thebradbain 3y ago
That's what makes them an important check on the state -- if they solely existed in a vacuum than what would speaking truth to power entail?
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by thebradbain 3y ago
Lexus appears to have done something like that using superconductors – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhCcC2smGMI https://discoverlexus.com/stories/journeys-beyond-the-road/
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by thebradbain 3y ago
I actually would argue universities should not be neutral. They're a historical check on the State. Universities should do whatever works to attract intellectual talent, and if their ideology sucks, they'll naturally lose talent a
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by thebradbain 3y ago
Well, they clearly can’t, because one is being bolstered by politicians and the other attacked by the same set of those politicians. I have not heard of a single Democrat politician advocate defunding religious organizations. I have often h
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by thebradbain 3y ago
Go after the churches and religious organizations first, in that case, as they’re also tax advantaged and their leaders and congregations have a profound pull upon politics and politicians. The Mormon Church in Utah is essentially a governm
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by thebradbain 3y ago
You’re advocating placing limits on free speech of those best situated to speak truth to power — this is straight out of the fascist playbook. Go after the Churches and religious organizations first, in that case, as they’re also tax advant
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by thebradbain 3y ago
Any piece of pie deemed too big for one person to eat will be split accordingly. I don’t think NYT, or any other industry, for that matter knows AI isn’t going away: in fact, they likely prefer it doesn’t, so long as they can get a slice of
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by thebradbain 3y ago
“Hollywood Accounting” gets its name for a reason. I guarantee you there is _no one_ who knows the exact ROI of a show in terms of dollars. In fact they don’t want to know (because it would be a liability). Often times studios set up entire
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by thebradbain 3y ago
My prediction is Zaslav will… go ahead with all of this, since he only seems to execute ideas that everyone knows are terrible in both the short and long term. There’s finally enough people noticing Zaslav’s wrecking ball outside of Hollywo
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by thebradbain 3y ago
This is touched on in the article, but I never understood why billionaires think that they’ll be able to ride this out. They’ll likely be the number one targets of armed mobs or other looters (or even sovereign nations armed with nuclear we
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by thebradbain 3y ago
And then the WGA and SAG would’ve gone back to primarily working on network television, as they have since the 60s—as that sector of the industry has shown it actually knows how to run a sustainable business. If Netflix can’t run a sustaina
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by thebradbain 3y ago
Nice eye — I did do remove that clause, but because the understanding in the industry is that the data shared with Guild members (for which there are 12k WGA writers and 100k+ SAG actors) can still be shared by those members. And even if th
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by thebradbain 3y ago
View-based streaming royalties (“residuals”) were also something won in the strikes. They previously didn’t exist for streaming in the same way they did for cable tv or theatrical releases— no matter how successful the show. That’s part of
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by thebradbain 3y ago
I imagine they’re just releasing everything at this point so they can show the total number of hours watched to investors, who I would guess will also be very interested in the numbers as a benchmark for valuing streaming services going for
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by thebradbain 3y ago
For anyone else wondering “why they’ve decided to do this”— This is an outcome of the WGA strike negotiations. Now writers (and actors, and anyone else) can use this information to better negotiate their worth with studios, rather than it b
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by thebradbain 3y ago
This is a result of the union negotiations with the WGA, which demanded and won that all streamers disclose exactly this. Expect to see this for every other streaming service imminently. https://www.wgacontract2023.org/the-c
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by thebradbain 3y ago
It was! Previously studios did not want to disclose streaming numbers publicly, except under NDA to certain authorized union members. Now writers (and actors, and anyone else) can use this information to better negotiate their worth with st
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by thebradbain 3y ago
The cynic in me, just based on how many active drilling sites exist in the middle of Los Angeles (particularly the county but also the actual city), says that getting CEQA approval for a mine/dig/drill site is… probably easier tha
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by thebradbain 3y ago
My experience is based in SF and Los Angeles, but I personally know many new/recent-grads who were recently hired at $150-$180k (cash) comp including bonus, to say nothing of options, from FAANGs to well-funded later-stage startups to

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