Bitchin Dave's newsletter

I listened to a really interesting podcast about the Eleven Madison Park Restaurant in New York City.  I wanted to talk about that for a moment. (sorry in advance for the length!) The gist of the story is that the restaurant is a fine dining establishment and around five years ago, it was awarded three Michelin stars. It was heralded as one of the best restaurants in the world.  The chef/owner realized he had nothing else to accomplish; he had reached the summit and had done as much as he could.  And that's when he decided to challenge himself to achieve something new.  It was sort of an existential personal crisis, and his solution was to change the menu completely, to think about sustainability and long-term health of the planet. And so he closed, and re-opened a while later as a plant-based restaurant.  In his own words, this was not based on anything related to animal rights or about applying labels to it. This was simply about sustainability and challenging himself to do some ...

In the US, we have the major sports (the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA at the top) and there are teams that play in those leagues. But the wild part is that there's no threat of being demoted or being discharged from the league.  Some teams, then, are basically incentivized to not even bother trying to win (and just roll with it),  to keep payrolls low, or to do what is known as "tanking" where they attempt to lose on purpose in order to get some return in the long-term As fans, sometimes you get stuck wanting to root for the team you "love," but you know there's never going to be a championship, and you just accept it and maybe even remain hopeful that someday your team's fortunes will change. For their part, the leagues also see an opportunity to generate revenue, by imposing  hefty fees to relocate or to bring in a new franchise to that league (when they think it's the right time).   But meanwhile, in many other leagues (the English Premier league of soccer ...

Companies (large and small) tend to outsource their HR front end, relying on third parties to handle the voluminous applications that come into a job (in some cases it could literally be tens of thousands of applicants for a single job).  But these third parties may not be playing fair.  I read an  article about a lawsuit against the "Workday company," who offer this service.  The suit alleges that workday use some kind of automation (they refer to as AI, but I'm skeptical) to immediately (like within seconds) weed out candidates who the system determines are over 40 (based on years worked or degree dates or whatever). The company defends itself by saying that it's legitimate automation and it's looking at skills and experience for a job, and the kicker is that since there's no human involved it can't be age discrimination!  And in today's world, who knows? They may be "correct" in that assessment.  But the bigger picture is that the companie...

As you probably are aware, the World Cup was awarded to North America in 2026.  Meaning that there will be 45 teams representing their home country (plus the US, Mexico, and Canada) competing in one of the greatest spectacles in the world.  The games will take place at venues spread out between the three countries.   Before T-rump took office, the estimate was that this summertime event is expected to bring many millions of visitors, and that those visitors would spend upwards of $15 billion while in North America (with most of the spend in the US). However.  There are now some mitigating factors which surely will impact the success of this event.  I'll try and keep this brief, and encourage you to watch one of the YouTube videos on the topic for additional details.  At the top of the list is the fact that FIFA embraces diversity, human rights, and various forms of expression.  They re-iterated that as recently as last week.  They noted certain values that the US is trying to dista...