#Investors Consulting Group

[nccconsultinggroup]

Columbus Real Estate Listings

With NCCG Consulting Group, you may get premium real estate services and exclusive listings in Columbus and Cleveland. Find your dream property today!

[npzlawyersforimmigration]

Business Immigration Considerations for a Potential Second Trump Administration

https://visaserve.com/business-immigration-considerations-for-a-potential-second-trump-administration/

#BusinessImmigration #H1BVisaUpdates #ImmigrationCompliance #WorkforcePlanning #EVerify #MeritBasedImmigration #USVisaPolicy #TrumpImmigrationPolicy

[blackbackedjackal]

I was the one who started the server and founded the studio. I invited DogBlud to the server.

I was an investor on the project, quoted a total of $5200 out of the full $13,600 on a website that DogBlud commissioned Angela and her team to make.

One of the first red flags I noticed as an investor was that DogBlud never patched me through to Angela and her team. She said she would after I read over and agreed to the contract that Angela wrote up, but she never did. She promised to add me and Rex to a server with Angela so we could keep up to date with the progress. This never happened.

I messaged DogBlud several times about my payments. My first one was due February 12th. I didn't know where to send the funds and brought it up with her several days before. It was around this time that I suspected she was hiding me away from Angela and her team, and now I know why.

According to Angela's own account, DogBlud is saying she invited ME to the project. Which is a blatant lie. So let's go ahead and add taking credit for space a Black woman created, a space that was predominantly women of color (DogBlud being the ONLY exception) to the pile.

Dog was not the "group leader". She was tasked with being an investor, my business partner/consultant, a writer, and an inker. Since we agreed to start on her project, Same As Always, first, I asked her to be a project manager so that she could tell us the art direction she wanted us to take. She was asked to do these things, by me, the studio founder and lead who was working on contracts, setting up meetings with lawyers/other investors and participants, researching for and planning a KickStarter campaign that was intended to help us raise more money for the studio, set up an LLC for the studio, be a character/writing consultant, cultural consultant, art director, colorist, and more.

The reason I "wasn't able to hit my deadlines" is because A. She made completely unrealistic deadlines on a project that I and Rex were under the impression was volunteer work since none of us were getting paid. We agreed to this because we knew that a lot of work needed to be completed before the site launched.

B. Because I was in the process of moving (a move that DogBlud encouraged me to do due to my horrid living situation at the time) and did not have access to my PC for certain working hours that was had agreed to. I was working consistently on the off-hours to make up for any scheduled time I missed (my art updates were posted in the server) and kept the team updated with my moving situation. I assured Dog that once I was done moving, I'd be on a proper schedule. My move was delayed and complicated due to external factors outside of my control. After about a week and a half into what was a three week process, Dog either stopped acknowledging my updates in the chat or said that she "wasn't happy" with me even though she was harassing me and pressuring me to work on pages nearly every day when I physically could not work on them.

[siblingshuffle]

Day-017: Partner

Lore:

Dr. Light’s idea was for robots that could grow, change, and think for themselves. However, he’d had to win over the committee before he could make that dream a reality. Feeling bad after he’d told the committee that he couldn’t support Wily’s double-gear system (especially because Wily had been there to witness it), he offered that they could build the first Robot Master together.

Wily had always been better with hardware and mechanical design. It was something of his specialty, even. With his skills with hardware and Light’s skills in artificial intelligence, the two could be basically unstoppable.

Wily had initially refused - the salty man he is, he definitely interpreted Light’s gesture of goodwill as some kind of condescension. However, eventually he accepted. Light (mistakenly) took to mean he’d been forgiven. Wily would design a lot of the hardware and design, including, eventually, the prototype Megabuster and the Variable Tool System.

Dr.s Cossack and LaLinde weren’t officially on the project, though they did contribute their thoughts and ideas. When Blues’s core failed in the middle of the Military demonstration (because they built it with Blues the unarmed child in mind and forgot to compensate for the weapon attachment, and it turns out it couldn’t generate enough to power both Blues and the buster. The event damaged his core, making it more inefficient and unbalanced.), Light made sure to consult Dr. LaLinde to help him design the solar cores for Rock and Roll (she’s an environmental scientist and he figured she would probably be able to help him and Wily design a more efficient environmentally-friendly solar core.)

————————————————————————

Notes:

Their overall appearances are based on their young designs from Megaman 11. Their shirts are colored that way as a reference to their young selves from the Ruby Spears cartoon.

Wily’s hair color came from blending the shades of yellow of Piano, Bass, and Zero together (& then lightening it because 11’s Flashback Wily has LIGHT blond hair). With Light, I blended Rock, Blues, and X’s hair colors and darkened it. ✨ Contrast ✨

Light and Wily were roommates. They couldn’t exactly escape each other. After ignoring Light for a week, Wily told their shared friend group that he was getting sick of having see his "stupid, traitorous face" every the morning and afternoon and LaLinde & Cossack (he was doing his thesis at the time) individually suggested that he should try talking to Light about how he felt. He basically said "screw that!" but did take their advice to at least try to get along. It was the first crack in their friendship and he never actually forgave it.

Dysfunctional Besties <3 (/hj)

Also I think it would be kinda cute if Light was inspired on a subconscious level by Dr. Cossack talking about Kalinka & how she was growing up. She might be like 2, if she is even born yet tho. Still working out the timeline there. It’s a little fuzzy.

Blues took quite a few years to build because they had to do everything from the ground up. The Robot Masters built after him used modified versions of Blues’s base code and designs, so they took comparatively less long.

The idea was presented before the committee as just the base code, which they determined would probably work. (I assume the committee would reach out to investors or something, but I’m like the furthest thing from a roboticist so I have no idea.) By the time Light founded Light Labs and obtained military funding, he’d gotten like. parental-levels of attached. He didn’t set out to make robot children but boy did he want robot children now—

and then he made 4 that were "children" children and like a bajillion that don’t stay at Light Labs

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

The Birdcage

Jurassic Park: It's Ironic, by Meig of A-Dinosaur-A-Day

What follows is a retelling of the Jurassic Park story, mainly based on the 1993 film, with portions of the original novel used to supplement the story. The main point of divergence occurs when the park is unable to find workable nonavian dinosaur genetic material for cloning, since - as in the real world - dna degrades much too rapidly. Instead, the park consists only of extinct dinosaurs that can be brought back - birds from the last 2.5 million years. What happens after that is, as Ian Malcolm would say, an emerging pattern.

Infinite thanks to beta readers @plokool, @killdeercheer, and @otussketching! And extra thanks to @i-draws-dinosaurs for the killer logo! Happy 30th anniversary of the JP Film!

Link to the masterpost of chapters

Chapter One: Magallanes Basin, Chile

It was frigid at the dig site, with sharp winds battering everything they could, knocking over rocks and tools and even people. Some folks were shouting over the wind, while others were hurrying to protect precious material. The chaos was almost too much to deal with, but Donald Gennaro had work to do, and needed to consult with the dig site leader, Juanito.

Dig site leader was, honestly, not descriptive enough. Juanito Rostagno was one of the most respected paleontologists of South America, and he oversaw all the dig sites run by International Genetics Technology Incorporated, otherwise known as InGen. And it was precisely because of his competence and knowledge that Gennaro had made the trip so far south.

Magallanes Basin was as far south in Patagonia as you could get, near Tierra del Fuego. The freezing winds and icy temperatures prevented it from being inhabited in most locations, with only a few population centers popping up here or there. The dig site was near the sea, among the rocky crags and crevices, far away from the more famous Patagonian steppe. Snow was common, which made the dig perilous – at any point, the material could be lost forever. As it was, a miracle must have prevented the material around them from being swept out to sea.

“Hola Juanito!” Donald greeted, finally finding the scientist among the others, reaching out to shake his hand as he tripped over a few rocks.

“Hola! Bienvenido!” Juanito shouted, gesturing for Donald to follow him across the rocky terrain. He was dressed in khakis and a thick flannel shirt, not bothering to wear a hat for fear of the wind blowing it away. Donald had lost his own hat about fifteen minutes ago. But among the researchers and workers dressed more similarly to Juanito, Donald felt quite out of place in his business suit.

“So Hammond is back at the island?” Donald asked, trying desperately not to trip over another rock. In the distance, a group of penguins walked by the workers, to their delight as they attempted to talk and interact with them. Donald had been brushing up on his knowledge of local wildlife, and was pretty sure they were Magellanic Penguins, a small variety similar to the African or Humboldt. They were really very cute. Sometimes he could really understand the appeal of Hammond’s vision.

“No, he had to go back to California early. He sends his apologies,” Juanito explained, grimacing slightly as the pair made it to one of the sturdy tents tucked away against the side of the mountain. It was significantly warmer here, both protected from the wind and supporting a small space heater.

Donald bristled but kept his voice even as he responded, “We are facing a twenty-million-dollar lawsuit by the family of that worker! And you’re telling me Hammond can’t even bother to see me?”

“He wants to be with his daughter, she’s getting a divorce,” Juanito said, picking up a bone fragment and examining it.

“I understand that, but we’ve been advised to deal with the situation now. The underwriters feel that the accident has raised some very serious safety questions about the park. This makes the investors very very anxious. I had to promise to conduct a very thorough, on-site inspection.”

Juanito looked up from the bone, frowning at Donald.

“Hammond hates inspections, they slow everything down.”

Donald fought the urge to laugh as he responded, “Well I need to or they’ll pull the funding. That’ll slow him down even more.”

“Juanito! Juanito!”

Both men looked up to the tent mouth to see a young graduate student waving them outside. Donald grit his teeth and followed them, bracing himself for the wind as they ambled down the hill towards a more secluded spot. The rocks were tucked against the mountain, with a pit a few feet deep so hidden Donald almost fell into it.

“Qué tenemos aquí?” Juanito asked the student, as they both began talking in rapid Spanish. Donald had learned Spanish, of course – hard to consult with a company that did most of its business in Latin America if he hadn’t – but he still could not follow the native speakers as their words flowed seamlessly like rivers between them. He could pick out the occasional world – something about a skull, dirt, and a new specimen.

“A ver muéstrame, muéstrame,” Juanito finally said slowly enough for Donald to pick it out, following them down into the pit carefully. Donald tripped into it, as he had almost predicted, steadying himself against the side of the rocks.

“Watch your footing!” Juanito warned as they came into the main center of the pit.

“If two experts,” Donald continued, determined to move past the fact that he couldn’t walk down here, apparently, “Sign off on the island, the insurance guys will back off. I’ve already got Ian Malcolm, but they think he’s too trendy – they want Alan Grant.”

Alan Grant and his research team had been early consultants on the project, though they never really knew what they were consulting about. Now they were just on Hammond’s digsite payroll – always looking for that one in a million chance that, maybe, his original dream could still happen.

“Grant?” Juanito snorted, “You’ll never get him out of Montana.” He picked up a skull fragment and looked at it excitedly, calling for the students around him to come over to examine it with him.

“Why not?” Donald asked, irritated.

“Because Grant’s like me,” Juanito explained, smirking, “He’s a digger.”

“Well what about Spinoza, down in New Zealand? She was hired for consultancy when the project changed direction.”

‘Changed Direction’ was the official wording for the major speedbump that had nearly thrown the entire enterprise out the window. Even mentioning it made a small frown appear on Juanito’s face. Donald didn’t like even mentioning it, given how much of the original investment had been lost chasing impossible dreams. They had kept as much of that original idea as they could, of course – even continuing to consult with Grant, Sattler, and others, when their work was no longer particularly relevant – but there was no getting around it. Hammond’s big dream had to be downsized. The laws of nature were against him.

“Spinoza?” Juanito continued, “Maybe. I do know she returned to the States recently for a conference, so she may actually be available. But she’ll insist on Grant and Sattler coming, too.”

“Why?” Donald asked, eyebrows raising towards his receding hairline. He had not even understood why they kept them on the payroll.

“Because she’s Grant’s former student, and none of them know that Grant and Sattler are no longer our chief experts,” Juanito snorted, “This is the price of all our secrecy, is it not?”

Donald sighed, “I suppose. So, what, in the middle of this lawsuit and the investors getting nervous, I’m supposed to fly down a whole spread of experts, regardless of their actual relevance, to check out this park?”

“Sattler is still relevant,” Juanito pointed out, “And beyond that, Grant is one of the strongest researchers in behavior we have. He will still be helpful. If you can get him to leave.”

“Any idea how I can do that?” Donald laughed.

Juanito helped his students start to prepare the specimens before them for transportation. He turned to look at Donald, frowning.

“Well...” Juanito paused, taking a deep breath and looking Donald straight in the eye, “Funding for us diggers. Nearly impossible. As always.”

Donald sighed.

It always came back to money.

“Since he couldn’t be bothered to join this meeting, I’ll have John sell it. His boisterous enthusiasm and cavalier attitude towards money will make it more enticing, anyway,” Donald said.

“Certainly is a better salesman than you,” Juanito laughed. Donald couldn’t help laughing with him.

“Unfortunately I cannot come with,” Juanito continued, frowning apologetically at Donald, “After all, look what we have here.” He gestured to the new material, which looked just like more bone scraps to Donald. But he wasn’t an expert.

“Think that’ll be a new species we can add?” Donald asked.

Juanito shrugged, walking back up out of the pit and helping Donald with him, “Well, we’ll find out, won’t we?”

Donald wasn’t confident enough that the project would move forward to answer.

[fatehbaz]

In the late 18th century, [...] Lahaina carried such an abundance of water that early explorers reportedly anointed it “Venice of the Pacific”. A glut of natural wetlands nourished breadfruit trees, extensive taro terraces and fishponds that sustained wildlife and generations of Native Hawaiian families.

But more than a century and a half of plantation agriculture, driven by American and European colonists, have depleted Lahaina’s streams and turned biodiverse food forests into tinderboxes. Today, Hawaii spends $3bn a year importing up to 90% of its food. This altered ecology, experts say, gave rise to the 8 August blaze that decimated the historic west Maui town and killed more than 111 people.

“The rise of plantation capital spawned the drying of the west side of Maui,” said Kamana Beamer, a historian and a former member of the Hawaii commission on water resource management [...].

---

[S]ugar and pineapple white magnates began arriving on the islands in the early 1800s. For much of the next two centuries, Maui-based plantation owners like Alexander & Baldwin and Maui Land & Pineapple Company reaped enormous fortunes, uprooting native trees and extracting billions of gallons of water from streams to grow their thirsty crops. (Annual sugar cane production averaged 1m tons until the mid-1980s; a pound of sugar requires 2,000lb of freshwater to produce.)

Invasive plants that were introduced as livestock forage, like guinea grass, now cover a quarter of Hawaii’s surface area. The extensive use of pesticides on Maui’s pineapple fields poisoned nearby water wells. The dawn of large-scale agriculture dramatically changed land practices in Maui, where natural resources no longer served as a mode of food production or a habitat for birds but a means of generating fast cash, said Lucienne de Naie, an east Maui historian [...].

“The land was turned from this fertile plain – with these big healthy trees, wetland taros and dryland crops like banana and breadfruit – to a mass of monoculture: to rows and rows of sugar cane, and rows and rows of pineapple,” she said.

---

The Great Māhele of 1848, a ground-breaking law that legitimized private land ownership, laid the ground for big developers to hoard water for profit, said Jonathan Likeke Scheuer, a water policy consultant and co-author of the book Water and Power in West Maui. [...] [T]he creation of private property allowed agricultural corporations to wield “political and ultimately oligarchic power” over elected officials. In 1893, a group of sugar magnates and capitalists overthrew the Hawaiian Kingdom’s Queen Liliuokalani, paving the way for the US to annex Hawaii five years later. Sanford Ballard Dole, a cousin of Dole Plantation’s founder, served as the first governor of Hawaii.

When the last of the sugar companies closed in 2016 [...], Scheuer said, the farms were purchased by large investors for real estate speculation and left fallow, overrun with invasive grasses that became fuel for brush fires. Developers [...] took control of the plantations’ century-old irrigation ditches and diverted water to service its luxury subdivisions. In doing so, it left scraps for Indigenous families who lived downstream. [...] [O]n Maui, 16 of the top 20 water users are resorts, time-shares and short-term condominium rentals equipped with emerald golf courses and glittering pools [...].

---

Text by: Claire Wang. "How 19th-century pineapple plantations turned Maui into a tinderbox". The Guardian. 27 August 2023. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[thedevillionaire]

If I may be greedy, 3, 4, 6, 9 (yes I am 👀ing Cerb) & 11 for Cerberus and Kia?

Greedy is totally fine! This is a nice bunch, too. :D

3) What song describes your OC?

Cerberus has two main "theme songs": Dance With Fire by Operus, and The Cage by Attrition. He's had more than one Underworldian song written about him, too, though I don't have actual music for those, just lyrics, due to me being a craptacular singer. Only one of these is currently anywhere online: Green Fire

For Kia, Love An Adventure by Pseudo Echo.

4) What song describes your OC and their partner/love interest?

As a couple, they have a few, actually, but the main two are A Touch of Evil by Judas Priest, and Body and Soul by the Sisters of Mercy.❤️

6) If your OC is in a fantasy setting, what profession would they be in the modern day?

Cut time!

This is really tricky for Cerberus, actually, and the only thing I'm confident of is that he'd be his own boss. Possibly the world's hottest occult bookstore owner/operator lol. But I can also see him not working a "regular" sort of job at all, and being the kind of super-successful investor that can live off passive income and do whatever he wants in his (significant) spare time, and that may not be a whole lot different - although with a "mortal plane" skew, of course - to what he does now.

lol maybe he'd be a cult leader. 🤣 He was mortally pyrokinetic, after all. Kia had all sorts of odd jobs when she was mortal. She's been a masseuse, a supermarket checkout chick, a fashion consultant/assistant, a pole dancer, a telemarketer, a typist... She'd probably settle into something customer-service focused that didn't require a degree/formal qualifications.

9) How does your OC handle their physical health? Do they take care of themselves?

Cerberus is excellent at this...until he gets sick. 😂😂 He's very physically fit, in great shape, looks after his physical needs overall extremely well. Eats well, exercises, is very hygiene-conscious. He's kind of a workaholic and should almost certainly take more time off for just relaxation, but that's about as lax as he gets about his general physical wellbeing. And he doesn't often get sick at all. BUT. Partly due to infrequency/unfamiliarity with getting ill, partly just that he's always so resentful that it even happened, how fucking dare this happen, and he's just...patently terrible at accepting his fate about it. 😅 So when the Healing meds don't instantly and completely cure things, he's prone to completely disregarding everything he's told to do, because it's already proved pointless again, as usual, so why not try [insert probably bad idea here] instead. Kia's made things way better for him in this regard, and he's the best of all possible selves with her around, but still. He's a notoriously dreadful patient and he deserves every bit of that reputation lol.

Kia is also very fit, although less hygiene-conscious, and also far more likely to socialise in large groups, etc. She gets sick a regular amount, and is much better at looking after herself when it happens, too. She gets a bit cranky about it at times, sure, but she's pretty accepting of it as just a part of life, and just...deals. Not to say she doesn't enjoy a good spoiling when she's unwell. Cerberus, for all his failings at being a good patient, actually makes a wonderful caretaker.

11) What was your inspiration for your OC?

Cerberus was supposed to be a one-off serve-a-purpose temporary creation and problem-solver. I made too many OCs in early Underworld times and thought if I just had...like half of them killed off in one fell swoop, sort of thing, I could get back on track, haha. Anyway, so, he was meant to just come in, do damage, fuck off.

He...did not do that. 🤷‍♀️ I mean, he absolutely did do what I, um, brought him in for. He just also decided to stick around and take over the place afterwards.

IDEK. I'm just a dumb scribe lol. And I genuinely do not remember what/who inspired Kia, but she was also an unexpected "success story". She was an Incept, brought into the Underworld's Vampirism Caste by another OC pretty much nobody's met here - Vesuvius - and just...went about being Kia. And here we are. 🫠

[phoenixyfriend]

Ko-Fi prompt from @dirigibird:

I've been looking at investment options but I don't want to be messing around too much with the stock market, and a co-worker suggested exchange traded funds. Would love to know your opinions!

LEGALLY NECESSARY DISCLAIMER: I am not a licensed financial advisor, and it is illegal for me to advise anyone on investment in securities like stocks. My commentary here is merely opinion, not financial advice, and I urge you to not make any decisions with regards to securities investments based on my opinions, or without consulting a licensed advisor. I am also going to be talking this all over from an American POV, which means some of these things may not apply elsewhere.

So instead of letting you know what to pick or how to organize your securities, I'm going to go through the definitions of what various investment funds are, how they compare functionally, and maybe rant about how I disagree with the stock market on a fundamental ethical level if I have word count left over.

If you want more information, and are okay with jargon, I'd suggest hitting up investopedia. That is where I will be double-checking most of my information for this one.

I also encourage folks who know more about the stock market specifically to jump in! I like to think I'm good at research and explaining things, but I'm still liable to make mistakes.

Mutual Funds: A mutual fund is a pool of money and resources from multiple individuals (often vast numbers of people, actually) being put together and managed as a group by investment specialists. The primary appeal of these is that the money is professionally managed, but not personally so; it gives smaller investors access to professional money managers that they would not have access to on their own, at cheaper rates than if they tried to hire one for just their own assets. The secondary appeal is that, due to the sheer number of people, and thus capital, that is being invested at once, the money can be invested in a wide variety of industries, and is generally more stable than investing in just one company or industry. Low risk, low reward, but overall at least mostly reliable. Retirement plans are often invested in mutual funds by employer choice, through companies like Fidelity or John Hancock.

Hedge Funds: A hedge fund is a high risk, high reward mutual fund. Investors are generally wealthy, and have the room and safety to lose large amounts of money on an investment that has no promise of success, especially since money cannot be withdrawn at will, but must remain in the fund for a period of time following investment. It gets its name from "hedging your bets," as part of the strategy is to invest in the opposition of the fund's focus in order to ensure that there is a backup plan to salvage at least some money if the main plan backfires. Other strategies are also on the riskier side, often planning to take advantage of ongoing events like buyouts, mergers, incumbent bankruptcy, and shorting stocks (that's the one that caused the gamestop incident).

Private Equity: Private equity is... a nightmare that got its own incredibly good Hasan Minhaj episode of Patriot Act, so if you've got 20 minutes, an interest in comedically-delivered, easily-digestible, Real Information, and an internet connection, take a watch of that one. (If it's not available on YouTube in your country, it's originally from Netflix, or you can probably access it by VPN.) Private equity companies are effectively hedge funds that purchase entire companies, rebuild them in one way or another, and then sell them at (hopefully) a profit. Very often, the companies purchased by private equity are very negatively impacted, especially if the private equity group is a Vulture Fund. Sometimes, it's by taking it apart to sell off; sometimes it's by just bleeding it for cash until there's nothing left. Sometimes, it's taking over a hospital and overcharging the patients while also abusing the staff! (Glaucomflecken has a lot of videos on the topic of private equity in the medical industry, check him out.)

Venture Capital: In contrast to private equity, which purchases more mature companies, venture capital is focused on startups, or small businesses that have growth potential. These are the kinds of hedge funds that are like a whole group that you'd see some random tv character calling an Angel Investor (they're not actually the same thing, but they overlap by a lot). I'd hesitantly call these less ethically dubious than private equity, but I'm still suspicious.

And finally, to answer your question on what ETFs are and how they fit into the above.

Exchange Traded Funds: ETFs are... sort of like a mutual fund. Sort of. You are, to some extent, pooling your money... ish.

An ETF is like a stock that is made out of partial stocks. So instead of paying $100 for stock A, and not getting stocks B/C/D that all cost the same, you buy $100 of the ETF, which is $25 each of stocks A/B/C/D. You are getting a quarter of a unit of stock, which isn't normally an option, but because you are purchasing through an ETF that officially already bought those Whole stocks, you can now purchase the partial stocks through them.

They buy the whole stocks, then they resell you mixes of those stocks. They still officially own the whole stocks themselves, but you now own parts of the stocks. Basically, you own "stock" in a company that owns stock in other companies, and in that process you own partial stocks in those other companies.

I'm going to re-explain this using fruit.

Imagine you can buy apples, oranges, melons, grapes, etc. You can also buy fruit cups. You can only buy the individual fruits in big batches or you can pool your money with a few other people, hand it to a chef. The chef will decide which fruits look like they'll taste the best by lunch time, buy a bunch of those fruit pallets with your combined money, and plan out the best possible fruit salad for you to share with a bunch of people once lunch rolls around.

You could also buy a fruit cup. You don't have a lot of control over what's already in the fruit cup, but there are a few different mixes available--that one has strawberries, but that one over there uses kiwi, and the other one that way has pineapple--and you can pick which mix you want. It's a pretty small fruit cup, and it's predesigned, but you can choose the one you want without having to pool money with everyone else. You just first have to let someone else design the fruit cups you choose from, and you don't know which ones are probably going to survive the best to lunch time unless you ask a chef (which defeats the purpose of buying a fruit cup instead of pooling your money, and asking the chef costs money).

That's the ETF. The ETF is the fruit cup.

The upside is that you can now just track the prices of your fruit cup, instead of tracking the prices of four different fruits, and so if the price of one fruit drops, you can just... let the other three buoy it.

Of course, in the real world, there are more than just four stocks involved in an ETF. This part of the Investopedia article lists a few examples, and they're usually themed and involve anywhere from 30 (DOW Jones) to thousands (Russell) of shares by stock type, or by commodity/industry. So with the ETF, you can invest in an entire industry, like technology, and just keep track of that single "stock" in the industry game.

They do cost less in brokerage/management fees than regular mutual funds, and they have a slightly lower liquidity (slower to cash out). There also exist actively managed ETFs, which are basically mutual funds for ETFs. You are paying the chef to buy you premade fruit cups.

(Prompt me on ko-fi!)

[darkmaga-returns]

You might not have noticed it, but amid the election circus, Thanksgiving feasts, and the fast-approaching holiday season, something really interesting has been happening behind the scenes. Warren Buffett, the legendary investor, has been steadily pulling his money out of banks—and not in a small way.

Since July, Buffett’s holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, has sold 260 million shares of Bank of America (BofA), cashing out over $10 billion. This rapid-fire selling has reduced Berkshire’s stake to under 10%. That means Buffett can keep selling without having to disclose it right away.

But the Oracle of Omaha's banking exodus extends far beyond Bank of America. Since early 2020, Buffett has systematically pulled his investments out of Wells Fargo, U.S. Bancorp, JPMorgan Chase, and Goldman Sachs—completely divesting Berkshire's stakes in each of these financial giants.

And Buffett isn’t the only one making these moves. Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater Associates and other major investors have also been dumping bank stocks en masse.

So why are these financial heavyweights suddenly fleeing the banking sector like rats from a sinking ship? Believe it or not, they've got a good reason.A Ticking Time Bomb

Earlier this year, there was this massive study published from Klaros Group, a consulting firm, and it found that 282 regional banks have both high levels of commercial real estate exposure and large unrealized losses from the rate surge.

That's the same toxic double whammy that pushed First Republic and Signature Banks over the edge last year, remember?

These banks went under because they couldn’t raise enough money by unloading their investment portfolios (which were deeply underwater due to the Fed's rate hikes) to pay back the depositors who were rushing for the exits.

Chances are, it’s not only these 282 banks that are at risk—there are likely many others not covered by the study.

Speculation aside, here’s what we do know for a fact: U.S. banks as a group are currently sitting on $513 billion in unrealized paper losses on securities.

[mariacallous]

Elon Musk is a man comfortable with risky bets. He pledged to send 1 million people to Mars (SpaceX), to fill factories with humanoid workers (Tesla Bot), and to create a network of highways deep underground (the Boring Company). All of these bets are yet to pay off. But six years ago, Musk took a leap of faith that would also affect him personally. He tied his own pay at Tesla to a series of financial targets over the next decade, including boosting the company’s market value from $59 billion to $650 billion. Such targets were decried by commentators at the time as “jaw-dropping” and “his most unlikely goal yet.” And Musk’s wage from the company if he didn’t pull them off? Nothing at all.

The board agreed to the plan in 2018. However, a heavy-metal drummer named Richard Tornetta, who owned just nine Tesla shares, did not. In June of that year, he decided to sue, claiming the pay package was unfair to investors like him. By the time the case reached court in Delaware in 2022, Musk had just one milestone left before the big payout. But the judge agreed with Tornetta in January, voiding what she called an unfathomably large pay package and describing the directors who negotiated it as beholden to Musk.

Musk succeeded in hitting those 12 jaw-dropping targets by the close of 2023, following Tesla’s brief spell as a trillion-dollar company. And now, despite what happened in Delaware, he’s demanding to be paid. At Tesla’s annual meeting on Thursday, shareholders are being asked to vote again on whether Musk should receive what has by now swollen to a nearly $50 billion pay package, the biggest in US corporate history. The $50 billion question for shareholders is: Is Musk worth it?

Posing the question of whether he deserves his pay packet at all marks a significant shift for the relationship between Musk and the electric automaker he has led since 2008. “The resistance shows that there is a ceiling to the influence that a single person has on the company,” says Mike Ramsey, an automotive analyst at the consultancy Gartner. “This is the the first time Tesla shareholders might be willing to say, ‘You can’t have unlimited power.’”

The vote comes at a difficult time for Tesla. For the first time in the company’s history, Tesla is facing intense competition in the electric car market—especially from cheaper Chinese competitors. Meanwhile, some observers have puzzled over Musk’s response and his pivot to robotaxis and artificial intelligence.

“The debate here really is about the future, not the past,” says John Colley, professor of practice in strategy and leadership at the UK’s Warwick Business School. “Tesla has become a mature business, and it’s got all the problems that mature carmakers have now.” Whether a visionary like Musk is the best man to lead a mature business is unclear, he adds.

The pay package is just one in a series of measures that shareholders have already been asked to vote on by proxy, ahead of Thursday’s meeting. Others include whether Tesla’s incorporation should move from Delaware to Texas, whether the company should soften its hardline stance on labor negotiations, and whether the company should preemptively impose a moratorium on using minerals mined from the seabed.

Yet none have been as divisive as Musk’s pay. Deep rifts among investors have been exposed in the lead-up to the vote. Tesla board chair Robyn Denholm has backed the pay package, as has billionaire investor Ron Baron. “Tesla is better with Elon,” Baron wrote in an open letter last week. “Tesla is Elon.” Yet the deal’s opponents include two influential proxy advisory groups, which guide institutional investors on votes, as well as shareholders from the Nordic countries, where Tesla has clashed with workers over labor rights.

Norway’s trillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund has said it will vote against the pay deal, as will the country’s largest pension fund, KLP. “While we acknowledge that the company has grown significantly and successfully during the performance period, we still note that the total award value remains excessive,” Kiran Aziz, KLP's head of responsible investments, told WIRED, adding the fund will vote in favor of the motion urging Tesla to engage in labor negotiations. “Recent [dispute] between Tesla and the company’s workers in Sweden as well as Tesla’s history of accusations of interference with workers’ rights is of great concern and shows that the company needs to do better work in the area.”

Behind the scenes of the vote, lobbying has been intense. Tesla has paid for ads on Google and X, which is owned by Musk, telling investors to “protect your investment” and support the proposal, according to a company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In April, Tesla also launched a website urging shareholders to vote against the Delaware court decision and support the pay package. “The Court’s decision, if implemented, means that Elon would not receive any compensation for the tremendous accomplishments that have generated significant stockholder returns in less than six years,” the website reads.

“This is the most advertising I can remember from any proxy solicitation,” says Robert Anderson, a professor at the University of Arkansas School of Law. He believes the Musk effect—the CEO’s ability to attract endless publicity—has contributed to this situation. But the pay package and the proposed Texas move are both unprecedented in the business world, he adds. “Either [of] those things by themselves would be pretty significant, even if he were not a public figure.”

The vote will be decided by a mix of institutional investors as well as an unusually large cohort of retail investors, who control around 44 percent of the business. Among shareholders, there are concerns that if Musk does not win his compensation, “his attention might drift to some of his other ventures a little bit more,” says Anderson. Musk managed to juggle multiple ventures for years, but he has been more publicly distracted since acquiring the social media service Twitter and renaming it X. There, his visible turn to right-wing politics has garnered new fans and left some old ones behind.

Whatever happens this week, Tesla and Musk may emerge looking a bit less superhuman. For years, the two have insisted that Tesla is a tech company, with a Silicon Valley–style startup scrappiness. “We should be thought of as an AI or robotics company,” Musk told investors—or voters—in April. “If you value Tesla as just an auto company … fundamentally, it’s just the wrong framework.”

[starryjkoo]

Alright, not to get too caught up in the MHJ drama, but I’m crying because I just reread my now deleted post-Golden rant complaining about BSH, SB, and my issues with their strategy and I got to this part

😭😭😭

No but I was right. Say what you want about MHJ, but NewJean’s was truly HYBE's only other major success outside of BTS and it had nothing to do with BangPD and it turns out that it absolutely did piss him off LMAO. I knew it. You don't have to believe everything she says, but the elevator thing was basically confirmed and there's no normal, well adjusted adult who would ignore young girls like that if they weren't an immature, petty asshole.

Not to be messy and reopen this can of worms, but it does make me think it's even more likely that he might have been a little bitter over LC hitting #1 considering he couldn't take credit for it. He had that whole article in billboard that came out around the same time talking about how they were going to get the next #1 through their connections or infrastructure or however he put it, which was clearly referencing SB & HYBE America. I think he was trying to make it seem like this whole Scooter A&R strategy was ingenious and vital to Western success based on how hard they kept pushing and talking it up. So if MHJ was telling any amount of truth about his attitude and how he acted towards NWJN's, I just can't help but feel like he must have felt at least a LITTLE negatively about LC hitting that #1 right after he was talking such a big game about how his system (that he spent a billion dollars on) was going to be vital to that next #1.

LC was a Korean song Jimin made with a small in-house team so it must have been a little embarrassing for him to say all that to billboard (and probably investors lol) and have it be immediately invalidated. And LC so clearly demonstrated that BTS and the members could still pull off these big feats without him or his ideas and massive investment and personal involvement. And yeah, billboard did target LC right after that to try and smear it's success, but I think this argument still holds up. Especially because if LC was given any extra care or support it could have kept charting. And what billboard did in it's second week was insanely dirty.

(I’m not saying he was MAD about it, or that he didn’t talk it up to investors after, or that he sabotaged Jimin like a vengeful cartoon villain, I’m just being petty and speculating and saying I don’t think he was thrilled about it considering the circumstances)

Likewise NewJean's released music that did have a good chunk of English but was still Korean, and they managed to break a bunch of girlgroup billboard records as well, and that's ANOTHER project that BSH didn't have his hands on at all. In fact it was one he didn't believe in. Yes, ILLIT broke their record for getting their debut song on billboard quicker, however BSH followed the formula that MHJ created and apparently didn't even consult her or give her any credit while creating a group that was clearly inspired by her work (I genuinely love ILLIT and think they have their own identity! But they do follow the formula that MHJ popularized). So it's not like he got another group on billboard with his genius, it was again just following a formula someone else created (Magnetic was a bop and I loved the whole EP, so I'll give him that!).

I honestly don't even know what SB brings to the table that's so helpful because all they need for a pop song to succeed is basic charting tools like CDs and remixes and playlisting, which they could get before him, and basic decent promotions for visibility. And he's not doing anything interesting or helpful for the non-pop releases even though there's a massive market here for indie, alternative, R&B, and rap. Why wasn't CBTM on college stations? He's useless because the pop releases don't even need much to be successful. And none of JKs promotions were new or unique or something they couldn't have gotten before SB either. And if he's doing something else behind the scenes, I don't think that's worth it either.

JK did have more GP tuning in, but his solo debut was still heavily carried by ARMYs who took advantage of every provided tool, so nothing revolutionary they couldn't have accomplished pre-SB. It wouldn't have worked for anyone else like I said before either, a good example being TXT and their Jo Bros collab which flopped. BSH was all overconfident (top 10 on billboard lol) about it because he thought the secret to success was simply - western producer, western collab, english - but their fans didn't care for the song and therefore it didn't do well. So yeah, at the end of the day it's about good music and/or having a big fandom willing to carry (and that very rare charisma the BTS members have). Not whatever stupid synergy strategy BSH thought he unlocked. Honestly I wonder if he's really that stupid to think that they could get a hit with just those things, but I'm starting to think so. Genuinely what good decision has he made lately that wasn't just following trends?

Won't rehash everything again but this MHJ drama did make me look back on all this discourse even though I swore I was done with it. I'm not as bothered by all of this now, I just think it's interesting to look back on and compare some of her criticisms of HYBE & BSH to many of our own criticisms and speculation. While I take her words with a massive grain of salt, I do think there's a lot of outside evidence to back up some of her claims about the company and their issues (and I'm not her fan or excusing her actions or saying she's always truthful either).

Of course I could be totally wrong, just my thoughts. I'll go back to looking forward to Jin returning and upcoming projects because at the end of the day the BTS members are the ones responsible for their own careers and they have to be the ones to advocate for themselves and deal with their company, but the plus side of this situation is that I hope at least some K-ARMYs are approaching the company with more scrutiny and hopefully holding them accountable for certain things, although I won't hold my breath. It was hilarious seeing HYBE's quick response to their complaints about Jin's hug event though. I wish I-ARMYs would stop being such company stans (you can criticize HYBE/BH without being a manti you know) but not getting my hopes up.

I just sincerely hope that this whole SB creative strategy won't carry over into BTS music, or any more of their solo work. I wouldn’t care if the quality was there, but imo it’s too inconsistent (I definitely enjoy most of Golden! Seven is a bop, SNTY is 10/10). It’s not about creating art or good music for them, it’s about trying to design a song that they think will chart. And songs like that will almost always lack in some way. So I hope this doesn’t become a pattern and the members retain their creative freedom and recognize that they definitely do not need to rely on those people for a hit (ofc unless the want to work with them).

[npzlawyersforimmigration]

Navigating Work Authorization and Social Security Number Requirements in the U.S.

https://visaserve.com/navigating-work-authorization-and-social-security-number-requirements-in-the-u-s/

#WorkAuthorization #SocialSecurityNumber #EmploymentLaws #ImmigrationCompliance #FormI9 #USCIS #HumanResources #EmploymentVerification #SSNDelays #EmployerResponsibilities

[siderealmaven]

Houses in Sidereal Astrology

The most important part of astrology is the planets and the second most important thing is the houses. The houses in a chart show you where the planets are, what they’re doing, and who they’re doing it with. They provide the context for the story being told by the planets and ground them in reality. Without an exact time to indicate the rising sign of a chart, knowing the houses is impossible.

House significations can change depending on the branch of astrology you’re engaging with, such as mundane, natal or horary, or the zodiac being used such as sidereal or tropical. And of course, each astrologer is going to have their own tried and true preferences that they swear by.

Here’s mine.

(Originally published on Sidereal Maven's Patreon Page as a free post.)

1st House

The Self + Personality, outer appearance of the body, things that happen to you + actions that you take, changes made to your appearance such as: hair cuts, body modifications, surgery and injuries. Personal style can also be found here, such as the types of clothes you wear and how you like to present yourself to others.

2nd House

Food, money, and personal possessions. Your income, how you create it, and who you create it with. Your food, what you eat, how you eat it, and who you eat it with. Your sense of self esteem and personal values can also be found in this house, as we live in a capitalistic society that ties personal possessions and income to our individual worth and value.

3rd House

Siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents and close family friends. Family gatherings, parties and reunions. Primary school, classmates, and neighbors. Your daily commute to work or around your local area. Day trips and short distance travel. Reading, writing, and studying. Social media, radio, podcasts, and self publishing. Private spiritual practice that is engaged with alone or within the home with family members.

4th House

Your parents, their home, and/or your childhood home. More specifically your father(s), father figures, and your paternal line. Your physical residence, the land you live on, agriculture, farming, gardening and real estate. Ancestral lands and ancestral parents, as well as your relationship to them. Family secrets, stories and heirlooms. Your private life. Your own relationship to being a parent if you are one, could be found here.

5th House

Children, childhood, and your inner child. The creative projects that you give birth to and nurture into existence. Your romantic partners and lovers, the dates you go on and the things you do together. Sex, sexual health, and baby making. You’ll also find cooking, fitness, sports, and physical activities. Creative hobbies such as art, theater, music, dance, etc. This house can also represent your father’s money + income and how it affected you growing up.

6th House

Job description and work environment. Your coworkers and/or employees that you hire. This could also be creative projects that you consider to be work and self employment. Service oriented work such as; medicine, public service jobs, community service and taking care of ill family members. Pets, veterinarians, and animal related work. Your physical health, illnesses, diagnosis, and treatment is also found here, along with your daily routines of care.

7th House

Partnerships, such as business partners, spouses, and co-parents. Courtrooms, litigation and legal battles. Lawyers, Doctors, Therapists, Astrologers and other professionals that you consult for advice. Rivals and competitors. Open enemies and people/groups/ideologies you find yourself in conflict with.

8th House

Shared finances and resources, especially those you share living spaces or financial responsibilities with. Inter-generational and communal living. Gifts, inheritance, loans, investors, debts and taxes. Death, loss, major life changes and initiations into new ways of being. Mediums and spiritualists.

9th House

Institutions of power such as governments, universities, and religious organizations. Government jobs, leaders, and organizers. Judges, diplomats and ambassadors. Higher education and learning, mass media, journalism, film, and traditional publishing (newspapers, magazines, and books.) Religious leaders, organizers, buildings, and sacred sites. Far distance travel and exploration. Oracles, divination, psychics, astrology, palm reading, etc.

10th House

Public status and reputation, the way you are seen and known by the outer world. Public Personas and your public life. Your mother(s), mother figures and maternal line. Authority figures, bosses, supervisors, and people who hold power over you + your relationship to them. Promotions and scandals.

11th House

Mentors, teachers, guides and helpful friends. Unions, nonprofits, and communities that you are a part of and participate in. Industry partners and allies. Sororities + Fraternities. Students, apprentices, step-children and other people’s children. Child support and custody. Your mother’s money + income and how it affected you growing up. Audiences + fans.

12th House

Foreign or unfamiliar places, cultures, and people. International travel. Immigrants and immigration. Remote work or work from home jobs. New experiences that take you out of your comfort zone. Solo spiritual exploration and experiences. Solitude and isolation. Hospitals, rehab, jail and prisons. Monasteries, convents, or other isolated religious groups. Estrangement + estranged family members.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy...

Sidereal Zodiac Signs: What You Need To Know

Tropical VS Sidereal: What's the Difference?

How to Cast Your Sidereal Birth Chart, A Step by Step Guide

[wonindia]

Fundamental vs Technical Analysis – Which Works Better for Indian Stocks?

Fundamental Analysis (FA):

Best For: Long-term investors who want to build wealth steadily.

Why It Works: FA looks at a company’s financial health, management quality, industry position, and macroeconomic factors. It helps you understand the "value" of the business.

Example in India: Stocks like HDFC Bank or Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) are favorites for FA enthusiasts due to their consistent growth, profitability, and strong fundamentals.

Limitations: It’s time-consuming and doesn’t account for short-term price movements.

Technical Analysis (TA):

Best For: Traders and short-term investors who capitalize on price trends and patterns.

Why It Works: TA is great for identifying entry/exit points, understanding market sentiment, and riding momentum.

Example in India: Day traders often use TA for volatile stocks like Adani Group stocks or Reliance Industries, especially around news or quarterly earnings announcements.

Limitations: It doesn’t focus on the company’s intrinsic value, so a TA-only approach can be risky for long-term investments.

[freifraufischer]

It's been a few days since the "announcement" of the GIGA Pro Gymnastics thing and I'd like to share some research and my lengthy list of questions about this project.

Let's start by saying that there is a document floating around that is marked confidential and proprietary. It's not long, it's an info graphic and appears to be aimed at investors or recruitment. I'm not sharing it. It does inform my questions.

Who Are These People?

First of all: The officers listed are Aimee Boorman as Co-founder and Chief Events Officer. Maura Fox as Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer. LaPrise Williams as Co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer. This is what I can find based on publicly available information:

The gymnastics community knows who Aimee Boorman is so I'm not going to detail her. She became a FIG Brevet judge in the last two years but is very junior. She's a category 4 judge meaning that except at the smallest FIG meets she is limited to things like being a line judge or a timing judge, this is not a slight. Everyone has to start as a cat 4 but that does mean she doesn't have a lot of experience as a judge.

Maura Fox has a linkedin which informs what I know about her. She was an executive for Time Warner leaving in 2009. Her last job there was as group vice president for consumer devices, cross platform, and strategy. She then ran her own consulting form for 10 years which her linkedin says ended in 2019. She's honestly the person I want to know the most about to take this project seriously or not. She says she's been involved in launching professional circuits in cycling and men's tennis. I'd like to find out what those ventures were to be able to assess the likelihood that this venture will survive. She then worked for some kind of media products group that I can't really get my head around for two years before going to work for GIGA. Her linked in identifies GIGA as having been founded in 2021. So they've had 2 years to build this... which frankly matches with the fact that I had heard about them recruiting potential athletes last year.

LaPrise Williams is a pediatric nurse who was the Baylor Acro and Tumbling coach for from 2011-2014. She later told the press she intended to file a Title IX complaint against the university but I have no idea how that worked out. She opened a gym in St Vincent and the Grenadines which identifies itself as the first gym in the islands. She is the Technical Director for the St Vincent and the Grenadines Gymnastics Association. Here is their facebook page. Now I'm going to put some context on the SVGGA here and I don't want anyone to think I'm disparaging them or her. There are many small federations in the world and this is one of them. It is very clearly a legitimate National Governing Body (NGB). At the moment they have no FIG licensed gymnasts in any discipline and Williams is the only FIG brevet judge from the federation in any discipline--she is a category 4 judge for WAG. The facebook activity for the fed runs:

post on June 4th of 2023 which is a repost from Williams' gym's instagram page.

on September 25, 2022 they changed their profile and header pictures

on January 25, 2020 they posted pictures of a team going to Manhatten Classic.

on June 16, 2019 a repost from an article from the Trinidad and Tobago Newsday about the Caribbean Gymnastics Championships which is very likely not a FIG sanctioned event.

All of this is to say this is a small, relatively inactive federation with limited resources and staff and I'm not entirely sure if much weight should begiven to her involvement in it for this project.

Who are the Sponsors/Who is going to pay the Athletes?

This is upfront going to be a lot of "I have no idea." Their launch material doesn't say. The document I've seen doesn't say and the fact that the thing has supposedly existed for two years without a sponsor lined up to be named at public launch is a little worrying to me.

The document describes a two tiered structure for the athletes with start fees and prize money for all (the initial start fee is $1500 to be paid to all gymnasts with GIGA paying for things like travel, hotel, meals, etc). The prize purse for the first year event is described in the low 6 figure range with mention of an All Around winner. I've seen no mention of teams so it appears to me that they're planning on this being an individual competition circuit (more thoughts on that later). I have seen no reference to insurance of any sort and the only medical related thing in the document is onsite massage, PT, and recovery aids. My major concern continues to be that these people are recruiting adult aged post-college athletes and all I can think is there will be many knees destroyed. And this is the United States... so look forward to some Go Fund Me for medical treatment in the future... It's notable that the European club leagues are all in countries with nationalized health care. Their document talks about career longevity for gymnasts but I'm not at all convinced they're promising an infrastructure for that.

There is a second section of this document that talks about headliners and the things they can negotiated for as individuals. So some gymnasts will be paid appearance fees--which I should stress I think is perfectly normal.

Why is it hard to figure out if these people want to be a professional league or a media platform?

Because they want to be both. They want hold to meets and stream content to fans as well as sell access to the athletes for fans experiences. It looks like kind of standard VIP meet and greet kind of things from what little detail I've seen... you pay money to meet the athlete for say 30 minutes with a group of other fans. I've done this kind of thing for television actors. It's fun. But it's also by it's nature not something a lot of fans can afford.

They also want to build a library of content that is essentially athlete interviews presumably the access of which they can sell in whatever the subscription package of their multimedia platform is. It's all pretty vague so we'll have to figure out what it means when their products actually launch.

For now my main concern is why did they announce this in June without a date or location or a format for their first competition?

Lingering Questions...

I have so many... aside from the ones I've touched on above. They talk about how this hasn't been done before. It has. The most successful attempt at launching a pro-gymnastics competition circuit was in 1997-98 in the post Atlanta Olympics hype. They used a modified NCAA code and the meets were aired on CBS. I don't need them to talk about the previous two attempts (except maybe don't claim to be the first) but I really hope they are aware of them at the very least to find out why they didn't last. I fear that they either didn't do that research or they assume because it was 20+ years ago that their multimedia platform makes them so different that it doesn't apply.

What the heck is the meet structure here? They talk a LOT about the successes of NCAA gymnastics but at least the materials I've seen seem to suggest that they don't plan on having teams. Teams are a key part of building fan support in both NCAA and the European club leagues. I still don't think you can model a US league based on those European leagues mostly because they are build on a lot of routines from junior gymnasts and this project seems to be entirely about post-NCAA age careers. That's in addition to my medical insurance and liability insurance questions.

What is USAG's involvement in this? My fear is "they don't want USAG's involvement". See the launching of new professional sports leagues in a country often depend on how much support and buy-in they have from the NGB. One of the major differences between the currently running National Women's Soccer League and earlier defunct attempts is buy-in from USA Soccer. And I promise you that US Soccer is no more popular then USAG. I'm also informed by the fact that playing conditions for a lot of NWSL teams have been pretty bad (let's not touch the sexual harassment issues within teams). One team was playing on a home field that had holes in it and couldn't afford to pay for their players shoes. Gymnastics equipment is extremely expensive. Millions of dollars just for the competition apparatus. Are these people buying it? From who? Are they going to transport it around the country? Are they going to host it in a central location so they can store the equipment locally or rent it from a specific source? So many questions.

What code of points are they using? US developmental program--you know the one whose code of points you have to buy and isn't publicly accessible without paying for it? Some modified version of the above (like NCAA)? If they're riding the coat tales of NCAA I somehow doubt they're using the FIG code which will make it somewhat harder for non-US/Canadian athletes to be involved. What difficulty expectations will there be? How are they going to handle judges? How are they going to assure fans and athletes that judging will be fair given how much money they are saying is in the prize purses and that they're setting up a two tiered "everyone" and "headliners" compensation structure?

Conclusions:

I'm highly skeptical of all of this. I'm worried about what seems to have been a premature information free public launch. Their website and materials seem amateurish to me and I just can't get my head around the idea that they launch this publicly with no sponsors named.

I'm not at all convinced that these people know how or why European club leagues work, why previous attempts at this in the US have failed, what a lot of the appeal of NCAA gymnastics is, or that they have the experience necessary to do any of this.

[fredseibertdotcom]

Next New Networks, Part 3

I’m going to try, in as few posts as possible, to create a coherent timeline of the short, eventful life of Next New Networks, an early, consequential moment in streaming video history. 

From Part 1: Emil Rensing and I, with a huge assist from future Tumblr creator David Karp, stumbled into the brave new world of online video without much of a plan. 

From Part 2: Our friend –my former partner at Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, and our future Next New Networks partner– Jed Simmons introduced us to Spark Capital in Boston, who wanted to partner and fund Next New. 

Part 3: Late 2006 

What do we do now? 

Once Spark signaled their interest, we needed to get serious. I still had Frederator Studios, my successful and increasingly busy independent cartoon production company, but the excitement of this opportunity was overwhelming. Even if I was significantly older than the typical internet entrepreneur, I felt that my background in media and production could be meaningful. The first phase of the consumer internet required deep engineering skills because the infrastructure was still somewhat nascent. Web 2.0 had developed enough tools that even someone with my limited skills could participate. Besides, I had Emil on my side, someone who had a unique understanding of the state of the tech world. 

By summertime, after a variety of conversations and meetings, Emil and I settled on a co-founding team. Jed Simmons, of course. Emil had a start up friend –Tim Shey– who’d sold his DC based, interactive agency and moved to New York where he was consulting with some early stage video companies. I was stretched to thin to have an operating role in the joint, so we all agreed that my childhood friend and adult colleague Herb Scannell –former Vice Chairman of MTV Networks and CEO of Nickelodeon– would be a perfect CEO. Luckily, he agreed, and our management line up was in place. (David Karp would be our founding developer, until he launched Tumblr several months later, of course). 

We can leave the machinations of filling out the A-round of investment aside. Suffice to say, many venture capitalists were uninterested in any idea that didn’t have unique software attached –we didn’t– but we put together an investor group and board of directors that were excited with our vision. 

Next New Networks posters designed and illustrated by Frank Olinsky

Our vision? ah. yes. By the time we were on the road pitching our wares, we had taken the basics of VOD Cars and Channel Frederator and put together a plan that was based on “communities of interest,” which we felt would be the engines of viewership and growth. As Tim Shey later wrote: 

Next New Networks popularized the ideas of videoblogging and advertiser-supported online video, and pioneered the multi-channel network (MCN) business model and the concept of audience development, assembling a diverse and successful portfolio of original programming including hit channels Barely Political, VSauce, and ThreadBanger, and a network of independent creators such as The Gregory Brothers—racking up over 2 billion video views and thirteen Webby Awards, more than any online media company at the time.

Virginia Heffernan of the New York Times was probably the writer that caught onto what we had accomplished better than most.

By March 2007, we were fully funded with our first round, expanded past the Frederator/NY office into a larger space in the same building on Park Avenue South, and started to put together an amazing start up staff that could actually execute. At least, what we’d morphed our vision into.  Super distribution! 

(More to come.)