Elon Musk: “I have 44 billion reasons to NOT testify under oath.”
So, the Elon Musk/Twitter dance took an unexpected twist yesterday when Musk said that he was going ahead and buying Twitter after all. Just a reminder of...
Paging Mr. Kozak Redux: Never Mind
Remember when I was crowing about how tech savvy I was by repairing my own laptop and making my seventh-grade shop teacher proud? Yeah, well, never mind. For...
Healthcare: The Price is Definitely NOT Right
…“Ventricular tachycardia and a potentially ruinous amount of medical debt, Bob!” “Contestant #3: Is the price for a cardiac catheterization HIGHER or...
The Idiot Algorithms
The author tries to unsubscribe from marketing emails (Image: Warner Bros.) I have posted in the past about how, for the time being, I am not at all worried...
Paging Andy Rooney
NPR introduces new co-anchors For those of you who are too young to remember, Andy Rooney was an old (I think he was born old) curmudgeon who had a weekly...
Summer Update
Any minute now… I started this newsletter in January, so I decided to go back and review some of what I wrote to see if it held up. I say “some” because I...
The Decline and Fall of a Breakfast Icon
Last week, Kellogg’s, the iconic cereal manufacturer, announced that it was breaking itself up into three separate companies: Cereal, snacks and plant-based...
Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day…
Why does everything take so long these days? We used to get shit done in this country. Now, everything takes FOR-EVER. First, some historical facts for...
The Language of Viruses
A flu virus that gives you the flu (Image: CDC) “Language is a virus.”- Laurie Anderson The other day in the shower, I had a thought. (I do some of my best...
5 Reasons My Dog is Kind of a Dick
If you are a friend and/or a regular reader of this newsletter, you know that we are sort of dog people. Well, maybe a bit more than “sort of…” We (my wife...
Econ 101
There’s an old joke about economists (or lawyers. I can’t remember, but for the purpose of this post, it’s about economists): A physicist, an engineer and an...
Vangelis: Synthesizer Genius
Vangelis, London, 1982 (Alamy) Vangelis died last week. He was 79. Vangelis (real name Evángelos Papathanassíou) was one of my musical heroes. You know his...
Paging Mr. Kozak!
When I was a wee lad of 12, we graduated directly from the sixth grade straight into the high school. They called 7th and 8th grade “junior high school”, but...
Amazon’s Last-Mile Conundrum...
The trajectory of Amazon’s core retail business is nothing short of astonishing. Originally a bookseller, Amazon is now “the everything store.” During its...
On Monday Morning Quarterbacking…
As a former radio guy, I never really understood sports talk radio. Granted, I never really cared about sports that much either, so maybe I am not an...
Musk Makes Market Manic!
So, Elon Musk is buying Twitter. Probably.I barely use it, so I am coming at this not as a lover/user of the product, but as an observer of the news and...
CNN+: How, Actually, Does this Happen?
<Cue James Earl Jones> “THIS is CNN+!” CNN is killing its brand spanking new streaming service, CNN+, after a month. As a bit of a news junkie, I was...
A Few (More) of My Favorite Things
Bill goes for a hike Wow! I’ve actually come up with two posts about things I like. Shocker. I mean, I like things like… Ferraris and private jet travel and...
Let’s Talk About the Worst Business in The History of Capitalism
A recent conversation with a friend and the news this week that JetBlue wants to acquire Spirit Airlines got me thinking about the worst business in the...
Modern Medicine Giveth and Taketh Away
Many aspects of modern medicine are nothing short of astonishing. If you need proof of how spectacular medical science is, look no further than the Covid...