Why is Meta doing this?

#1 | POSTED BY QCP AT 2024-04-17 01:37 PM | FLAG:

They're an NSA corporate partner.

That's going to be a wrap on the human pilot. No way you'll be able to turn fight with something that doesn't black out.

The SolarCity turned Tesla plant never should have existed in the first place and were placeholder jobs that were heavily subsidized.

I like the separation of work life and home life that working AT WORK gives me. Development of my team members is nearly impossible over the phone or via Teams/Zoom. Ever try to join a Teams call while running Bloomberg in the background and while your spouse is streaming video in the other room? Doesn't work so well, and those to whom I report start wondering about my value to the organization. No thanks to that...

#7 | POSTED BY CATDOG AT 2024-04-18 09:10 AM | FLAG:

That's a you problem. You have to setup a space to work efficiently without distractions. I have a rolling, adjustable for sit or standing desk and a UPS for the PC. I can unplug and roll and setup anywhere in the house or out by the pool.

You're really invested in it. Did you actually watch the WNBA before this? It's been around 25 years. Nothing Tiger Woods about this lol.

and Tiger Woods moment? Really? A white women shooting hoops having the same cultural impact as a black man absolutely dominating a super white sport with a massive racist legacy that was actively hosting tournaments at venues that didn't even allow black members until the 1990 and female members until 2012?

I'd bet no. That's got a real different vibe to it.

and it doesn't compare to Tiger Woods unless he was a she and playing in the WPGA.

I'm not a hype person, and that's what this is so far, hype that 1 player will make this tiny, subsidized by the NBA league, into a media powerhouse.

It's all entertainment, and I like gate math. Attendance is always indicative of popularity, and popularity is going to determine how lucrative a TV deal is. The WNBA doesn't put asses in seats, the highest average being 9k and lowest 3k. Crowd energy matters as part of the media presentation.

Bananas put $3 million in ticket sales in a day, 10x that in merch and food/beverage sales. That's a $33 million dollar night, that they're repeating 4 times in 1 tour, in addition to a couple dozen 20k seat venue sellouts. It's a tremendous amount of gross revenue split between the business and the venues and is worth talking about for relatively small sports businesses like WNBA teams. The entire value of the current WNBA TV deal is $60 million dollars gross revenue, split between all of the teams having to produce the content. That's all of $5 mil average pear team. So no, you can't overlook attendance and assume that the media will get drastically more valuable in an outlier NCAA March Madness year.

Oh jeez. I see, we're having a Great White Hope moment, because a tall girl has some bball skill.

They canned mostly sales staff, for cars you pick off a menu and don't need sales staff except for delivery. Not the first time they've done this, probably third or forth I've heard about.

The NBA record attendance is 100k. They just move them to a stadium.

They record WNBA attendance is less than 3x the record attendance of the Sugarland Space Cowboys minor league baseball team, and those players are making maybe $15k if they're really, really hot prospects.

"The finals averaged 728,000 viewers across ABC and ESPN..."
2.45 million watched the WNBA draft two nights ago where Clark was chosen first. 18.9 million watched Caitlin play with her team in the NCAA Championship game two weeks ago. I think that interest in her has been both confirmed and substantiated and is only growing at the moment.
Hence, this thread.

#37 | POSTED BY TONYROMA AT 2024-04-17 09:07 PM | FLAG:

Context of those viewership numbers:

That's less than half of what's needed to crack the top 100 viewership for tv shows. That's NCIS Hawaii numbers.

2.4 million is lower than Walking Dead Season 11 reruns.

So when I ask "who the hell watches the WNBA?" the answer is: not many people. 90% less than NBA finals.

Lets go further, what's the record attendance numbers for the WNBA? About 20k. That's less than half of the Savannah Banana's draw at Minute Maid Park.

Are you absolutely certain this NCAA viewership will be consistent? Or did it only occur in the vacuum of 99% of March Madness brackets were wiped out in the opening round and nobody cared about the teams that won?

Nah, no way. If you proclaim yourself the expert, and everybody agrees and plays with you, that's not a scapegoat. That's just a bunch of people not checking the receipts.

Who actually watches the WNBA? Only team I can name are the Comets. I think they're the Comets. Not sure.

Kind of hard to do worse than 2023. The inspector general report was pretty harsh.

"As of last summer, 63% of new audits targeted taxpayers with income of less than $200,000," reports the Journal. "Only a small overall share reached the very highest earners, while 80% of audits covered filers earning less than $1 million."

"It's almost like they didn't tell us the truth the first time around. But that's not even the most embarrassing thing in the report: The IRS had set a goal of hiring 3,700 new agents in the first year of boosted funding. Instead, in the first six months, they'd hired 34.

Awkwardly, "revenue agent staffing had actually decreased by 8%, or more than 650 employees, between the end of fiscal 2019 and March 2023," per a previous watchdog report. And it's not just hiring that's in trouble: The agency has completed just 33 percent of its fiscal year 2023 milestones outlined in its strategic operating plan, which is ... tough given that the year is over."

Most likely, Ukraine will become a landlocked basket case and liability for the West.

#11 | POSTED BY EFFETEPOSER AT 2024-04-17 03:30 PM | REPLY

Plenty of rich landlocked country. The EU will pour investment into it and it will prosper and be extremely rich compared to the area that Russia ends up retaining, which will always be extremely poor.

It definitely can't win without China. You can't run an massive infantry swarm without socks.

Woody and Suzanne Johnson

Oh god the picture. That's too funny.

#15 | POSTED BY DANFORTH AT 2024-04-17 11:44 AM | FLAG:

Seriously, who certifies these people? I've asked that numerous times, where's the course you take to become an armorer?

#13 | POSTED BY SITZKRIEG AT 2024-04-17 10:10 AM | FLAG:

Still waiting on that one. Who certifies the armorers? How do you know they're an expert? What's the test?

but if i add up all the shots fired at all of the local ranges.. really safe, definitely toe to toe with movie production on injuries and fatalities, probably much better on the injuries/deaths per shot count, but with a completely different type of protocol that shares the same first rule as the Theater crowd.

Tom Sizemore simply missed the extra. On a movie where they never needed real ammo. Poor extra dodged a .30-06.

Movies have them all the time, just rarely fatal. John Wick burnt so many extras with gunpowder it's kind of hilarious.

Masterful gambit sir

#36 | POSTED BY JOE AT 2024-04-16 08:37 AM | FLAG:

and yesterday he asked shareholders to reinstate his compensation package.

...