Afternoon Tea 9.29.21 - Psychedelic Grift

Trump tried to sell VA medical records, America’s Frontline Doctors & Simone Gold are ripping off red voters, companies with a board that’s at least 1/5 women do better than Bro Boards, the reason why your kid’s bus driver hasn’t shown up yet, and even the worst financial prophets get it right eventually. It's Wednesday, September 29th 2021, and this is your Tea. Today’s vibe comes from Marlon Craft, one of the most talented hip hop artists you’ll ever encounter. Seriously.

Network of Right-Wing Healthcare Providers Making Millions on Hydroxychloroquine & Ivermectin (The Intercept) Remember Simone Gold & America’s Frontline Doctors, her astroturfed pro-Trump group? Guess who has been charging rubes $90 for a consultation phone call re: Hydroxyfluorescence & the anti-Ketamine? Guess who sometimes doesn’t even make the call after they get paid?

Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Buddies Tried to Get the VA to Sell Access to Veterans’ Medical Records (ProPublica) At this point, you could photoshop the GOP into Mos Eisley Cantina, complete with armless lightsaber harassment duo, space aliens playing jazz, and a No Android policy. And I’d be so sad when those pictures were proven fake.

Trump donor: Corey Lewandowski made unwanted sexual advances (Politico) We really want to see the communication chains that attempted to stop this. Like, Please do not hit on the donors, Corey. Hit on the help, the catering staff, hell, even the junior staffers. But do not, under any circumstances, hit on the people who are signing our checks. Signed, the GOfreakingP

The Diversity Premium: More Women, Higher Returns. (Institutional Investor) Companies at least 20% of management being women returned 9.7%, annualized between 2010 & 2021 year-to-date. Full brodown (Editor’s Note: it’s like a hoedown, but with bros) companies returned an annualized 7.5 percent during the same period. That’s a non-trivial amount of profit for you stock pickers.

Refugees help power machine learning advances at Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon (RestOfWorld) Machine Learning is just 3 mechanical turks in a trench coat. Except for some companies, the mechanical turks are also refugees.

Amazon Astro is ‘terrible’ and will ‘throw itself down’ stairs, developers reportedly claim (The Verge) This product launch looks to be so bad, Amazon engineers leaked videos, documents and made statements about how much of a “privacy nightmare” the bot is, the DAY it was announced. If it’s so bad they can’t even wait 24hrs, we’d recommend against joining that closed beta invite list for the bot.

Why America has a school bus driver shortage (The Hustle) These jobs are as bad as waiting tables or being a day laborer, but you have to cope with angry parents, bully kids, and the same lack of support that every non-Tech & non-unionized job in this country is struggling with.

The Broken Clock (Dollars & Cents) When you do a rain dance, if you do it for long enough, it eventually works. Beware people forecasting collapses, as their revenue is tied to capturing your attention.

Psychedelic Companies Hope At-Home DNA Tests Bring Better Highs (Businessweek) We want to make something perfectly clear to anyone reading this. These tests are not backed by even the vapors of science. There is no evidence DNA tests can point out who would have a bad trip, or that a bad trip could cause long-term psychological damage. An entire sub-sector of the psychedelic research & start-up landscape that is so absolutely full of shit, we can’t even guess which one will be the Theranos of psychedelics.

The Biggest Country Crossover Hit Of 2021 Is A Literal Applebee’s Ad (Stereogum) This is both more impressive and more withering than the time Colonel Sanders played a DJ set at Ultra Music Festival. Our creative depression deepens, it seems.

Poem of the Tea: Going the oldest of schools today with Desiderata from 1927.

Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,it is as perennial as the grass.

Yours,