Cup of Coffee: February 28, 2024

Good morning!

Shohei Ohtani is back and raking. The Royals obtained a “get out of looking lame free” card. Are the new uniforms bad, or are they SUPER on-trend? A scary moment, a look at the life of minor leaguers, and some super depressing sports gambling news.

In Other Stuff, I spout off about AI. How novel for me! A writer speaks truth about power and people get mad. Can a governor accept a $250K VIP Super Bowl experience as a gift and simple not talk about it? And I have some amazing advertising advice for any fast food chain that wants to beat the shit out of Wendy’s. It’s gold, babies. Don Draper stuff.

[Editor: In tone it actually was more Peggy Olson stuff]

Hey, that’s still pretty good!

 The Daily Briefing

Shohei Ohtani is fine

Shohei Ohtani saw his first action in a Dodgers uniform yesterday. He batted three times. The first time he struck out looking. The second time he grounded into a double play. But just as everyone was beginning to think he’s a big bust and were demanding Mark Walter to sell the team, he did this:

So I suppose he’s still good.

The Royals aren’t wearing the crappy tiny lettering on their jerseys

Over at UniWatch, the soon-to-be-semi-retired Paul Lukas noticed that, unlike everyone else, the Royals are not using those janky-looking tiny letters for the players’ names on the back of their jerseys. They have the full-sized letters we’re used to seeing from seasons past. The jerseys are still the new material, complete with the MLB logo below the back of the neckline for some reason, but they have large, normal-looking letters instead of those small ones that look like they came out of an inkjet printer:

Why? Lukas:

The Royals like the new uniforms but felt strongly about maintaining the full-sized lettering as a way for fans to connect with the team’s players, so they worked with Nike and MLB to make that possible. This was not a case of teams being presented with a choice of lettering sizes. There was no choice at all — everyone was supposed to get the smaller letters. The Royals essentially got a waiver because they lobbied hard for it.

I think it’s absolutely nuts that MLB, Nike, and Fanatics imposed ugly-ass uniforms on everyone this year. Yet it may be even nuttier that they’re willing to let a team go back to a better looking jersey simply because they asked if they could. I mean, good for the Royals. I’m glad they did it. But how on Earth do you roll out, with great fanfare, a uniform redesign and then entertain case-by-case negotiations for exemptions?

Great Moments in Leadership from a league and a couple of apparel companies who seem to have absolutely no goddamn clue what they’re doing with this.

Keeping with fashion news . . .

I apologize to MLB, Nike, and Fanatics. The new uniforms are not stupid ideas poorly executed. They’re on-trend! From a report on Paris Fashion Week in The Guardian forwarded to me by a helpful reader:

If the “Free the nipple” campaign is a relatively recent phenomenon, designed to push back against Instagram’s female nipple ban, Yves Saint Laurent was playing his part long before social media. Back in 1968, he debuted what was quickly referred to by the press as the “see-through blouse”, a chiffon design worn with nothing underneath.

It’s an item that was surely on the mood board for Saint Laurent’s creative director, Anthony Vaccarello, on Tuesday night at Paris fashion week. His autumn/winter 2024 collection was dominated by see-through fabric, with the majority of models bare-breasted under translucent blouses, fitted T-shirts and sleeveless tops. Some also wore transparent pencil skirts, with high-legged knickers visible underneath.

Saint Laurent has been popular on the red carpet with stars including Dominic Sessa, Quinta Brunson and Cillian Murphy wearing the designs during the current awards season.

So work it, fellas. Work it.

Son of Blue Jays pitcher hit by a car

Scary news down in Florida: On Sunday Toby Swanson, the four year-old son of Toronto Blue Jays reliever Erik Swanson, was hit by a car and was airlifted to a hospital. Thankfully, per manager John Schneider, "Toby is on the road to recovery and is surrounded by his family.”

Schneider said Swanson will be away from camp "for a while” which, yeah. Glad to hear that young Toby is gonna be OK.

The Life of an International Minor Leaguer

My kids are 20 and 18. They’re pretty bright and pretty savvy for their age, but since they’ve gone away to college they’ve needed at least some help from their mother and me figuring out some fairly basic life skill-type things. Things such as how to to obtain and refill prescriptions. How to make travel arrangements. How to deal with whatever bureaucracies they need to navigate. It’s just part of life and the adjustment to the adult world everyone has to make.

My kids, quite obviously, have lived in the United States their entire lives and are fluent, native English speakers. And, of course, they have their mother and father a call or a text away to help with anything with which they either have no experience or cannot immediately figure out for themselves. Sometimes I try to imagine them figuring all of that stuff out in some other country where English is not super common and where, even if they called me, I wouldn’t have any better idea than they do how to figure stuff out.

Except I really don’t have to imagine it. I can read Jen Ramos Eisen’s story about the lives of international minor leaguers in the United States that was published over at Defector yesterday:

Defector talked to 23 people, including 16 current minor leaguers, about what life is like for players from outside the U.S. (The current minor leaguers were granted anonymity so they could speak freely.) They shared stories about the kindness of strangers and the supportive strength of their communities. They also provided reminders that however poorly minor league baseball treats its players, international players tend to have it worse. These players said the union and the new collectively bargained agreement did improve their lives; players who have been around since before the realignment in 2020 noted stark differences in how much better things have become, from housing to salaries.

But they also portrayed a system that still largely relies on the benevolence of underpaid minor league staff, underpaid minor league team employees, and other still-underpaid minor league players to help everyone get by, all while the billionaires at the top of MLB benefit. 

One of the more interesting things in the article is how some improvements to minor leaguers’ lives over the past few years have entailed hidden costs.

For example, before team-supplied housing was mandated, a lot of minor leaguers stayed with host families. Which, on some level was suboptimal because there wasn’t enough of it to go around and because it was mostly about billionaire team owners shifting the costs of player development on to others. But when host families were available they could be a great source of support — a surrogate family even — for young minor leaguers, particularly the non-English speakers. Players are paid better now and not having to worry about housing definitely saves them money and hassle, but it does mean they have to fend for themselves a bit more. There’s a lot of those kinds of observations, as well as smaller things about the day-to-day life of foreign-born minor leaguers which most of us don’t think about too often.

There were a lot of “life of minor leaguers” stories written several years ago, when conditions of minor leaguers were substantially worse, but Jen’s is the first I’ve seen which talks about what life is like in the new, unionized minor leagues. It’s a good read and it’s definitely worth your time.

What a waste

Imagine all of the things the people who bet this $100 billion could’ve done with their money that would’ve been more productive than betting it on sports. The broad answer is All of the Things. Every single possible thing, up to and including simply setting it on fire, which would at least provide warmth and/or energy if done in the right way.

Other Stuff

This awesome thing we just did is bad, folks. Don’t do it. But, honestly, we’re STOKED

Sebastian Siemiatkowski, the CEO of the online credit/purchase processing company Klarna touted its new AI customer service assistant chatbot, developed with OpenAI, on Tuesday afternoon. He referred to it as “a breakthrough in practical application of AI!” saying that in its first four weeks on the job the AI assistant handled two-thirds of their customer service enquires. That it was on par with human agents in terms of customer satisfaction. That it was more accurate, and shaved off 90% of the time it takes to make an average inquiry.

Siemiatkowski said that the AI assistant could handle the work of 700 full-time workers. That he announced this not terribly long after Klarna laid off 700 people in rather ham-fisted fashion that gave them bad press, was just a coincidence, I’m sure. The AI deal is all about the whiz-bang vision of the future, it’s not about cutting labor costs, no sir.

But then Siemiatkowski expressed something you don’t hear from tech dudes talking up the coming AI-powered utopia. An acknowledgement that maybe automating everyone out of their jobs is not an awesome thing:

So while we are happy about the results for our customers, our employees who have developed it and our shareholders, it raises the topic of the implications it will have for society. In our case, customer service has been handled by on average 3000 full time agents employed by our customer service / outsourcing partners. Those partners employ 200 000 people, so in the short term this will only mean that those agents will work for other customers of those partners. But in the longer term, as more companies adopt these technologies, we believe society needs to consider the impact. While it may be a positive impact for society as a whole, we need to consider the implications for the individuals affected. We decided to share these statistics to raise the awareness and encourage a proactive approach to the topic of AI. For decision makers worldwide to recognise this is not just "in the future", this is happening right now.

Gotta love “hey, this thing we just did — which is AWESOME! — is gonna make things bad soon, so while we are SO proud of this kickass thing we’re doing, no one should really be doing much more of this.” It’s like the Marlboro Man, looking cooler than anyone who came before him, telling you not to smoke. It’s a celebrity getting on their private jet for a 29-minute flight following their appearance at a Stop Climate Change fundraiser. It’s Tim Meadows giving John C. Reilly the “you don’t want any part of this reefer, Dewy!” speech. I can’t decide if it’s comically unaware or merely the new sort of boilerplate tech CEOs will gravely intone in announcements such as these so they don’t seem callous, but I give it points for style.

On a more serious note, the issue I tend to have with stuff like this is that the celebratory "make things better for society as a whole" sentiment is always cast as something completely independent from "the individuals affected.” Ignoring the fact that as more and more people get laid off it’ll be impossible to consider them to be separate things, ethically speaking. At some point soon the negative impact on society will far outweigh the positives automation will bring. But of course the train can’t just be stopped. Once we realize that’s happened it’ll be far too late to do anything about it. A lot of people will suffer over the course of the generation or three it’ll take society to readjust to it.

Technology companies have worked EXTREMELY hard to keep the gee-whiz of the promise of AI philosophically and structurally separate from its societal impacts because doing so would require them to ask questions that, this weird tweet from Klarna notwithstanding, are very, very rarely asked. For very intentional reasons.

Fearing the truth

There is an organization in Ohio called the Ohioana Library. Its mission, in its own words, is to “elevate Ohio’s written works and the creative minds behind them, celebrating our collective literary history. We also highlight the unique, diverse perspectives that shape the story of Ohio, aiming to inspire the next generation of writers and readers.”

The Ohioana Library gives out annual awards called, appropriately enough, the Ohioana Awards in six literary categories, recognizing “the accomplishments of talented Ohioans who have made significant contributions to the literary and artistic life of Ohio.” It’s an old award, going back over 80 years, whose recipients have included James Thurber, Toni Morrison, Robert McCloskey, Mary Oliver, Celeste Ng, Saeed Jones, John Scalzi and basically every other great writer who is either from Ohio or who has written about Ohio.

Longtime readers of mine are familiar with a two-time winner of the Ohioana Award, Brian R. Alexander. Alexander received his first in 2018 for his book Glass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town, which was about how private equity and the modern global economy has basically destroyed his hometown of Lancaster, Ohio. He won his second award in 2022 for The Hospital: Life, Death, and Dollars in a Small American Town, which explores America’s healthcare crisis via the experiences of a hospital, its staff, and its patients in the town of Bryan, Ohio. I highly recommend both of those books as they are critically important explorations of how the promise of America has been maliciously broken by greed, capitalism, and conservative policy writ-large.

Based on the descriptions of those books Alexander’s politics are no mystery. No one could possibly write such books without a clear-eyed point of view with respect to their subjects and without at least some idea of who the good guys and who the bad guys are in the stories which form their basis. So it will likely come as no surprise that Alexander is no fan of Donald Trump, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, or Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, to whose own book, Hillbilly Elegy, many considered Glass House to be an important rejoinder (short version: it’s large forces and institutions, impossibly out of any individual’s control and v virtually unregulated by government, which has led to the decline of the working class and small town America, not people’s personal moral failures). It will further come as no surprise to you that Alexander, in accepting his 2022 award, was publicly critical of those jackwagons.

Yesterday Alexander, writing in The Columbus Dispatch, revealed that sponsors of his award withdrew their support of the Ohioanas as the result of his comments:

Last October, I received an email from Ohioana’s director.

“We just did the 2023 awards last month at the Ohio Statehouse,” he wrote. “[It] was another great success. Alas, we did not get back the $6,000 we received last year from the sponsors of your award.”

Why did the sponsors pull out? “One of them said your remarks about the Governor and the GOP (at the 2022 ceremony) so incensed them they’d never support us again.”

To be sure, Alexander’s comments, which you can hear starting at the 25:25 mark of this video, were not timid. Alexander:

I pointed out that libraries were being attacked by those who would censor books they don’t like. In some places, librarians were being threatened with jail. Public health officials in Ohio were, quite literally, victimized, including by gunshots.

These affronts were the real-life manifestations of the fevered mind of Donald Trump, a lying sociopath; fostered by a state legislature that, I pointed out, was “rotten with corruption," reenforced by J.D. Vance, who, I said, was a “cheap punk," and enabled by Gov. Mike DeWine, who, I claimed, was a "spineless jellyfish" who didn’t have the backbone to stand up to this.

Every one of these statements was true.

The thing about it? Alexander’s comments were met with approval — in some cases effusive approval — from many if not most of the people in the room. The sponsors, however — the people who actively volunteered to underwrite an award given to a writer who has penned two no-holds-barred broadsides against the modern American dystopia and who assigns responsibility for that dystopia in no uncertain terms — were upset. I’m sure if you asked them they’d say it was because of Alexander’s tone or frankness or lack of diplomacy or something. Which to me just means that either (a) they didn’t read the books the awards for which they sponsored; or (b) they, like so many other people who claim to care about the sorts of issues Alexander writes about, only do so up until the moment they feel the slightest bit of discomfort. And their threshold for discomfort is lower than a gopher hole.

Alexander winds things up with some real wisdom:

The job, and duty, of a writer, especially a journalist, is to tell the truth, not to “present both sides,” but to present the truth as best as we can discover the truth. If the truth offends, so be it.

Sponsors of events are, of course, free to continue to provide the cash or to stop providing it. But it’s probably a bad idea to sponsor any event celebrating the work of writers and expect to avoid some truth telling. And when we’ve arrived at a point at which people are afraid to tell the truth, that’s when it becomes even more imperative to shout it out.

A-fucking-men. Welcome to the world of outlaw journalism, Brian. It’s actually quite nice.

Etticks

In 2005 Bob Taft, the governor of Ohio, was criminally convicted for accepting golf outings with people who had or wanted business with state government. The conviction came pursuant to a law that required all gifts to public officials valued at over $75 to be publicly disclosed. The conviction rendered Taft practically powerless for the remainder of his term and it ultimately ended his political career. It was an example of ethics laws holding public officials accountable. It was the system working the way it is supposed to work.

Per this report at Talking Points Memo we learn that Arkansas governor and former Donald Trump press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders somehow got luxury suite tickets for herself, her husband, and her three kids for the Super Bowl and VIP passes to multiple events connected to it. TPM spoke to ticket brokers and other experts in an effort to estimate the value of those tickets and passes and calculates that, conservatively, the tickets and VIP access badges cost the family at least $200,000 but probably more. And that’s before you get into travel, lodging, meals, and security, if any. Sanders’ salary as governor is $160,000 a year. She was a government employee for the four years before she became governor, making roughly the same. She did well as a political consultant several years ago and her husband appears to make decent money, but not “drop a few hundred thousand dollars on a luxury Super Bowl trip to Vegas” money. Assuming that such tickets and passes were ever freely available to the public as opposed obtained as gifts or via special access of some kind.

Arkansas law prohibits public officials from receiving gifts in excess of $100. Anything above that value must be reimbursed. And whether or not reimbursement is required, disclosure of gifts above a nominal value is required. This includes gifts to spouses and children. Ethics laws like these are important because they serve to prevent or at least discourage attempts to curry favor with — or out-and-out bribe — public officials. Ethics disclosures are important so that people can see who is potentially influencing public officials.

Huckabee Sanders, however, is refusing to answer questions about her Super Bowl trip. About how she got the tickets, where she got them or who she got them from, whether she was conducting state business while on the trip, and whether she used state vehicles or travel funds or state security services for the trip. She is able to hide the travel/security part because she rammed through a law last year that excludes information related to travel and security for the governor from public disclosure. The law there likewise contains an unusual provision which allows only Arkansas residents to file public records requests, making it harder to investigate this kind of business.

Huckabee Sanders’ required annual disclosures for 2024 are not due until next January, so she can theoretically stay silent about this for nearly a year. The problem, though, is that she attended multiple NFL games in Kansas City in 2023, apparently in the owners’ box, and did not disclose them on this year’s forms, so it’s not hard to imagine her stonewalling on this again next year. At least if she can make it that long, as I presume the media pressure on her will only increase now that this report is starting to gain traction.

People talk about corruption in government all the time, but as someone whose legal practice included the representation of public officials and the handling of several public ethics cases I can tell you that, if anything, the amount of public corruption afoot is massively understated. I can also tell you that I am struggling mightily to come up with a way in which Huckabee Sanders’ trip was on the up-and-up, ethically speaking.

Wendy’s plans to gouge you

Wendy’s Old Fashioned Hamburgers — based in the beautiful suburbs of Columbus, Ohio! — is in the process of rolling out digital drive-thru menus at all of its restaurants. Once that’s completed, which the company says will happen by next year, they are planning to enact dynamic pricing:

In early February, Kirk Tanner, the new CEO and president of Wendy’s, shared with analysts his various plans to increase company profits, including investing in digital menu boards that will have the capacity to display dynamic pricing that fluctuates throughout the day by 2025 . . . Tanner stated, “Beginning as early as 2025, we will begin testing more enhanced features like dynamic pricing and daypart offerings along with AI-enabled menu changes and suggestive selling.”

Dynamic pricing, in which prices go up or down at various times based on traffic, demand, and various other factors, is familiar to people who use ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft. It’s barely begun to take hold in fast food yet, however. Partially because you need digital signage to make it work but also because, unlike ride-sharing, there is a hell of a lot of competition in fast food so it’s pretty easy for your competitors to undercut you.

It also just seems phonier and more like price-gouging in a fast food restaurant setting. While there may very well be an actual shortage of Uber or Lyft drivers immediately after the Buckeyes or the Dodgers game lets out, there isn’t an actual shortage of supply of Jr. Bacon Cheeseburgers or Biggie Fries at noon or 6pm compared to 2pm absent some pretty extreme circumstances. The length of the drive-thru line at peak times may turn some people away, and I suppose one could argue that jacking up prices then may ease the lineup and the crush of work on the store’s staff, but it’s not like someone can make a price-based decision before getting in line. By the time you see the prices, you’re at the intercom. You’re committed.

I’m not the greatest business thinker by a long shot, and I presume that the CEO of Wendy’s and other restaurants that plan to do this are pretty confident it will increase revenue for them. But it strikes me that it’d be WAY easier for a competitor to drum up business by attacking the practice in ads while advertising their “always-low prices.”

I can picture the ad now: a frazzled mom in a minivan with three kids in the back gets to the drive-thru menu and, just as she’s about to order, the price on the kids meal shoots up. Cut to exasperated mom. Hell, you can even thrust the dagger in at that point and have her say “sorry kids, we’ll have to just wait until we get home” followed by the sound of disappointed children. Then you cut to a car with a far more happy and serene family pulling up at the competitor’s drive-thru and getting their nice, tasty meal at an always-low price. Close on the cutest and happiest goddamn preschooler you’ve ever seen taking a bite out of her cheeseburger.

It’d be like the Schooner Tuna ad. Which is easily the best spot in the history of advertising.

I’m guessing a lot of y’all don’t know that one. But folks, my brother and I wore this record OUT when we were little kids and I cannot think of cheeseburgers without thinking of a Michigan-born singer affecting the worst southern boogie man accent and saying “get you one of the greasy hamburgers, all peppered up, lay you up in the hospital for ten days.”

Damn. No ketchup.

Have a great day everyone.

Make a Comment