D&D April Fools’ Edition: Episode 2 — Ladies Night, Line-Cutting, and Las Vegas

Plus, billboards that smell Iike french fries — Yay!

The year is a third over, and there’s no sign we’re getting smarter.

If you missed yesterday’s preamble, you can find it here. Today I release the official Dumb & Dumber list for April, filled with money and marketing moves that deserve a rant. Shields up!

DUMB — Ladies Night Nonsense

The Fresno Grizzlies are a minor league baseball team for the Colorado Rockies, and they’ve been slapped with a lawsuit over last year’s “Ladies Night” promotion.

The man suing the team, Harry Crouch, says he had to pay $18 to get into the game, while his female co-plaintiff got in for free. This could be a violation of California’s Unruh Act, which bans discrimination. Crouch also apparently runs the National Coalition for Men, based in San Diego. I’m gonna go out on a limb and speculate that this was Crouch’s first Grizzlies game, and that he doesn’t really follow the team closely.

The lawsuit reportedly seeks $5 million in damages, even though the Grizzlies only became profitable three years ago, earning less than $700,000.

Crouch’s lawyer told YourCentralValley.com:

The Fresno Grizzlies’ ill-conceived ‘Ladies’ Night’ promotion seemingly sexualized female fans by treating them as little more than sexual bait in order to attract men to buy tickets to the game. In doing so, the Grizzlies’ male-dominated front office managed to pull (off) a rare trifecta of sex discrimination – misogyny, exorsexism, and misandry all at once – by treating female, nonbinary, and male fans unequally based solely on their gender."

Seems to me the Grizzlies wanted to attract more women to the game — where they would buy overpriced hot dogs and beer — rather than use them as “sexual bait.” Also, I had to look up “exorsexism” and “misandry.”

First of all, everyone should’ve just gone to the game and said they were ladies. It’s California. No one will question you. Probably not even in Fresno. I personally get very binary if there’s a freebie involved.

Secondly, enough already.

American women are still earning 84 cents for every dollar a man brings home. College athletes born with uteruses have to compete in swim competitions against people born with penises/male musculature/testosterone, (though, oddly enough, I can’t find anyone born with a uterus fighting to compete in the men’s 400-meter freestyle). Women are losing their reproductive rights, and we can’t even get elected President.

Ladies Night is all we’ve got. Back off, Jack!

DUMBER — Caitlin Clark Outrage from Non-WNBA Fans

Speaking of female college athletes…

I’ll admit that I never watched the women’s NCAA basketball finals until this year. I wanted to see Caitlin Clark, and while viewing her incredible skills on the court, I also discovered the wonders of Hannah Stuelke, Paige Bueckers and Kamilla Cardoso.

Also, I’ve only been to one WNBA game in my life — 20 years ago — and that’s because a friend gave me a free ticket.

So while everyone is expressing outrage that Caitlin will earn less than $77,000 in her rookie year with the Indiana Fever, ask yourself: What are you doing to boost ratings and revenues for the league? The WNBA brings in $200 million a year. The NBA brings in $10 billion.

I googled “Joe Biden attends WNBA game,” and came up empty, though there were lots of headlines about Brittney Griner begging him for help when she was imprisoned in Russia on drug charges.

If people care so much about WNBA salaries, then go to their games, watch them on TV, buy a jersey, create more demand. Higher pay will follow.

Also, don’t worry about Caitlin. Even as the NCAA insulted her by moving one of her March Madness news conferences to a loading dock (is there a more tone deaf organization right now?), she’s doing fine.

From X

She made a lotta money in college from NIL (name-image-likeness), and now she’s signed a groundbreaking deal with Nike reportedly worth $28 million over eight years. Nike ads will lead to more interest in the WNBA which could lead to more ticket/jersey/TV revenues, which should lead to higher salaries for everyone.

DUMBERER — Misleading Earnings Reports

Facebook and Asana co-founder Dustin Moskovitz is calling out Tesla over the way it accounts for revenue. Moskovitz is a billionaire tech entrepreneur who has long criticized the carmaker and CEO Elon Musk, and he says that the way Tesla accounts for deferred revenue is ”consumer fraud on a massive scale.” Deferred revenue is when you claim revenue on the books for products that have yet to be delivered.

Moskovitz declared, “This is Enron now, folks,” comparing Tesla to the disgraced energy company. “People are going to jail at the end.”

From Threads

Whether or not he’s correct, the point he makes is not unique to companies like Tesla. Earnings releases move numbers around all the time to improve a company’s outlook, and it’s the job of investors and business reporters to read these statements carefully.

Here’s an example from steel manufacturer Cleveland-Cliffs. The very first line of its latest earnings report says that revenues for the first quarter of 2024 came in at $5.2 billion, “compared to $5.1 billion in the fourth quarter of 2023.” Yay, sales went up! Except the company is comparing the first quarter’s numbers to the previous quarter, instead of comparing them to the same quarter a year ago. Year-over-year comps are usually considered better measures of performance, because seasonal changes can affect one quarter to the next.

So what happens when you do a year-over-year comparison for Cleveland-Cliffs? Sales didn’t go up. They went down. That’s not good.

Okay, you say. No big deal. Maybe that’s their thing. Maybe they always do quarter-to-quarter comps.

Except they don’t. For the previous quarter, the company chose to highlight year-over-year comparisons, because they showed improvement, while quarter-to-quarter showed a dramatic drop.

You can’t have it both ways, and companies lose credibility when they play these games.

DUMBERERER — Excellent Timing

UnitedHealth has been dealing with a massive ransomware data theft that could “cover a substantial proportion of people in America.” It hasn’t been good for patients, providers, or shareholders.

But Bloomberg reports that even before the cyberattack, the company learned in October that it was being investigated by the Department of Justice for potential antitrust violations. That news didn’t become public until February. And between October and February, UnitedHealth chairman Stephen Hemsley and three other top executives sold shares worth $102 million. Good thing they did, because after the news broke, shares fell! Whew!

UnitedHealth tells Bloomberg that the company approved the stock sale, though “[t]here’s no indication that the trades were executed according to scheduled trading plans in filings related to the transactions.”

They just had a hunch.

DUMBERERERER — Unfair Line-Cutting at the Airport

I write about California a lot, mostly to make residents in other states feel better. Except for maybe South Dakota, a picturesque state where Gov. Kristi Noem — a potential Trump VP — has written a book detailing how she shot her unruly 14-month-old hunting dog dead, and then shot a grumpy goat for good measure.

Sure, California quit trying to account for $24 billion in homeless aid that didn’t reduce homelessness. (By the way, that’s $130,000 for each of the estimated 181,000 people without housing here.) And yes, California is also having a hard time repaying $21 billion it borrowed from the federal government to pay unemployment benefits during Covid, an amount far more than any other state borrowed, partly because of massive fraud.

But rather than focus on these issues, or closing a growing budget deficit estimated at $58 billion, it’s easier to just come up with more ways to punish people and companies.

There’s a bill in the state legislature with bipartisan support to ban passengers from using CLEAR at the airport so they won’t be able to cut in line at TSA security. Why? Because it hurts the feelings of those who didn’t pay the $189 annual fee to join CLEAR.

The Democratic state senator who authored the bill, Josh Newman, told Politico, “The least you can expect when you have to go through the security line at the airport is that you don’t suffer the indignity of somebody pushing you out of the way to let the rich person pass you.” Spending $189 a year to reduce your wait time at the airport now qualifies as “rich.” That’s basically one latte a week.

Newman’s legislation would force CLEAR to finance the creation of its own lane through TSA if it wants to stay in business here. (An amended version allows CLEAR to keep operating where it’s currently set up, but it can’t expand to other California airports until the special lanes are created.)

Look, I get it. I hate it when people preorder at Starbucks and walk right in to pick up their orders. They’re so privileged. But what’s next? No more valet parking? Upgraded meals? First class? FasTrak lanes? Netflix ad-free subscriptions? Costco memberships?

All this to spare our feelings, as if going to the airport isn’t dehumanizing enough. If only California legislators did something to spare our feelings over something important, like shoplifters running amok, or the humanitarian crisis at our border, or the inability of many residents to afford a home, or blowing $24 billion on homeless initiatives that didn’t work and can’t be accounted for.

DUMBEST — Bailing out a Baseball Billionaire

We end where we started, with baseball.

The Oakland Athletics will play in Sacramento for at least three years while the team awaits a new home in Las Vegas. That’s assuming the plan to use $380 million of taxpayer money to help finance the stadium isn’t overturned by voters. An Emerson College poll found that most residents of Las Vegas don’t want to pay for a new stadium, and the Nevada State Supreme Court is considering whether to allow a ballot measure to overturn the deal.

The A’s are owned by John Fisher, who inherited the Gap fortune from his parents and is reportedly worth $3 billion. Yet the team he owns has the lowest payroll in baseball and is averaging fewer than 7,000 fans a game.

I hope Nevadans get to vote on this, and that they vote it down. Las Vegas already has Oakland’s former football team, the Raiders, plus Stanley Cup champions Vegas Golden Knights and WNBA champions Vegas Aces. It also has LAS VEGAS. Sin City doesn’t need a baseball franchise. Who wants to see the A’s play anywhere right now? And taxpayers certainly don’t need to help finance a stadium for a billionaire who’s refused to invest in his team.

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DUMB… But Hilarious

More baseball!

While the Fresno Grizzlies are facing a lawsuit over Ladies Night, the St. Paul Saints are sticking with the decision to name their pig mascot OzemPig.

The club holds a contest every year to name the mascot who runs onto the field to fetch balls for the umpire (awesome). Some people accuse the club of striking out with this year’s name, calling it fat-shaming. The negative backlash caught management off guard. “We didn't anticipate the discussion occurring, but now that it has, we feel like there's an opportunity to do something good with it,” general manager Derek Sharrer tells USA Today. “Our hope is that we can find organizations in our community to partner with to help spread awareness about these issues.”

Most fans have a sense of humor. “As a former super fat guy, I approve wholeheartedly,” wrote Gavin Wigg on social media. “Pigs are cool.”

From the St. Paul Saints press release

On another note…

A male hippo brought to a Japanese zoo from Mexico seven years ago has turned out to be female. But she (they?) will keep the male name, Gen-chan. A gender-fluid hippo is peak 2024.

From the Tennoji Zoo

SMART & SMARTER

Because intelligent and clever ideas deserve recognition.

— Taiwan’s tallest skyscraper survived a 7.4 earthquake in April because designers had previously installed a 730-ton steel sphere pendulum. The ball is suspended through several floors in the middle of the building and swings back and forth during shakers to absorb the energy.

— I covered the arrival of “murder hornets” in Washington state three years ago. The giant hornets were destroying bees needed for pollination, literally ripping off their heads. Plus, the hornets were huge. So gross.

That’s me on the left. Nice.

But scientists in the state’s agriculture department learned of tiny radio frequency trackers that could be attached to a hornet’s legs (!!), allowing them to follow it home. Five nests were destroyed, and there have been no sightings of the hornets since.

— McDonald’s is experimenting with billboards that smell like french fries near some of its restaurants in The Netherlands. I’m lovin’ it. Come on, you gotta admit that’s pretty genius.

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