Dumb & Dumber — From Jimmy Kimmel to Bad Basketball Behavior
Plus Crypto Calamities, Electric Truck Travails, and Nirvana Neurosis
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About this recurring column: Once or twice a month, Dumb & Dumber highlights behavior that consistently leads to bad outcomes. Like the dockworkers charged with billing their health insurance for sexual services provided by a local “wellness center.” Hey, they felt better!
D&D serves as a reminder that this sort of thing could happen to any of us, because it *has* happened to some of us — e.g., Andrew Cuomo refuses to go away, despite new lawsuits against him.
No need to read every artfully crafted word here. There will be no pop quiz. Instead, think of D&D as a financial tapas menu. Taste what you like (though I hope you’ll like it all).
Dumb — Fat-Fingered Crypto Crisis
You know what’s dumber than paying Matt Damon to promote your crypto exchange with a Super Bowl commercial comparing Bitcoin investing to being an astronaut? Wiring a customer $7.2 million when all she wanted was a $68 refund.
Somebody with fat fingers at Crypto.com did just that, and no one noticed the mistake for over six months!
Now the company is suing its own customer in an attempt to claw back the epic overpayment. Crypto.com, by the way, is the same company that paid $700 million to slap its name on the arena where the Lakers and Clippers play, just as Bitcoin was about to crash. OY.
The customer who accidentally received all that money is Thevamanogari Manivel, an Australian woman who chose to keep it rather than report the error. She then spent over $1 million to buy her sister, Thilagavathy Gangadory, a nice house. Not what I would’ve done, but it makes me laugh.
Manivel’s Bitcoin bonanza, however, is probably over. Her accounts are frozen and the court has ordered her sister to sell the house and return the money (plus interest). So far it appears the sisters have ignored the court. Again, not what I would do, but I’m still laughing. No word on what happened to the employee who made the error. He/she/they probably aren’t laughing.
Dumber — I’m Dying Up Here!
It’s hard to be a successful comedian, and it’s even harder when your jokes aren’t funny (rim shot).
Jimmy Kimmel is catching flack because Quinta Brunson was forced to accept her Emmy over his dead body. Brunson won Best Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series for the hit show “Abbott Elementary,” but she was forced to approach the stage in the dregs of a comedy bit where Jimmy is supposed to be too drunk to stand up after losing out to John Oliver (again) for Best Variety/Talk Show. See it here:
#Crrrrinnnnnnge.
It wasn’t a funny bit in the first place, but Kimmel made it worse by refusing to budge, even as Brunson encouraged him to get up, pleading, “Jimmy, wake up, I won!”
The internet went wild — because that’s what the internet does — with accusations of white privilege, disrespect, and spotlight hogging. Personally, I think Kimmel would’ve done the same thing no matter who won. It still wouldn’t have been funny. It still would’ve put a damper on the winner’s big moment. But the optics in this case were just awful.
Brunson was a class act throughout. “I kind of consider him one of the comedy godfathers,” she said of Kimmel backstage, adding that he was an early supporter of her show. “Abbott Elementary” co-star and fellow Emmy winner Sheryl Lee Ralph was not so kind, saying she told Kimmel that he was disrespectful.
Kimmel apologized to Brunson on this show Wednesday night, admitting it was a “dumb comedy bit.” She thanked him for that, but said she really hadn’t been bothered by his behavior, because she was caught up in the moment. “I won my first Emmy!”
Dumberer — Milk Madness in Montana
In an era of record inflation, Montana is dumping cow’s milk only 12 days after it’s been pasteurized. That’s less than half the time milk is considered safe for humans to consume.
The spilt milk is mandated under a 1980 law that protects local dairies, according to the Wall Street Journal, which reported that “Until recently, grocers couldn’t even give their excess inventory to charity.” Got extra milk? Nope!
With such a short shelf-life, the law discourages out-of-state dairies from trucking product into Montana, giving local dairies even more of an edge. This drives down competition and drives up prices.
Dumbererer — Nikola is No Tesla
Nikola Tesla was a great electrical engineer who pioneered the possibility of wireless technologies. He was such a visionary that two companies have used his name to launch their startups.
Tesla, Inc., has done well. Nikola Motor Company... not so much.
The smartest guy in the room/Donaldson Collection/Getty Images
Nikola Motor was a Wall Street darling a few years back with a stock market value that momentarily topped Ford’s. It was going to be the Tesla of trucking. But then the wheels started to come off.
Company founder Trevor Milton was accused of lying about the company’s progress and technology, most notably with a video showing a large Nikola semi moving along nicely, when it was actually just rolling down a hill without a motor.
The feds eventually charged Milton with fraud, accusing him of hyping the stock on social media to attract less sophisticated investors.
I mean, there’s hype, and then there’s Milton-level hype. He not only claimed to (allegedly) have a functioning electric truck when he didn’t, and stated that he was (allegedly) building hydrogen fueling stations when he wasn’t, but Milton also said he was (allegedly) planning a pickup that would have “a drinking fountain fed by wastewater from its hydrogen fuel cell” when he hadn’t even discussed the idea with his engineers.
Investors who believed him lost a lot of money. Shares that were trading above $70 are now around $5. The company is still in business and has started producing a real, live electric truck. Nikola Motor is not part of the criminal suit, and it settled civil charges brought by the SEC for $125 million without admitting or denying culpability.
FYI, Nikola Tesla, the man, was very successful during the early part of his career, making a lot of money off his inventions. But he was a troubled genius whose ego matched his mathematical abilities, and not everything panned out. He died penniless.
Dumberererer — Smells Like a Bad Lawsuit
A man depicted naked on an album cover with his genitals exposed sued over the image, but a federal judge threw out the case.
Because the man was four months old at the time.
Spencer Elden sued members — both living and dead — of the legendary grunge band Nirvana for using his image on the cover of their 1991 hit album “Nevermind.” Elden’s parents were reportedly paid $200 for the use of the photo 30 years ago, and the album went on to sell 30 million copies.
I’ve edited the photo to avoid being sued./Amazon.com
Elden claims the image constitutes child pornography and that he suffers harm to this day. “He hasn’t met anyone who hasn’t seen his genitalia,” his lawyer told the New York Times last year. “It's a constant reminder that he has no privacy.”
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and assume his genitalia has changed over the years.
Elden says he’s also suffered financial harm, but it isn’t clear how. The band’s attorneys argued that Elden has profited from his notoriety by reenacting the photo in exchange for a fee — $200, the same amount his parents were paid — and by autographing copies of the album later sold on eBay. They claim he also tattooed “Nevermind” on his chest and used the connection “to try to pick up women.”
After weighing the arguments, the judge said “Nevermind,” dismissing the case with prejudice. Elden waited too long to file the suit, the judge ruled, explaining that any claims of harm must have occurred when Elden was a minor, and the statute of limitations ran out when he turned 28. He’s now 31.
Elden is appealing the decision.
Dumbererererer —3M versus Disabled Veterans
If one of the largest companies in America successfully protects itself from one of the nation’s largest lawsuits through a new twist in the bankruptcy system, that noise you hear will be me banging my head against a wall.
Nearly a quarter million military members claim that earplugs made by 3M were faulty and caused hearing loss in combat or during training, and so they’re suing. 3M says the earplugs worked fine when used correctly — though the company settled charges by the Department of Justice for $9.1 million (and nearly $2 million of that went to a whistleblower). They also stopped selling the earplugs, so...
Meantime, 3M may now be trying to use the bankruptcy system in a unique way to protect its interests.
3M itself isn’t filing for protection. Instead, the company is putting the subsidiary that made the earplugs — Aearo Technologies — into bankruptcy. This may be an effort to shove the lawsuit into a dark corporate corner and protect the rest of the conglomerate.
Axios reports that this is a relatively new tactic providing all the benefits of bankruptcy “without the drawbacks.” If 3M succeeds, big companies with deep pockets may be able to keep their deep pockets!
Dumbest — Bad Basketball Behavior
A lot of terrible behavior gets excused in professional sports, so it must be pretty bad when the NBA suspends Robert Sarver from the teams he owns for a year and fines him $10 million.
Sarver owns both the Phoenix Suns and the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury, but an investigation by the league determined that Sarver, among other things, used the N-word “at least five times” over the course of his ownership going back to 2004. He apparently said the word while quoting others who’d used it, but he continued saying it even after employees — including at least one head coach — told him to stop it.
Phoenix Suns and Phoenix Mercury owner Robert Sarver/Christian Petersen/Getty Images
Investigators also believe Sarver made “sex-related comments.” Multiple witnesses told the league that Sarver brought up condom sizes during an employee meeting, and in another gathering he discussed “how he learned what a ‘blow job’ was when he was a child.”
There were several other incidences of boorish behavior: claims that Sarver treated women differently, that he made comments about their bodies, and that he told a pregnant employee she “would be unable to do her job upon becoming a mother.” He also sometimes acted inappropriately around male employees — pantsing one guy, standing naked in front of another after he came out of a shower meant for coaches, and grabbing a male employee at a holiday party to dance “pelvis to pelvis” with him.
You get the picture.
The investigation is the result of an ESPN report last year alleging racist, sexist, and bullying behavior going back years. Sarver denied the accusations at the time, but today he issued an apology.
“While I disagree with some of the particulars of the NBA’s report, I would like to apologize for my words and actions that offended our employees,” he said. Sarver takes full responsibility, accepts the consequences, and hopes to “learn and grow as we continue to build a working culture where every employee feels comfortable and valued.”
Notably, the league doesn’t think Sarver is a racist or a sexist. The problem is his management style. Investigators say the owner liked to provoke people, that he “lacked a filter,” and that his sense of humor was “sophomoric and inappropriate for the workplace.”
Okayyyyy, so he’s not a racist. He’s merely a jerk. A jerk who quoted other people using the N-word after being told to stop doing that.
Some in the league — including Lebron James — believe the punishment should be stiffer, pointing out that if anyone other than an owner behaved this way, they’d be out of a job permanently.
Oh, yeah. What happens to the $10 million fine? It will be donated to “organizations addressing race and gender-based issues in and outside the workplace.” Uh-huh. The Athletic did an excellent story last year trying to track down the money from NBA fines. It goes to NBA Cares, “a private wing inside the league office that is not required to disclose almost anything about its spending.”
Something Wonderful — Please Send Liz Truss Some Swedish Meatballs
This is both dumb and wonderful, my favorite combo. A few days before Queen Elizabeth II died, Liz Truss became Britain’s third female prime minister. Notes of congratulation poured in on Twitter from notable people and heads of state.
Many went to the wrong Liz Truss.
The handle @Liztruss belongs to a woman named Liz Trussell, who, happily for us, has a wicked sense of humor. She responded to the good wishes with grace and snark. When the Swedish prime minister sent out congratulations to the wrong Liz in a now-deleted tweet, @Liztruss replied, “Looking forward to a visit soon! Get the meatballs ready.”
More of this, please.
One other note of wonder: A billionaire has put all of his money where his mouth is.
Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard is giving away his entire ownership in the company, worth an estimated $3 billion, to a trust/nonprofit that will spend all profits on causes protecting the environment and fighting climate change. The way the transfer is structured also helps him avoid hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes — so his money can go towards programs he supports, instead of to the federal government, where it would be wasted on hiring new IRS agents.
Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard/Al Seib/Getty Images
“Billionaire No More” is how the New York Times described Chouinard’s decision to relinquish his ownership. “I didn’t want to be a businessman,” he told the newspaper. “Now I could die tomorrow and the company is going to continue doing the right thing for the next 50 years, and I don’t have to be around.”
💰💰💰💰💰
Let me know if I missed anything by commenting or emailing jane@janewells.com.
I love your emails. Example: One reader wrote me she learned the hard way that “duty free” means nothing to the TSA. She had olive oil in her carry-on bag, sealed with a “Duty Free” label. No go, said the TSA agent. It was too late to go back and put the oil in checked luggage, so she handed it over with a, “Have a nice meal.” The agent informed her that the expensive olive oil would just be thrown away. No food pantry donation, nothing.
That’s not only dumb, that’s a crying shame.
Cover image of Quinta Brunson winning an Emmy while Jimmy Kimmel plays dead/Kevin Mazur/Getty Images