Tag: greed

Revisionist history is fun not

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know why I get set off so easily by news from the airline industry.  Maybe it’s because I’m constantly frustrated by the endlessly elevating cost of travel, compounded by all of the traveling I wish I’ve done that I struggle to try and make reality.  Maybe it’s because the industry is so full of bullshit that’s so easy to sniff out, where companies are getting richer by the second while consumers have long been left in the dust at being able to keep up with rising costs.  Maybe it’s because of years of having flight privileges and then not has me with some resentful shell shock at what it costs for the rest of the world to travel and it manifests as vitriol toward in the industry.

Maybe it’s just all of the above to varying degrees.

Anyway, I read this article about how airline travel costs aren’t coming down in spite of the plunging costs of jet fuel, and this is one of those situations where an explanation isn’t needed at all; most of us in the world know and accept that the airline industry is just a bunch of greedy fucks who will continue to increase and increase costs and that going backward is absolutely not an option.  But an explanation is given, courtesy of Delta’s CEO Ed Bastian, and naturally all it does is incite anger and frustration to anyone like me, stupid enough to read it.

However, the worst part is that from the time I originally read it, to the time I’m taking the time to write about it, the original post as well as all links, feeds and summaries about the original post have all been since edited, to make Bastian look like not quite the disgusting money-grubbing corporate asshole, because there was a quote originally that basically blamed the rich for why fares will indefinitely remain high, because the affluent don’t want to run the risk of the poors getting on their hallowed Delta jets.

It really was a sight to behold, a masterclass of white man CEO-ing, where Bastian completely dodged accountability, threw his richest customers under a speeding bus, acknowledged the class disparity in the world by also blaming the poors for existing, all while not even trying to stop spinning bullshit about the dollars and cents that make Delta and all the other airlines are grubbing for with every ounce of energy they have.

Revisionist history truly is an incredible thing.  Clearly, smarter people than Bastian quickly realized the disgusting horror of his original words and cashed in a whole lot of favors for them to be able to scrub the entire fucking internet so quickly to revise his words to not necessarily stop blaming the rich, but to soften the accusations that the poors are why the rich are the reason why fares remain high.

The funniest (ironically) thing about this whole thing is that it was wholly unnecessary for Bastian or any CEO to even pipe up about this whole thing.  It’s one of those things most people already know and have begrudgingly accepted the fact that airline costs will never, ever, ever come down because the industry, much like all other corporations, really like money, and when they get used to seeing how much of it comes in on account of a hike, they would rather eat their young before bringing it back down, regardless of if the reason for the increase swings back downward or goes away outright.

Not only did anyone not have to say anything about this, no airline really even has to do anything in order to try and placate airline travelers.  Like, Delta tries to justify keeping their airfare costs astronomical by introducing the most minimal of perks, like a discount or reduction of bag fees, or a tweak to boarding process – but only for those in first or business class, and possibly the less pleeb-ey pleebs in economy plus.  With absolutely zero consideration for the economy and Spirit basic class, whose nickels and dimes are the real reason why the company makes a gozillion dollars a year.

Yeah, Delta doesn’t even have to do that, because the whole airline industry is full of collusion, and if all carriers agree to the same uniform set of draconian in-flight privileges, then nobody is required to deviate from the status quo.  In fact, the fact that Delta is doing such is only going to piss off the people operating United, American and any of the other carriers that will most likely have to tweak their operations in order to fight for the five passengers per flight who are fickle enough to pick one over the other on account of such trite perks.

And then of course, these too will disappear in the future, regurgitating and recycling the droll state of airline traveling for consumers, and then the whole thing will restart itself in 12-18 months, but with fares another $40 higher across the board.  Because of inflation, fuel costs, too many poors getting on, etc.

God bless ‘Murica

Wonder what the Mormon faith feels about enabling, Bryce?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Philadelphia Inquirer: video emerges of MLB star Bryce Harper giving personalized message to FanDuel gambling addict, with implications that it was done so to continue to encourage gambler to keep pissing away money

Personally, I enjoy gambling despite the fact that I don’t do it nearly as much as I did when I was in my twenties.  Obviously, I am an enthusiast of sports as well, seeing as how a good 40-50% of my brog’s content is usually related to sports, or at least is full of sports analogies, flexing the encyclopedic wealth of sports knowledge I like to believe I have.

However, gambling on sports, is something that I don’t do.

Because I have never won a sports bet in my entire life.

Like really, I can trace it all back to the three times in which I’ve bet actual money on sports, with all three ending up with L’s:

  • In 1996, I bet a classmate, ice cream (35¢), that the Pittsburgh Steelers would defeat the Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl XXX. Honestly, this was a reckless bet that only a 5th grader would be capable of making, seeing as how my NFL knowledge was nowhere as comprehensive as my NBA knowledge, and I was just mostly just being a contrarian and banking on the fact that there was no way the Cowboys would win a third Super Bowl in four years.  I was wrong
  • In 2006, I bet ($50) on I think, BoDog, that the Washington Redskins would defeat the Seattle Seahawks in the divisional round of the playoffs. The Redskins were surging, powered by their white-on-white jersey combo, coming off of a big wild-card weekend win against the Buccaneers.  Furthermore, Seattle RB Shaun Alexander was out with a concussion, and I thought the Seachickens were ripe to be upset by a Redskins team with momentum.  I was wrong
  • In 2008, I bet ($20) in Las Vegas, that the Tampa Bay Rays would beat the Boston Red Sox in game 5 of the ALCS. Scott Kazmir was starting and he was an absolute Red Sox killer, and to his credit, he did hold Boston to 2 hits, 0 runs in six innings, but between the 7th, 8th and 9th innings, the Tampa Bay bullpen imploded, allowing 8 runs, including a walk-off hit in the 9th that proved me wrong and made me vow to not bet on sports anymore because what could be more emblematic of such a message than a playoff team blowing a 7-0 lead in three innings.  Humorously, I had seen that there was a bet for a five-inning official game wager, and had I done that one, I would’ve won, but the potential to win a whole $5 moar dollars led me to the full nine-inning bet instead, and look where that got me.

The point is, I’m no stranger to gambling, but gambling on sports is just something I don’t do.  I’m fortunate that in spite of the competitive nature I can sometimes exhibit, I (hopefully) don’t have that facet of my brain that snaps and goes off the deep end when it comes to gambling and I’ve always been able to restrain myself from making any dives into oblivion when it comes to the pitfall of one more time that unfortunately befalls many others.

Like this poor dude in the article who has wagered over $18M* through FanDuel betting, and has lost $2M over the last 5-6 years, which doesn’t sound that bad as far as the ratio of what he’s bet versus what he’s lost, but considering he’s lost his house and contemplated suicide, there’s a lot of murky details in the dark water that would really help if were made clearer.

*unclear in the scope of the story of how much of this $18M is actual money and not promotional or bonus funds because it does matter in the grand spectrum and could be misleading if left unclear

The last thing I’d want is to miss paying any sort of bill because of gambling, much less my mortgage, to the frequency in which I fall into foreclosure and ultimately lose my family’s home.  This is a stark reminder of the potentially fatal consequences of gambling addiction, and I’m always astonished at how most everyone knows this, but we’re still in the present reality where it’s very much not just a meme:

Welcome back to SportsCenter presented by ESPN Bet, for more on the Ohtani situation we go to our FanDuel MLB Insider Jeff Passan at our DraftKings Studio in Los Angeles brought to you by Caesar’s Sportsbook

The crazy horrific variable about this whole story is the involvement of an actual, high-profile, top-tier professional athlete in Bryce Harper, where the high-level narrative that is perceived is that he made a personalized video at the encouragement of FanDuel, to passively encourage this addict to continue gambling, because he’s getting a very special incentive because of his spend history.

There is absolutely zero manner in which this is not a horrible look for FanDuel, for MLB, for the Philadelphia Phillies, and especially for Bryce Harper, on several levels, including one that I’d like to isolate being, his supposedly devout Mormon faith.

Yes, I think all religions are full of shit, and Mormonism is probably no exception when it comes to gray areas and loose interpretations, but the Church of LDS supposedly is opposed to all forms of gambling, so it’s really weird and unnerving that a Mormon like Bryce Harper that has the influence (money, status) to get married at one of their sacred castles, is basically an accomplice to enabling a gambler to continue to ruin the lives of himself and his family, and there’s nothing that can be done or said at this amount of evidence where anyone comes out looking good from it.

It’s like, because Harper himself is not doing the actual gambling, it’ll be swept under the rug as something harmless, and that he and his faith are not responsible for those who do, and that there’s no explicit rule against enabling, which is precisely what he is doing and what the intention of the video was meant to do.

Also, want to iso this, because wtf:

your host Bryttanni at FanDuel

I mean we’ve all seen some truly Mr. Garvey names in our lives these days, but this one actually manages to stand out.

I’m really curious to see how this pans out, or if Harper, the Phillies and MLB are just going to keep their lips zipped, and hope for it to go away, especially when the inevitable strike and lockout is going to take place in the winter because all the owners and all the players are a bunch of greedy fucks and I’m inclined to blow the whole sport out of existence in spite of how much I love the game, just because it doesn’t seem like there’s going to be any other way to eradicate the greed and corruption otherwise.

But at least Harper, and anyone else entwined with FanDuel or any other gambling racket will have a way to make some coin on the side when next season is cancelled due to work stoppage, and I’m sure no more degenerate gamblers are going to suffer and possibly die in the process.

ABS is the gift that keeps on giving MLB

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Larry Brown Sports: seven ancient-tenured MLB umpires accept buyouts from the league to retire early, including notoriously oft-questioned umpire, CB Bucknor

Make absolutely no mistake, this story is probably 95% on account of the fact that the automated ball and strike system has nuclear-power kicked open the door of exposing umpire ineptitude, with the other 5% being that there’s an extremely high chance that the entire league is going on strike after the 2026 season and that there will be no or a shortened 2027 season on the near horizon, and Beaner wanted to give their old boys club a chance to get out ahead of time.

But really, this has almost entirely to do with the fact that the ABS system has wreaked havoc on the umpire fraternity, and this seems like the safest way to get many of the most exposed umpires out the door with the most minimal amount of further humiliation at how bad they are at their jobs.

I know it’s been a divisive topic among baseball fans, with lots of old school old heads not liking the advancement of change, and that old school part of me can understand it, but I’ve been a sports fan long enough to know the frustration and aggravation of missed officiating ruining and tarnishing games, so even if it means that there’s a chance that it goes against the outcoming I’m hoping for, I’m generally accepting of the fact that this newer system of accountability is in place, in the event it helps the probabilities that I’m hoping for.

Let’s not sugar coat it, baseball umpiring has been among the worst when it comes to league oversight.  No other major American sport, do fans know the names and faces of officiating crews more than they do in baseball, primarily for reasons of disdain, dislike and hatred.  It didn’t take me long at all to learn who Tim McClelland, Joe West and Angel Hernandez were in the past of notorious umpires, and it took me no time at all to understand the significance of CB Bucknor headlining the latest list of umpires getting pushed out the door.

And not to go unnoticed is Laz Diaz, whom despite not being the headlining name, was very clearly listed second in the list of umpires sent packing.  Whether it was intentional or not, smart of him to sneak in underneath CB, so that some of his heat is mitigated by a worse umpire.  But make no mistake, I’m about as pleased to see Laz getting the boot as much as Bucknor is, because he too, fucking blows.

I digress though, when change this large crashes over, it sometimes turns into those scenarios where we might not like the devil we don’t know that’s looming ahead of us, versus the devils we just sent out to pasture.  I still believe that there’s an extremely low chance that there’s even a baseball season in 2027, given the MLB Owners basically speed-running the inevitability of a work stoppage, with their list of demands that the players will more than likely absolutely not agree to, but regardless of what happens when baseball is back on the field after the 2026 season, as far as the umpiring goes, it’s probably going to be, one of baseball’s favorite cliches, a brave new world.

But at least it will be one where umpire culture is getting something of a hard-reset and hoping that we the fans (and those like me who pretend to be them) won’t ironically know and react to the names of every umpire that is slated for the games we want to watch.

Bobby Bonilla Day presents the 2026 MLB All-Deferred Money Team

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This year, I actually learned that there was a Bobby Bonilla in history before Bobby Bonilla took the Bobby Bonilla deal that turned every July 1st into Bobby Bonilla Day.

And it was actually a player for the Atlanta Braves, which is astounding seeing as how as a, for lack of a better term, Braves fan, I did not know about this, as well as the fact that the Braves are among the cheapest teams in the galaxy these days, so it’s doubly amazing to see how they were once wrapped up in a Bobby Bonilla-like arrangement, ever.

But in 1984, the Braves signed reliever Bruce Sutter to a six-year, $9.6M contract, with $4.8M of that deferred, at an interest rate of 13%.  And between the years of 1992 and 2022, the Braves paid him $1.12M a year, and I don’t know how and when the interest compounded through the life of repayment, but he was paid $9.1M in 2022, the final installment of the pact; and I don’t know the specific date of the payment, but it should be noted that he also died that same year, and I think it would be ironically funny if the narrative were that he stayed alive long enough to ensure that the cheap-ass Braves paid him his money before he could rest.

Also impressive to me is that within the duration of the repayment plan, the Braves’ ownership had transferred from the free-spending Ted Turner regime, into the stuffy corporate penny-pinching Liberty Media ownership company that as choked the team into this mid-market team, crying poor all the time, caring more about fiscal responsibility to shareholders versus trying to remotely operating a baseball club to victory.

I’m sure Sutter’s contract was an excruciating blight for the Liberty Media bean counters to inherit, and they probably were counting the days of the last 12-13 years of the deal, and probably remains a large part of why the Braves will never play in such deferral tactics, regardless of how effective it is proving to be capable of.

Needless to say, I’m not sure how accurate the math is, since deferred monies have a tendency to be invisible in online payroll records, but Sutter managed to parlay $4.8M into at least $41.58M through a Bobby Bonilla-like payment plan, and seeing as how there was a twelve-year overlap between when Sutter’s payments and the Bonilla’s started, I’m surprised the whole thing didn’t meme out to be Bruce Sutter Day instead.

That’s the strength of the whole LOL Mets meme, I suppose.

Anyway, it’s July 1st, so that obviously means it’s that time of the year again, where a 63-year old Bobby Bonilla receives a $1,193,248 paycheck from the New York Mets because they didn’t want to pay him $5M in 2000 after 141 horrible plate appearances in 1999, and decided that it was more preferable to pay him nearly $36M over 30 years starting a decade later.

And in honor of Bobby Bonilla Day, I take my yearly deep dive into the state of the MLB to try and construct a hypothetical roster of players receiving deferred money, share some stats about them, as well as share all sorts of shade about the practice, the cheapness of the Braves, and other opinionated takes.

Continue reading “Bobby Bonilla Day presents the 2026 MLB All-Deferred Money Team” →

Beef S2: Everybody sucks

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was a big fan of the first season of Netflix’s Beef which starred Stephen Yeun and Ali Wong.  The writing was strong, the acting superb, but above all else, it was a show by Asians, starring Asians, but not explicitly being “an Asian show.”  It was a fantastic piece of representation, while still having the storyline and relatable appeal to those that weren’t Asian.

But the thing is, the way the show concluded, I was thinking that there probably wasn’t going to be a second season.  That is, unless they conclude the original storyline, create a new one that’s similar in some aspects but is different, with a new cast.  And when I heard that Beef was getting a second season, I figured that such was going to be the case, and I looked forward to it.

Not going to lie, upon seeing that the core cast of S2 was Oscar Issac, the cute girl from The Great Gatsby, some other white girl, and a guy that looked like he might possibly have a drop of Asian DNA in his 23andMe, it was a little bit of a turnoff from the fact that S1 was this speeding Humvee of representation, and now we’ve got another clear instance of white folks latching onto a success story and sequel-izing it, but with far less representation, and far more white people.

The show dropped, and it went from something I was interested in, to something to catch when I get a chance.

Thankfully, it’s as if Netflix really is mainlined into my feelings, and when I turned on Netflix to watch WWE RAW is Commercials, I saw that the thumbnail for Beef S2 had Youn Yuh-jung (from Minari fame) front and center, looking like a powerful queen and not just some meek Asian background character, and it renewed a little bit of interest to the point where I would eventually start watching it.

The thing is with me lately, is that I feel as if I’ve become even more neurotic and temperamental when it comes to television watching, and that if I’m not in the right mood or mindset, there’s almost no point in watching television, because I just won’t give it adequate attention.  But as far as Beef S2 was, it was like, if I don’t get to this now, I won’t ever get to it, and then it’ll just get backlogged and never seen, and this property doesn’t deserve that.

That being said, I was probably like 75-80% prepared to watch the show, and I admittedly had a harder time getting into it, than I had gotten into the first season.

Frankly, it kind of felt like the show was taking a page out of Aziz Ansari’s Master of None property, where the last season had nothing to do with the original seasons, and was more of a case of latching a name with equity, onto a season of television that has nothing to do with it, solely to help bring eyes to it in the first place.

The black comedy genre seems to be hipster enough to just try and spin that as viable and justifiable tactic, and that’s kind of what S2 of Beef felt like.  Sure, there were conflicts, in fact, many conflicts between characters, but save for the first 20 minutes of the show, few were to the explosive magnitude that was remotely close to S1, much less warrant even being called something like “Beef.”

What I’m trying to say is that S2 didn’t really feel like there was much beef between characters, but other than the fact that it’s the same creator, could probably have easily been called something else, but obviously they want eyes on it and fast, so it’s just slipped into the Beef umbrella as Season 2.

Anyway, semantics aside, the show wasn’t that bad.  It kind of goes without saying that it’s not as good as the first season, but that’s an unfair standard to chase after considering just how good S1 really was.  The writing was sharp, the cinematography was crisp and noticeable to even my novice eyes, and there was a lot of subtle, situational humor throughout.

The show was really heavy handed with their criticisms of Gen-Z and considering creator Lee Sung-jin is close to the same age as me, it’s evident who his target audience is, and was probably cognizant that his digs at the youth of today would be watching, and would probably feel targeted, and that’s probably the point.

Regardless of the contrasting ages of the characters, there was one consistent theme throughout the show: everyone sucks.  Not in like an X-Pac Heat kind of, I hate them and they make me not want to watch the show, sucks, but in the sense that every single character has some serious flaws, baggage and personality traits that amount to them all, sucking.

Whether it’s being a workaholic, dabbling in flirtations over social media, projecting insecurities over inadequate education, persecution complexes, lack of accountability, just about every character in the series had multiple prevalent flaws, and they would all act out and take it out on everyone else, and everyone made their problems everyone’s problems, and such is kind of triggering to me, especially these days.

Also, the Koreans that were in the show, are all corrupt and up to no good, and I’m just kind of like, couldn’t we just swap these alignments to the white folks instead??

As a result, it wasn’t a season that I could actually binge or watch too much of at once, because regardless of the time that I don’t have that much time I want to dedicate to watching television, at the very most, I only watched three consecutive episodes, before I felt like I needed to take a break.  Mythical wife, who caught some of it, only needed to half-watch two middle episodes to come to her own conclusion about just how much all of the characters just sucked, and I wasn’t far off from that assessment myself.

It made it sometimes feel like a chore, and by the time I got to the final episode, I had the attitude of simply wanting to finish what I started, versus bating my breath for the season finale on pins and needles.

Don’t get me wrong, such reactions aren’t indicative of the quality of the show, so much as I feel like such was how it was designed to make viewers feel, and it was working on me.  it was still a good show that I’ve clearly given a tremendous amount of thought and reflection towards, but it’s also definitely the type of show that needs a palette cleanser, or at least some Ted Lasso or Batman the Animated Series for me to kind of let me get the stink of all the Beef S2 characters out of my head.

Either way, characters sucking by design not-withstanding, S2 of Beef wasn’t bad.  Not nearly as good as the first season, but I’ve definitely seen worse things that commit the biggest sin for my preferences: making me feel like I’ve wasted my time.  Beef did no such thing, but like I said, it definitely has a droll outlook of the world that tends to affect my mood adversely, and it’s just one of those stories that requires a pick-me-up afterward.

Anytime I read about the environmental effects of AI

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I think about this snippet from the epilogue of The Big Short detailing Michael Burry’s lone investing focus.  Back in 2015 when the film was released, I didn’t really think about what was really implied by Burry’s decision to start betting on water, but I could imagine reasons similar to what happened in Flint, Michigan, or the fact that in spite of the world being like 90% water, I don’t imagine even close to a tenth of that is drinkable water, and clean water is probably going to be a bigger commodity in the future than it really sounds like it should be.

But with all the chatter about the growth of AI, and how a single ChatGPT query results in the consumption of energy that is capable of requiring like a gallon of water to cool down some servers in a data center in the middle of bumfuck flyover America, this is what makes me wonder if Burry knew something was on the horizon or something a decade ago.

Either way, every time something comes out about the environmental ravaging AI is capable of, this is the image that comes directly to mind, and I find myself thinking about this more and more as AI is blabbed about more and moar.

lol MARTA #437

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

AJC: (Paywall, but headline tells the story) Days away from the start of the FIFA World Cup, the new, state-of-the-art MARTA trains of tomorrow have not passed mandatory safety tests, and remains possible that they will not be ready for the largest sporting event in the world

There’s really not a whole lot to add to this story.  I figure to most people who live in the Atlanta area and are familiar with MARTA’s history, this is pretty much the least surprising thing in the world that Atlanta and MARTA fumbled the bag and in all likelihood won’t be ready for the World Cup despite having years to get shit done.

Progress in Atlanta moves at a snail’s pace, and frankly the metaphor is an insult to the speed of snails across the planet, because Atlanta routinely falls short of expectations unless there are millions of dollars in a treasure chest at the end of a rainbow to incentivize expediency, like when they miraculously rebuild I-85 three weeks ahead of schedule, which was still about like six weeks slower than the time it took Fukuoka, Japan to repair a sinkhole the size of a crater in a weekend.

I vaguely remember a similar situation way back when the College Football National Championship was being hosted in Atlanta, the city really wanted to get the Atlanta Streetcar up and running, mostly for appearances on a national level, because the little ass street car wasn’t going to be realistically moving more than a few hundred people for an event the size of the Natty.

But they failed, and didn’t complete it on time, and when they did finally get it up and operational, nobody cared, nobody rode it, and it’s about as much of an afterthought to the city as much as the Dallas Austin-produced ATL Anthem that was supposed to be the city’s song, akin to Sinatra singing New York, New York, but still cost taxpayers around $5M to make.

So it’s not the surprise of the century that Atlanta and MARTA are on a one-way crash course to yet another failure, and more than likely won’t have the purported trains of the future ready in time for the World Cup.  And even if they did miraculously pull off the impossible, there’s no way that they would have passed the mandatory safety checks and requirements, and I could see a situation where a shiny new Cerberus-looking train car, packed to the gills full of Spaniards* and the motherfucker goes off the rails and causes some tragic accident.

*I double-checked Atlanta’s guaranteed match list, and holy fuck did we get the shaft on country draw, where Spain is pretty much the only powerhouse country playing here, with the rest of the field being Czechia, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Haiti, Cabo Verde (?), and Congo; I didn’t even know many of these places even had national teams, much less ones good enough to qualify for the World Cup

Alternatively, once the festivities begin, futbol fans will be subjected to the old and busted, urine-smelling incumbent trains, where local bums and panhandlers are probably rubbing their hands together at the opportunity to grief and harass riders from various other parts of the world, who just want to get to Mercedes-Benz Arena (that’s not allowed to have their own logo in sight, lmao).

Either way, I heard that thanks to the political situation in ‘Murica, there was a lot of reconsideration of would-be fans, travelers and futbol enthusiasts, as far as hotels, tickets and the promised influx of money that an event the caliber of the World Cup is capable of bringing in, and I thought to myself, even if Korea isn’t going to get a match here, it might still be a cool thing to go to a World Cup match, and maybe even take my dad with me.  But then I discovered that the duration of the entire Group Stage, I will be out of the country, and by the time I get back, will be only critical knockout futbol matches, where the cost of those tickets will probably be back up to $FuckYou.99/each.

Perhaps I might luck into some watch events in Seoul for when Korea takes the pitch, I can’t imagine that even remote, they could be any less chaotically disorganized as Atlanta and MARTA are.  But thank goodness I won’t be around in the city for when the World Cup will inevitably be causing all sorts of chaos around town, and no thanks to MARTA.