Paulo Braga

Brazil is letting China buy its future at a discount. Chinese M&A in Brazil hit an eight-year high in H1 2025 ($1.7 billion). Lula visited Beijing in May and came home with $4.5 billion in commitments. Envision: $1 billion. Great Wall Motors: $1.05 billion. CGN Power: $529 million. Longsys: $423 million. Sounds like a win. Look closer. China State Grid has invested more than $12 billion in Brazil and manages $25 billion in assets across 14 of 27 states. It owns CPFL Energia, one of the largest power distributors in São Paulo state. It built and operates the Belo Monte ultra-high-voltage transmission line (2,539 km, serving 22 million Brazilians). It just won the largest power transmission concession in Brazilian history ($3.6 billion, 1,513 km in the Northeast). A foreign state-owned enterprise controlled by the Chinese Communist Party has operational control over critical electricity infrastructure serving tens of millions of Brazilians. COFCO (Chinese state grain trader) is now one of the largest grain traders operating in Brazilian ports, competing directly with Cargill, Bunge, and ADM. Brazilian soybeans increasingly move through a supply chain where Beijing sets the terms. BYD opened its largest overseas factory in Camaçari, Bahia. Sales grew 327% in 2024. Brazilian automakers can't compete on price. The Chinese factories employ Chinese supply chains, import Chinese components, and send profits to Shenzhen. Serra Verde (Brazil's only rare earth mine) exports concentrate. The only realistic destination today: Chinese refineries. Beijing processes 90% of the world's rare earths and 99% of the heavy elements that make EV motors and missile systems work. Brazil mines it. China refines it. China captures 5-20x the margin. Brazil gets the hole in the ground. This is the pattern. Every time. China doesn't transfer technology. It transfers dependency. It builds infrastructure that requires Chinese maintenance, Chinese equipment, Chinese software, and Chinese supply chains. When the equipment breaks, you call Beijing. When the software needs updating, you call Beijing. When the contract comes up for renewal, Beijing sets the price. The United States is a different partner. Not a perfect one. But a fundamentally different one. The DFC's $465 million for Serra Verde funds processing upgrades and requires a portion of production be made available to the United States. American capital comes with conditions that build capacity, not just extract output. American capital markets (NYSE, NASDAQ) gave Nubank a $45 billion IPO. Embraer lists ADRs. WEG trades globally. Chinese capital markets offer none of this to Brazilian companies. American universities train thousands of Brazilian students every year. The BrazilCham fellowship program sends young Brazilian professionals to US graduate schools. This human capital returns to Brazil. Chinese scholarships create dependency on Chinese institutions. The US committed $565 million to Brazilian critical minerals. Lula's non-negotiable condition for any bilateral deal: processing and refining happen on Brazilian soil. China invested billions. The structural outcome: processing happens in China. Serra Verde's concentrate has one realistic destination today... Chinese refineries. From 2023 to 2024, Chinese FDI in Brazil grew 113% to $4.8 billion. American FDI in Brazil grew 0.057%. Brazil holds 94% of global niobium. Second-largest reserves of rare earths and graphite. 50%+ of the territory unmapped. This is generational wealth if developed with partners who build Brazilian capacity. It is generational dependency if developed with partners who extract Brazilian resources and process them elsewhere. The question isn't whether Brazil should accept foreign investment. The question is which foreign investment builds a sovereign industrial economy and which one builds a colony with better infrastructure. Brazil has been a colony before. It didn't end well. Read more about the Race for Brazil between the U.S. and China: x.com/drewcrawford_/…

@RicardoRoveran Respeita um ca@&lho seu traíra.

Flávio Bolsonaro pediu paz e eu o respeito. Mas para acabar com a briga é necessário entender os dois lados. De que lado você está e por qual motivo? 1) Eduardo Bolsonaro 2) Nikolas Ferreira

@jlbraga E termina com o ‘Cristo’ em queda livre.

Notem que recentemente comecou a pipocar mais artigos como esse. Entre 2022 e 2024 nunca aparecia. To impressionado como aos poucos o estrangeiro tá voltando a olhar pro Brasil. É um começo de ciclo que termina com o Cristo levantando vôo. Aproveitem.

São Paulo em 1920. Absurdo o que fizeram com essa cidade.

@tommyswriting What prevents Brazil from reaching its potential (far from it) is the wholesale corruption in every level of government and judiciary (including the SC). The current legal framework is broken. The leftist gov is bending to China and to the organized crime.

Holy shit, this is some truly expert level analysis Made me mega bullish on Brazil 🇧🇷 “Brazil is the only large democracy in the world that is simultaneously a food superpower, a water superpower, an energy superpower, a mineral superpower, and a carbon superpower, with export routes that do not depend on any contested strait or chokepoint”

So much silence yet so much said 😂

🚨 This clip of Trump dating Melania is going viral as people are just now realizing what happened. Watch closely. What did you catch?

Finalmente um médico falando a real: autista gourmet é só um esquisito vagabundo

Como alguém que teve a honra de conhecer Olavo pessoalmente, conversar com ele em várias oportunidades e aprender muito com o Professor, me sinto na obrigação de estabelecer a verdade sobre sua relação com Bolsonaro e sua visão sobre o ex-presidente. Vejo muita gente ENGANANDO o público, postando prints soltos que dão a entender apoio incondicional ou rompimento com Bolsonaro — o que não corresponde à realidade. Se não me falha a memória, a última avaliação mais longa de Olavo sobre Bolsonaro foi no programa "ConservaTalk", de Paulo Figueiredo, que foi ao ar em 20 de dezembro de 2021. Olavo viria a falecer pouco depois, em 24 de janeiro de 2022. Selecionei os trechos mais relevantes da live. Tire suas próprias conclusões. 1. A eleição de Bolsonaro como chance perdida Acabou. Agora, a eleição do Bolsonaro foi a grande chance — grande chance, por meu entender, já perdida — porque ele precisava, primeira coisa que ele precisava ter feito, é desmantelar esse esquema nas primeiras semanas. Não fez isso. Foi tratar de querer parecer um bom administrador, quis parecer ser o novo Juscelino Kubitschek. Perdeu tempo. 2. Bolsonaro aprecia ser humilhado Então eu acho assim: o Bolsonaro é, jeito que ele aprecia, né, ser insultado, aprecia ser humilhado, né, aprecia ser achincalhado — porque tudo que ele faz é para perder a guerra. Ele só não perde a popularidade, mas popularidade não é poder. 3. Popularidade não é poder Evidentemente o povo brasileiro não tem poder nenhum, né. Então a elite inteira está contra o Bolsonaro e ela continua mandando no pedaço. [...] O pessoal se iludiu muito com a eleição do Bolsonaro. Venceu uma eleição — não é nada, gente. Nada. Zero. Cargo eletivo não é poder, só imbecil acredita nisso. O poder tá na sociedade. [...] Quantas pessoas te obedecem? Não é quantas pessoas gostam de você. [...] O Bolsonaro já ganhou, né, quantas pessoas gostam do Bolsonaro, quantas gostam do Lula — a maioria absoluta gosta do Bolsonaro. Mas o problema não é gostar, o problema é obedecer. O Bolsonaro não é obedecido em praticamente nada. Quem manda no Brasil é a turma do STF e a turma da mídia, a turma do show business, e pronto, acabou. 4. No Brasil só há comunistas ou neutros No Brasil só há duas possibilidades: ou você é comunista ou você é neutro. Não existe direita, existe bolsonarismo — não direita. Então é isso aí, é a raiz de todos os males. 5. "A briga já está perdida" E o Brasil vai se dar muito mal, gente. Não venham com esperanças tolas, porque é o seguinte: a briga já está perdida, já está perdida. Existe chance de fazer voltar? Existe uma chance remota, vou dizer: se o Bolsonaro acordar. Mas eu não sei como fazê-lo acordar. 6. "Não sou guru do Bolsonaro" Porque o pessoal imagina que eu sou o guru do Bolsonaro — isso é absolutamente falso. Conversei com Bolsonaro quatro vezes na minha vida e duvido, duvido que ele tenha lido o meu livro inteiro. Nem aquele livro único ele não leu aquilo inteiro. Se ele tivesse lido com atenção, tem muita coisa que ele fez que ele não faria. E os demais livros e o meu curso — eu tenho um curso que eu dei 570 aulas — ele assistiu alguma? Nenhuma. 7. "Ele me usou como poster boy" Então a minha influência sobre o Bolsonaro é zero. Ele me usou como poster boy, usou para se promover e se eleger. Depois disso não só esqueceu tudo que eu dizia, mas até os meus amigos que estavam no governo ele tirou. [...] Eu só indiquei dois ministros, por uma questão de educação, porque ele me convidou para ser Ministro da Educação. Eu não aceitei, então já que eu não aceitei, falei: bom, então por educação deixa indicar alguém para lá. Não foi um ato político, foi um ato de polidez pessoal, foi somente isso. 8. O Brasil se ferrou — a eleição foi a última chance Olha, sinceramente, eu acho que o Brasil se ferrou, viu. O Brasil não vai se levantar, não. A eleição do Bolsonaro foi a última chance. Talvez se ele se eleger de novo é possível, mas o que ele já perdeu de apoio popular é uma grandeza, e acho que ele não sente isso. [...] Eu acho que o Bolsonaro caiu na mesma coisa — pegam esses assessores, viram: "Não, Presidente, o senhor tá eleito, o povo tá com você, não se preocupa." 9. Bom administrador, mas não é estadista Então o que ele quer agora? Parecer simpático, parecer bonzinho, parecer um bom administrador — que ele é um excelente administrador, de fato é o melhor que nós já tivemos para lidar com obras públicas, economia tá indo muito bem. Mas política ele não faz, e sobretudo um guerreiro ele não é. Estadista ele não é, de jeito nenhum. Ele é assim como se fosse um prefeito de cidade do interior, né. Assim, é um Paulo Maluf sem a roubalheira. 10. O poder do presidente é nulo Qual é o poder que tem o presidente da República comparado com o Congresso e o STF? Não tem nada, nada. Quer dizer, ele se castrou a si mesmo desde o primeiro dia. Ainda diz que eu sou guru dele — se eu fosse isso, jamais teria acontecido. A primeira coisa que eu ia dizer: "Ou você resolve o problema nas primeiras semanas ou você tá perdido." E se você está dando tempo para o adversário se fortalecer, ele vai se fortalecer e vai acabar com você. Foi exatamente o que aconteceu. 11. O 7 de Setembro — desperdício de apoio popular Nas primeiras semanas, alguém teria coragem de dizer do Bolsonaro que dizem agora? Não tinha. Porque o pessoal sentia a força do apoio popular. Agora não sente mais. E essa manifestação do 7 de Setembro — o maior desperdício de apoio popular que já se viu. Quer dizer, você reúne um povão na rua e o povo vai dizer: "Eu autorizo." Autorizo o quê? Que que ele fez com a autorização? Fez nada. Quer dizer, tem algum problema, tem algum problema com o Bolsonaro, não sei qual é o problema, né. 12. "Não vou retirar meu apoio — não tem outro" Agora, eu vou retirar meu apoio dele? Não, não. Porque não tem outro, né. E quem vai votar, vai votar no sei lá quem... nesse pessoal do Congresso aí, né. 13. Sobre as eleições de 2022 — "Vou votar nele, é claro" Se eu faço alguma crítica ao Bolsonaro, não quer dizer que eu tô contra ele. Ao contrário, vou votar nele em 2022, é claro que vou. Em quem que você quer que eu vote, né? O Ciro Gomes? Bom, eu gosto do Ciro Gomes, acho até um sujeito inteligente, mas ele nasceu para perder, gente. Ele é um perdedor nato, ele sempre vai perder. [...] É claro que vou votar no Bolsonaro, é claro que tô a favor dele. Mas então fica aí o registro para todo mundo que ficar aí: "Ah, meu Deus do céu, Olavo tá atacando o Bolsonaro, Olavo rompeu..." As notícias no jornal — o jornalista é o mais imbecil de todos, só consegue raciocinar assim. [...] Várias manchetes do tipo: "Olavo rompe com Bolsonaro." Que [merda] é essa? Rompe o quê, né?

@Rconstantino @pfigueiredo08 Cara, se vc não viu a live e confiou em um amigo que sabe não gosta do Paulo, o problema é você!

De fato, foi um amigo que não gosta muito de vc que me disse. O Kim não afetou minha cabeça, Paulo. A moral que o Eduardo dá a um notório desagregador é que preocupa. Mas o Eduardo já disse numa entrevista recente que se ele não der trela para vc, o Allan e o Kim, ninguém mais fala dele. Pode ser carência, então. Mas está prejudicando a campanha do Flavio…

Allan dos Santos chama Nikolas de "analfabeto e mau caráter". Paulo Figueiredo está me detonando na sua live. Eduardo dedica quase todo seu espaço para divulgar Kim Paim ou me criticar. Kim Paim é obcecado em achar "traidores" na "coleira do Deltan". Alguém acha mesmo que essa turma está colaborando com a candidatura do Flavio? Enquanto isso... Lacombe lança novo projeto, O Cruzeiro, com Silvio Navarro e Paulo Briguet, além de colunistas como Ludmila Lins Grilo, Flavio Gordon e eu. Gente séria, independente e com viés conservador. Mas a patrulha já vai denunciar: não é bolsonarista! Tem que ser bolsonarista raiz, concordar com tudo que diz Eduardo. O Brasil precisa de mais iniciativas como essa do Lacombe, e de menos influenciadores incendiários que produzem intrigas diariamente para dividir a direita. Leiam as colunas de O Cruzeiro! Conteúdo de primeira...

Num dos últimos vídeos do Olavo, "Aviso Tardio", na véspera do Natal de 2021, exatamente um mês antes de nos deixar, ele alertava sobre o ERRO de focar apenas nas eleições. "Alô pessoal, eu sei que é horrível falar essas coisas no Natal, mas para que deixar para depois? Eu queria dizer o seguinte: mesmo depois de avisados pelo Dirceu que tomar o poder não tem nada a ver com ganhar a eleição, o pessoal da direita só pensa em eleições. A cada palavra que eu digo, eles pensam que eu estou me referindo ao resultado da eleição de 2022. Isso é totalmente absurdo, porque, veja, não foi durante a gestão Bolsonaro que a esquerda implantou a sua ditadura. Quando que nos governos petistas alguém fechou algum jornal de direita? Botou direitista na cadeia? Não. Eles não tinham poder para fazer isso. Eles adquiriram esse poder depois do Bolsonaro. Que poder? Vocês não perceberam ainda que quem ocupa o cargo nominal não tem poder nenhum? O poder não está na presidência, meu Deus do céu. O poder está na sociedade humana, na trama da sociedade. Quem domina essa trama é que tem o poder. Então vamos perguntar o seguinte: vocês botam alguém na presidência, muito bem, parabéns. Agora me digam: quantos grêmios de faculdade vocês tomaram? Nenhum. Quantas redações de jornal vocês tomaram? Nenhum. Quantos sindicatos vocês tomaram? Nenhum. Quantas igrejas de teologia da libertação vocês tomaram? Nenhuma. Em suma, vocês deixaram tudo na mão dos comunistas. Está na mão deles, eles fazem o que quiserem. Deu para entender? O STF não é senão o porta-voz do consenso do pessoal esquerdista. E eles estão exercendo o poder e vão continuar exercendo. E se o Bolsonaro for eleito, os demais ainda, porque o Bolsonaro já provou que ele não tem a mentalidade necessária para enfrentar essa gente. Eu vou dar um exemplo: ele fez o possível para derrubar a Rede Globo. Muito bem, não derrubou, mas enfraqueceu muito. Agora, o Twitter não foi enfraquecido — foi totalmente destruído, isto diante dos olhos do Bolsonaro. Ora, Nietzsche já ensinava que só se vence aquilo que se substitui. Substituir por quê? O que puseram no lugar da Globo? Nada. Tem alguma TV conservadora? Alguma estação de rádio conservadora? Não tem. Tem algum jornal conservador? Não tem nada. Ou seja, vocês estão se esforçando para ganhar eleição e estão deixando a sociedade, o poder social, na mão dos comunistas. Meu Deus do céu. Agora tem gente que insiste que eu estou falando de eleição, que eu estou querendo que o Lula ganhe. Ele já fez isso — não teria a menor importância. Não importa quem vai ganhar eleição, meu Deus do céu. O que importa é quem tem o poder sobre a sociedade. Dá para entender isso aí? Se vocês levarem isso em conta, talvez seja possível terem um bom Natal. Até." Parece que depois de tudo que passamos, ainda tem muita gente, em 2026, acreditando que a luta pelo poder se resumo às eleições...

@leandroruschel Sempre com razão, mesmo depois de morto...notem que o Abe quase nunca levanta os olhos...como que está envergonhado do que faria depois...mas é isso,

@RealEmirHan Not really. At that time both had became a caricature of themselves. More mannerisms than actual acting.

In Heat, the iconic restaurant scene was the first time Al Pacino and Robert De Niro shared screen time together. Pacino said De Niro insisted on no rehearsals so the tension between them would feel real. Michael Mann agreed, and what we got is cinematic perfection.

@JoshHall2024 Nope. Another Meloni. No thanks.

🚨BREAKING:🚨 Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democrat and American military hero who has since denounced and disavowed her old party, is reportedly considering running for President as a Republican in 2028. What do YOU think about this news patriots... Would YOU support TULSI FOR PRESIDENT?

@BillAckman @X Fight, fight, fight!!!

I am reaching out to the @X community for advice with the likely risk of sharing TMI. I have been sufficiently upset about the whole matter that I have lost sleep thinking about it and I am hoping that this post will enable me to get this matter off my chest. By way of background, I started a family office called TABLE about 15 years ago and hired a friend who had previously managed a family office, and years earlier, had been my personal accountant. She is someone that I trusted implicitly and consider to be a good person. The office started small, but over the last decade, the number of personnel and the cost of the office grew massively. The growth was entirely on the operational side as the investment team has remained tiny. While my investment portfolio grew substantially, the investments I had made were almost entirely passive and TABLE simply needed to account for them and meet capital calls as they came in. While TABLE purchased additional software and other systems that were supposed to improve productivity, the team kept increasing in size at a rapid rate, and the expenses continued to grow even faster. While I would periodically question the growing expenses and high staff turnover, I stayed uninvolved with the office other than a once-a-year meeting when I briefly reviewed the operations and the financials and determined bonus compensation for the President and the CFO. I spent no time with any of the other employees or the operations. The whole idea behind TABLE was that it would handle everything other than my day job so that I would have more time for my job and my family. Over the last six years, expenses ballooned even further, employee turnover accelerated, and I became concerned that all was not well at TABLE. It was time for me to take a look at what was going on. Nearly four years ago, I recruited my nephew who had recently graduated from Harvard and put him to work at Bremont, a British watchmaker, one of my only active personal investments to figure out the issues at the company and ultimately assist in executing a turnaround. He did a superb job. When he returned from the UK late last year after a few years at Bremont, I asked him to help me figure out what was going on with TABLE. When I explained to TABLE’s president what he would be doing, she became incredibly defensive, which naturally made me more concerned. My nephew went to work by first meeting with each employee to understand their roles at the company and to learn from them what ideas they had on how things could be improved. He got an earful. Our first step in helping to turn around TABLE was a reduction in force including the president and about a third of the team, retaining excellent talent that had been desperate for new leadership. Now here is where I need your advice. All but one of the employees who were terminated acted professionally and were gracious on the way out (excluding the president who had a notice period in her contract, is currently still being paid, and with whom I have not yet had a discussion). The highest compensated terminated employee other than the president, an in-house lawyer (let’s call her Ronda), told us that three months of severance was not enough and demanded two years’ severance despite having worked at the company for only two and one half years. When I learned of Ronda's request for severance, I offered to speak with her to understand what she was thinking, but she refused to do so. A few days ago, we received a threatening letter from a Silicon Valley law firm. In the letter, Ronda’s counsel suggests that her termination is part of longstanding issues of ‘harassment and gender discrimination’ – an interesting claim in light of the fact that Ronda was in charge of workplace compliance – and that her termination was due to: “unlawful, retaliatory, and harmful conduct directed towards her. Both [Ronda] and I [Ronda’s lawyer] have spoken with you about [Ronda’s] view of what a reasonable resolution would include given the circumstances. Thus far, TABLE has refused to provide any substantive response. This letter provides the last opportunity to reach a satisfactory agreement. If we cannot do so, [Ronda] will seek all appropriate relief in a court of competent jurisdiction.” The letter goes on to explain the basis for the “unsafe work environment” claim at TABLE: “In early 2026, Pershing Square’s founder Bill Ackman installed his nephew in an unidentified role at TABLE, Ackman’s family office. [His nephew]—whose only work experience had been for TABLE where he was seconded abroad for the last four years to a UK watch company held by Ackman—began appearing at TABLE’s offices and conducting interviews of employees without a clear explanation of his role or the purposes of these interviews. During this period, he made a series of inappropriate and genderbased [sic] comments to multiple employees that created an unsafe work environment. Among other things, [his nephew] made remarks about female employees’ ages (“Tell me you are nowhere near 40”), physical appearance (“Your body does not look like you have kids”), as well as intrusive questions about family planning and sexual orientation (“Who carried your son? Who will carry your next child?”). These incidents were reported to senior leadership at TABLE and Pershing Square. Rather than being addressed appropriately, the response from senior management reflected, at best, willful blindness to the inappropriateness of [his nephew]’s remarks and, at worst, tacit endorsement.” The above allegations about my nephew had previously been brought to my attention by TABLE’s president when they occurred. When I learned of them, I told the president that I would speak to him directly and encouraged her to arrange for him to get workplace sensitivity training. The president assured me that she would do so. When I spoke to my nephew, he explained what he actually had said and how his actual remarks had been received, not at all as alleged in the legal letter from Ronda’s counsel. I have also spoken to others at the lunch table who confirmed his description of the facts. In any case, he meant no harm, was simply trying to build rapport with other employees, and no one, as far as I understand, was offended. Ironically, Ronda claims in her legal letter that TABLE didn’t take HR compliance seriously, yet Ronda was in charge of HR compliance at TABLE and the person who gave my nephew his workplace sensitivity training after the alleged incidents. In any case, Ronda, as head of compliance, should have kept a record or raised an alarm if indeed there was pervasive harassment or other such problems at the company, and there is no evidence whatsoever that this is true. So why does Ronda believe she can get me to pay her nearly $2 million, i.e., two years of severance, nearly one year of severance for each of her years at the company? Well, here is where some more background would be helpful. Over the last two months, I have been consumed with a major family medical issue – one of my older daughters had a massive brain hemorrhage on February 5th and has since been making progress on her recovery – and I am in the midst of a major transaction for my company which I am executing from a hospital room office next to her . While the latter business matter is publicly known, the details of my daughter’s situation are only known to Ronda because of her role at our family office. Now, let’s get back to the subject at hand. Unfortunately, while New York and many other states have employment-at-will, there has emerged an industry of lawyers who make a living from bringing fake gender, race, LGBTQ and other discrimination employment claims in order to extract larger severance payments for terminated employees, and it needs to stop. The fake claim system succeeds because it costs little to have a lawyer send a threatening letter and nearly all of the lawyers in this field work on contingency so there is no or minimal cash cost to bring a claim. And inevitably, nearly 100% of these claims are settled because the public relations and legal costs of defending them exceed the dollar cost of the settlement. The claims are nearly always settled with a confidentiality agreement where the employee who asserts the fake claims remains anonymous and as a result, there is no reputational cost to bringing false claims. The consequences of this sleazy system (let’s call it ‘the System’) are the increased costs of doing business which is a tax on the economy and society. There are other more serious problems due to the System. Unfortunately, the existence of an industry of plaintiff firms and terminated employees willing to make these claims makes it riskier for companies to hire employees from a protected class, i.e., LGBTQ, seniors, women, people of color etc. because it is that much more reputationally damaging and expensive to be accused of racism, sexism, and/or intolerance for sexual diversity than for firing a white male as juries generally have less sympathy for white males. The System therefore increases the risk of discrimination rather than reducing it, and the people bringing these fake claims are thereby causing enormous harm to the other members of these protected classes. So what happened here? Ronda was vastly overpaid and overqualified for the job that she did at TABLE. She was paid $1.05 million plus benefits last year for her work which was largely comprised of filling out subscription agreements and overseeing an outside law firm on closing passive investments in funds and in private and venture stage companies, some compliance work, and managing the office move from one office to another. She had a very good gig as she was highly paid, only had to go into the office three days a week, and could work from anywhere during the summer. Once my nephew showed up and started to investigate what was going on, she likely concluded that there was a reasonable possibility she would be terminated, as her job was in the too-easy-and-to-good-to-be-true category. The problem was that she was not in a protected class due to her race, age or sexual identity so she had to construct the basis for a claim. While she is female and could in theory bring a gender-based discrimination claim, she reported to the president who is female and to whom she is very close, which makes it difficult for her to bring a harassment claim against her former boss. When my nephew complimented a TABLE employee at lunch about how young she looked – in response to saying she was going to her 40-year-old sister’s birthday party, he said ‘she must be your older sister’ – Ronda immediately reported it to our external HR lawyer. She thereby began building her case. The other problem for Ronda bringing a claim is that she was terminated alongside 30% of other TABLE employees as part of a restructuring so it is very difficult for her to say that she was targeted in her termination or was retaliated against. TABLE is now hiring an external fractional general counsel as that is all the company needs to process the relatively limited amount of legal work we do internally. In short, Ronda was eminently qualified and capable and did her job. She was just too much horsepower for what is largely an administrative legal role so she had to come up with something else to bring a claim. Now Ronda knew I was a good target and it was a good time to bring a claim against me. She also knew that I was under a lot of pressure because on March 4th when Ronda was terminated, my daughter had not yet emerged from consciousness, she was not yet breathing on her own, and my daughter and we were fighting for her life. I was and remain deeply engaged in her recovery while at the same time I was working on finishing the closing for the private placement round for my upcoming IPO. Ronda also knew that publicity about supposed gender discrimination and a “hostile and unsafe work environment” are not things that a CEO of a company about to go public wants to have released into the media. And she may have thought that the nearly $2 million she was asking for would be considered small in the context of the reputational damage a lawsuit could cause, regardless of the fact that two years of severance was an absurd amount for an employee who had only worked at TABLE for 30 months. She also likely considered that I wouldn’t want to embarrass my nephew by dragging him into the klieg lights when her claims emerged publicly. So, in summary, game theory would say that I would certainly settle this case, for why would I risk negative publicity at a time when I was preparing our company to go public and also risk embarrassing my nephew. Notably, she hired a Silicon Valley law firm, rather than a typical NY employment firm. This struck me as interesting as her husband works for one of the most prominent Silicon Valley venture firms whose CEO, I am sure, has no tolerance for these kinds of fake claims that sadly many venture-backed companies also have to deal with. I mention this as I suspect her husband likely has been working with her on the strategy for squeezing me as, in addition to being a computer scientist, he is a game theorist. My only advice for him is to understand more about your opponent before you launch your first move. All of the above said, gender, race, LGBTQ and other such discrimination is a real thing. Many people have been harmed and deserve compensation for this discrimination, and these companies and individuals should be punished for engaging in such behavior. Which brings me to the advice I am seeking from the X community. I am not planning to follow the typical path and settle this ‘claim.’ Rather, I am going to fight this nonsense to the end of the earth in the hope that it inspires other CEOs to do the same so we shut down this despicable behavior that is a large tax on society, employment, and the economy and contributes to workplace discrimination rather than reducing it. Do you agree or disagree that this is the right approach?

All Time Best XI Do you agree? 🤔

@Realndependence Um BYD mini Dolphin bate todos eles na largada e no trajeto. Além de ser mais seguro e eficiente. Nostalgia pura.

🚨 PROIBIDO - Para quem não entende de carros ou possuem BYD 😎 Qual desses você teria ?

@MARINESARALDI Não voto em traira.

Ele pode contar com seu apoio? Sim ou Não

@TeamTrump47 @SULLY10X Vote to spaghetti hair? No thanks…

🔻Sen. Rand Paul is considering a run for president. Would you vote for him? I THINK I know the answer.

@RepThomasMassie Imagine a scoundrel, rat, traitor, liar, senator. You.

Imagine a world where hard work is rewarded, truth and justice prevail in courtrooms, the government doesn’t steal your labor by debasing the currency, bureaucrats aren’t captured by corporations, and our taxes go toward critical infrastructure instead of wars overseas.