Josh Richman

@micsolana @wolfejosh Just visited Portugal. Very multicultural. So much so that it was difficult to ascertain what exactly was Portuguese.

@wolfejosh why on earth should we be multicultural? if someone doesn’t want to be american, they should not move to america.

We should be multicultural. We must also severely punish criminals. Castration for rapists. And if the culture is uniformly Muslim male immigrants raping white girls we should not pretend it is “mental illness” or “gangs” we should call it unassimilated Muslim immigrants

@VerminusM Iron Eagle (the original). Stands the test of time!

I'm in a bit of a rut. Can you recommend a fun movie to watch? I'm a voracious cinephile so if it's mainstream I've probably already seen it.

@sneako Respect for at least having the conversation

Israeli-American on Iran War

@BillAckman @X The robots can’t come fast enough

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?

@jonfavs What other PACs do you criticize?

AIPAC says it's "fundamentally undemocratic" to...criticize AIPAC

@micsolana Underrated take

hey just need to take a quick second and say, amazon is so insanely good. what company has improved your life as much as amazon? gd magic floating infinity mall that delivers you everything you need in hours, amazing. thank you, amazon.

@BuffyWicks Labor labor labor work on reducing the cost of labor please

I’m so excited to finally have this Terner Center report in my hands! These insights will help guide my legislative work this year to unlock more housing construction innovation. We know the housing crisis is formidable—it’s time to get creative in how we solve it.

@shanrocksnwa Well said

I don’t care how people feel about Jake Paul. Every girl prays she finds a love like this one day. You can see how much fun they have together. They are each others best friend. Women dream of this.

@SawyerMerritt Sure wish @elonmusk would do a proper family car. There needs to be something akin to a Tahoe in size.

Tesla has released new 4K photos of the Model Y, Model 3 and Cybertruck. More photos in the thread below. Long press on mobile to load in 4K.

@VerminusM Right on the money

@Mark__Mazur @nntaleb Except that Jews never murdered Germans to justify the how they were treated. Gazans are violent - kick them out.

@nntaleb So Gaza is another Kristallnacht (1938). The primary purpose of Kristallnacht was to accelerate (till then orderly and based on the Jewish-Nazi Haavara Agreement) Jewish emigration from Nazi Germany. And the goal was to achieve Judenfrei Germany as quickly as possible.

The destruction of Palestinian property so they can't return isn't a Netanyahu strategy; it started in the 1940s and has been continuously used as an UNSPOKEN strategy covered up by propaganda "we are looking for peace", etc.

@CaseyMericle Where’s the line for ok deal?

Maybe it’s age or desire but if it’s just an ok deal I’d rather pass on it content to wait for the next one

@CohenSite @mnolangray Doesn’t even need to be “luxury.” Simplify the system, let developers build unencumbered market rate units and let the housing stock renew.

@mnolangray This would probably be a great mini-research project to spend a weekend doing (and then probably realize that it’s actually going to be a months worth of work)

I suspect that a chart of "dollars spent building deed-restricted income-restricted rentals" would show the exact opposite relationship, yet it remains the go-to Democratic housing affordability policy.

@CaseyMericle Pressured sellers in Dec and elective sellers in Jan

I like to buy in December and sell in January Can you guess why?

@cayimby as simple as that

The price of housing is set by supply and demand. The only way to make housing durably affordable to working and middle class Californians is to build enough homes to meet demand in the places people want to live.

@ComicDaveSmith The thing you miss is these countries threaten to kill Jews and the State of Israel and take steps in furtherance of accomplishing same. Inchoate offenses justify preemptive action just like attempted murder lands you in jail. You don’t need to wait until they murder you.

I hesitate to respond to this garbage because I think it’s just dishonest click bait, and you feed into that when you respond. (This guy has messaged me, trying to get me to share his videos, like 30 times over the years and I never do) However, I’m a sucker for tearing apart bullshit arguments and I particularly love that this is the issue these guys want to fight over. So, here we go: First of all, I think anyone honestly representing my “go-to argument” that I’ve made on many big podcasts, would agree that it is clearly that: Netanyahu and the government of Israel pushed for the war, and the Neoconservatives, a core constituency of the Israel lobby, were the main driver of the war, it would not have happened without them. I am objectively correct about this, and I’m happy to defend it. Let’s take on these two points in reverse order. 1) Yes, it is true that Netanyahu’s September 2002 testimony came after Condi Rice claims the decision had been made in the WH, weeks earlier, to invade Iraq (a lot of evidence indicates the decision had been made substantially earlier.) However, perceptive viewers might notice that Benjamin Netanyahu is NOT testifying before the White House. He is testifying before Congress weeks BEFORE they voted for the Authorization for Use of Military Force against Iraq (AUMF). I made this point in the conversation with Coleman but it was coincidentally edited out. Obviously, he was the former Prime Minister at the time, but he went on to be the longest serving PM and is still currently in power. Is anyone going to seriously argue that it is irrelevant that the longest serving PM in Israeli history openly advocated that the US overthrow the Governments of Iraq, Libya and Iran on Israel’s behalf? He’s gotten 2/3 and they were both catastrophic for those countries, the US and Europe. He’s been advocating for the 3rd the entire time. 2) Yes, it is true that a few of Ariel Sharon’s guys advised early in 2002 that the US topple Iran first, but after they got assurances that Iran would be next, they got on board. Netanyahu and the Neocons always wanted Iraq first. Mearsheimer and Walt demonstrate this clearly in their excellent book “The Israel Lobby”

@TheChiefNerd She still misses key points. It was not about inviting Elon as much as it was about excluding Tesla. Of course Elon would have come, but Biden intentionally excluded an immigrant led company that builds products in America with a mission statement to save the environment.

Kamala Harris Says It Was a ‘Big Mistake’ to Not Invite Elon Musk to the Biden White House EV Summit “A President of the United States, I believe, has to put aside political loyalties when they get in the way of what should be a source of pride for us as Americans … I don't know @elonmusk, but I have to assume that was something that hit him hard and had an impact on his perspective.”

@MdeZegher Truly an elegant system and exceptional customer experience.

@realEstateTrent @cameronmattis @mrkorangy The artist who did Tyson’s face tattoo owns the right to that design. The photo could go viral or have potential future revenue implications for the photographer. That said, it should be disclosed and discussed at time of contract….

@cameronmattis @BayAreaTM @mrkorangy Serious question what the heck do they care if they own or the client owns boring photos of the client’s building? We’re canceling a job scheduled for Monday over this.

We’re paying you to take photos of our building, but we don’t own the photos?? Good thing to look for if you need property photos taken. H/t @mrkorangy 🙏

@realEstateTrent @mrkorangy Technically you’re buying the rights to the photos specified in the contract you signed. Need to make sure you get a copyright assignment with your “purchase.”

@BayAreaTM @mrkorangy But I’m buying them from them …