Uri

I made a free Chrome extension to automatically download Search Query Performance (SQP) Reports for multiple ASINs. Initially, I made this for my team but I had a few people ask me to put it on the Chrome store. It is free to use. Here it is. Tutorial: youtu.be/Gt9ABKv_qnc Chrome Extension Link: chromewebstore.google.com/detail/giemlim…

@BillAckman @X The US has a massive glut of lawyers. Much of the profession is simply state sanctioned extortion against productive people.

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?

Good episode. IMO, Pape presents Trump's options as a binary. In reality, Trump is being presented with a range of military options. Iranian leverage boils down to inflicting economic costs on the US coalition by shutting down traffic in the Strait. It seems to me that taking that card away from Iran doesn't cross Pape's mind as a viable US strategy. I don't see why this is an impossibility for the US military to achieve through a range of escorts, insurance, and a concentrated air campaign.

"This War Will FAIL" - Military Expert @ProfessorPape Watch the full episode right here on X.

@ParanoidPol One of the best YouTube channels I subscribe to. @mpfelton

"It is said that if you stand beside the grave of Admiral Lord Nelson and listen carefully, you can actually hear him rotating at about 1,500 revolutions a minute." Good summary video on the current state of the UK's Navy from @mpfelton.

@ianbremmer What does this mean for those credentialed many who professed doom at his election?

milei putting up some extraordinary numbers: argentina's inflation went from nearly 300% to below 40%. gdp up 4.4%.

@DrHartwigAHW @ConceptualJames You have to be a mentally ill to make these videos. Random physical therapy guy from Stuart Florida at 12:30 AM: “Hey AI, take this photo of James Lindsay and make an animated demon Jew gif. Make sure the star of david is extra large”. Sick in the head.

Here's a video clip of a conversation from a couple years ago. See if you can recognize any new vocabulary words in it!

@TheDefiantGhost You have to be so retarded to believe this shit.

Prof. Jiang Xueqin on the outcome of this war: "The outcome is to kill as many people as possible, to destroy the entire global economy, to destroy Iran, to force the United States out of the Middle East, to destroy the Gulf nation states, to suck Turkey into the war, to lead to the creation of the Greater Israel Project and eventually Pax Judaica." "And then, eventually, to create conditions for another world war called the War of Gog and Magog, where Russia and Iran attack Israel together, which will usher in the end of the world." "It's all been preordained. It's all been scripted out. And that's exactly what's going to happen. And it's only a question of like time frame." "It will be a disaster." "Iran will be shattered. America will be forced out of the Middle East. And Israel will become the only standing power in the Middle East." @xueqinjiang

@JewishWarrior13 If regime change is the goal, which I hope it is, I cannot think of a better filter for identifying people to eliminate.

🚨 Khamenei's funeral arrangements have been announced. The mourning ceremonies for Ali Khamenei will begin tomorrow, Wednesday, and will continue until Friday at the holy complex named after Khomeini in Tehran. The funeral ceremony will start on Friday and continue until Saturday, then Khamenei's body will be brought to the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad, where Khamenei will be buried.

@Rob_Malley It's an absolute disgrace that a piece of shit of your caliber was anywhere near a president of the United States.

More we learn of US/Israeli aims (deal w/parts of IRGC, ethnic breakup, regime collapse) clearer these are pyromaniacs treating Iran not as a country but arena for geopolitical & social experimentation. Likely losers in Iran: those at the top (killed or soon to be) & the people

@IsraelRadar_com This is awesome but what if Qaani is actually an asset. That'd be such a tragedy.

WHO DID THIS?? 😂

@Hoopss He did not intern at NASA lmao.

Jaylen Brown keeps running into controversy. Nike dropped him after he spoke out. He was left off Team USA despite being an NBA Finals MVP. Even Beverly Hills had to apologize for shutting down his party. This is a man who interned at NASA, negotiated his own contract, and represents the kind of educated, independent Black man people say they want as a role model. Yet look at how he's treated.

@DavidAFrench No, first round teams should also be considered. Why be punished for winning the playin?

I’m going to fix the NBA’s tanking problem right now: Draft order is the reverse order of non-playoff teams. Best team to miss the play-in gets first pick, then the order is determined from there. (Second-best team to miss play-in gets second pick, and so on). All the worst teams will have huge incentives to play hard. Problem solved. You’re welcome :)

Real story: I run a b2b printing business that services thousands of ecommerce artists. All of our other production environments run on Linux or Mac but we had a single computer running Windows to run a program callled “Switch” (essentially processes and normalizes files to prepare them for printing). Anyway, on Cyber Monday the Switch computer running Windows auto updated to a new windows version with a weird memory leak. Everything failed. I stayed up until 5 am trying to solve it. Nothing worked. Couldn’t revert. Couldn’t upgrade. At 9 am, I walked into an Apple store and bought a Mac Studio. Windows is hot garbage and cost an unnecessary 48 hour delay in fulfillment.

Imagine the negative impact on the US economy from Microsoft being so bad for the last several years I wonder if you could squeeze out another percentage point of growth just by fixing this one company

@flasportsbuzz The fix is pretty easy. Tie a portion say 20% of a team’s salary to winning games. Make it conditional. Then distribute lottery picks on even chance and include teams bounced in the first round.

This has been worse than ever. Would pro sports be better if all 30 teams had draft order determined by lottery and all had the same lottery odds? For the first time in my life, I would advocate for that so teams aren't rewarded for failure and intentional failure

@DiscountedTr You missed a big one: rug pulled 100s of thousands of American entrepreneurs who built businesses on Amazon only to erode their margins down to zero and foster an environment for Chinese competitors to take over every category.

> bean-counting bureaucrat who lucked into the CEO chair after brown-nosing Bezos for decades > inherited the greatest e-commerce machine ever built and immediately started breaking it > oversaw the biggest layoffs in Amazon history — 27,000+ heads chopped in waves while he pocketed $200M+ comp packages > forced brutal 5-day RTO mandate that sparked internal revolts, leaked memos, and mass quiet-quitting > let retail bleed billions in over-expansion hangover, closing warehouses he helped overbuild > AWS growth decelerated hard on his watch as Azure and Google Cloud close the gap > burned tens of billions on vanity moonshots — Rivian stake down 90%+, Kuiper satellites, Zoox robotaxi pipe dreams > stock flatlined or lagged peers for years post-transition until AI hype and rate cuts bailed him out > faces massive FTC antitrust lawsuit for the monopoly abuses he pretends weren’t his fault > zero vision, infinite corporate jargon, toxic spreadsheet obsession > preaches “Day 1” culture while turning Amazon into a soulless cost-cutting machine > retail shareholders paid the price for his mediocre stewardship and failure to innovate > just another overpromoted middle manager destroying a founder’s legacy

@Heat_Muse LeBron signed for $15M for year 1. He wanted to play with Wade and Bosh. No one is going to take a pay cut to play with Herro and Bam. Bam is at best a 3rd piece to a championship team and Herro isn’t a starter on one. Hopefully we can just dig for some more G League talent!

It bewilders me that we’re the same organization that pulled this off. Pat RIley isn’t able to pull the trigger like he once used to. Too many “ifs, ands or butts”

@SpencerHNDRXX Riley is not a good GM. Heat need to clean house including with ownership. We’re just the g league all stars

Here’s another reality check for some people. Wade pulled this off, not Pat.

The Miami Heat legitimately have one of the worst front offices in the NBA. Absolute negligence

@IraHeatBeat Miami loves getting the most out of the least. But the league just over values draft picks and makes tanking too attractive. Miami’s strategy of player development just aint it unfortunately.

With Pacers' Zubac/Mathurin trade, every team in the East has made a deadline deal . . . except the Heat.

@PaulSkallas Maintains ethnic solidarity yet intermarries at like 70%. The only Jews not assimilating are Hasidic.

@RiotIQ @rjhaier Interesting

🚨New podcast episode🚨 This chat w/@rjhaier covers more ground than any other episode. Topics include: ➡️The newest frontiers in neuroscience & IQ ➡️Whether society is warming up to IQ research ➡️New orgs that advance the field of intelligence Watch: youtube.com/watch?v=2VKBY0…