Zack

Showing up 20 minutes late to work with a huge ice cream cone

Records, obtained by @detroitnews, show the Washtenaw County prosecutor has used his county gov’t gas card to buy fuel for his travels as he campaigns for attorney general. He says it’s legal because the county provides him unlimited personal travel. detroitnews.com/story/news/pol…

January February Izzo May May

Congratulations to @CoachDustyMay, Elliot Cadeau, and @UMichBBall on winning their first title since 1989! This team dominated the tournament from start to finish. Well deserved. Go Blue!

Coaches to lose a Final Four game by 18+ points (shot clock era, since 1987): * Tom Izzo (twice) * Tom Crean * Steve Fisher * Bob Huggins * Lon Kruger * Mike Krzyzewski * Tommy Lloyd * Kelvin Sampson * Roy Williams

Update:

back in my day, you could watch march madness online for free, and there was a button on the screen called the "Boss Button" that if you clicked, it would make it look like you were working on a spreadsheet.

6 years ago today, we were told to take our laptops home for no reason. Friday March 13th, at 11:30am, we received an email telling us why.

Let's use Michigan/MSU day for something good. Ele's Place serves several communities in both the Ann Arbor and Lansing areas, helping children and families with grieving the loss of a loved one. Consider donating or getting involved, if you can: elesplace.org/get-involved/

How to lobby Trump: A Detroit billionaire opposes a new bridge connecting Michigan with Canada that would compete with one that he owns. On Monday, he met with @HowardLutnick, who then called Trump. Trump then threatened to block the new bridge. nytimes.com/2026/02/10/wor…

Leadership: "AI is so good it writes almost all our code" Status dashboard:

Scoop: Matthew Moroun, the billionaire owner of a bridge connecting Michigan with Canada, met Howard Lutnick on Monday hours before Trump lambasted a competing bridge w/ @MatinaStevis nytimes.com/2026/02/10/wor…

Not enough discussion on here about how at some point this spring we're going to inaugurate a major new bridge (on a new alignment) in the US for the first time in 16 years. Likely the last for many many decades, too

Last quarter I rolled out Microsoft Copilot to 4,000 employees. $30 per seat per month. $1.4 million annually. I called it "digital transformation." The board loved that phrase. They approved it in eleven minutes. No one asked what it would actually do. Including me. I told everyone it would "10x productivity." That's not a real number. But it sounds like one. HR asked how we'd measure the 10x. I said we'd "leverage analytics dashboards." They stopped asking. Three months later I checked the usage reports. 47 people had opened it. 12 had used it more than once. One of them was me. I used it to summarize an email I could have read in 30 seconds. It took 45 seconds. Plus the time it took to fix the hallucinations. But I called it a "pilot success." Success means the pilot didn't visibly fail. The CFO asked about ROI. I showed him a graph. The graph went up and to the right. It measured "AI enablement." I made that metric up. He nodded approvingly. We're "AI-enabled" now. I don't know what that means. But it's in our investor deck. A senior developer asked why we didn't use Claude or ChatGPT. I said we needed "enterprise-grade security." He asked what that meant. I said "compliance." He asked which compliance. I said "all of them." He looked skeptical. I scheduled him for a "career development conversation." He stopped asking questions. Microsoft sent a case study team. They wanted to feature us as a success story. I told them we "saved 40,000 hours." I calculated that number by multiplying employees by a number I made up. They didn't verify it. They never do. Now we're on Microsoft's website. "Global enterprise achieves 40,000 hours of productivity gains with Copilot." The CEO shared it on LinkedIn. He got 3,000 likes. He's never used Copilot. None of the executives have. We have an exemption. "Strategic focus requires minimal digital distraction." I wrote that policy. The licenses renew next month. I'm requesting an expansion. 5,000 more seats. We haven't used the first 4,000. But this time we'll "drive adoption." Adoption means mandatory training. Training means a 45-minute webinar no one watches. But completion will be tracked. Completion is a metric. Metrics go in dashboards. Dashboards go in board presentations. Board presentations get me promoted. I'll be SVP by Q3. I still don't know what Copilot does. But I know what it's for. It's for showing we're "investing in AI." Investment means spending. Spending means commitment. Commitment means we're serious about the future. The future is whatever I say it is. As long as the graph goes up and to the right.

A side note to this: The NERD Fund was mentioned 3 times in speeches on the Michigan Senate floor during the 2013-2014 session. All three times were speeches by then-Sen. Gretchen Whitmer criticizing it.

Nope don’t recall anybody making a big deal of that ever

Remember all of the attention the NERD Fund, the nonprofit fundraising account linked to former Gov. Rick Snyder, got? Here's a quick comparison of its total fundraising to that of the nonprofit tied to current Gov. Gretchen Whitmer:

This is so much funnier now

"So you can't afford a 30-year mortgage, but you're going to take out a 50-year mortgage to pay $300 less a month but pay $500,000 more to the bank by the end of the loan?" "That's correct, Dave."

I guess we just have to keep correcting the record: Mike Duggan didn’t “steer” Detroit through the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. He wasn’t even elected in July 2013 when a state-appointed emergency manager filed for Ch. 9 protection. He was largely sidelined for his first year in office while EM Kevyn Orr (and attorneys at Jones Day) steered the city through bankruptcy negotiations with creditors. Duggan didn’t get full control of City Hall until December 2014 after Detroit exited bankruptcy. nytimes.com/2025/11/04/us/…