Nike $NKE - down on all fours The company presented their latest earnings this Monday. I just finished reading the earnings call transcript. Not going to say the dive the stock took was an overreaction. It wasn't. I only read transcripts related to stocks I own and I've been doing it for about 6-7 years. This is probably the saddest earnings call I've ever read. Nike Direct down, Nike Digital down, China down, classic footwear franchises down, I could go on. Nike has more things going down than the average rain cloud. How can this be? As if that's not enough the resigning CEO John Donahoe wasn't even present. What!?!? Embarrassing both for Nike and even more so for John. I don't care how bad it is, considering the position you have and amount of money you're paid, you show up! You show up in business and you show up in life even during dark times. This behaviour is so unlike Nike's ethos or at least what it should be. Could it have been the boards idea? Sure, doesn't make it any better though. Instead poor Matthew Friend, who is CFO, has to handle the presentation and questions alone. Respect to Matthew! New CEO Elliott Hill, who returns to Nike, has 32 years with the company. The guy started as an intern and is soon to be CEO. Mad respect! Hopefully he can turn this around. I think it's still possible to do. It's a great company in many ways with numerous great innovations and franchises. They did it before, they can do it again. Not selling! Massimo Giunco - "Nike: An Epic Saga of Value Destruction" Definitely worth a read not only if you're interested in Nike. Lots of lessons to be learned here which can probably be applied to other companies as well.

Nike: An Epic Saga of Value Destruction

A month ago. June 28th, 2024.

Bloomberg - "The Man Who Made Nike Uncool" (paywall) Good article on Johns stint at Nike.

Bloomberg.com

The Man Who Made Nike Uncool

Instead of transforming the sneaker giant into a high-tech powerhouse, John Donahoe pissed off partners and disappointed fans.

Yahoo Finance & Motley Fool - "Nike Q1 2025 earnings call transcript" One for the history books.

Nike (NKE) Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Hermès Spring/Summer '25 Women's $RMS.PA

Rick Owens Spring/Summer '25 Women's - Hollywood Music by Richard Wagner

Curare - Schneller Pfeil Love this classic on the Harthouse label. They released some amazing music back in the day. #trance

6EJOU & Dion - Face 2 Face at Rotterdam Rave Nobel prize going to these guys for solving nuclear fusion! So much energy here. #techno

#YearOfTheDragon

$META Zuck, Yann and everyone involved do it again!

Llama 3.2: Revolutionizing edge AI and vision with open, customizable models

Today, we’re releasing Llama 3.2, which includes small and medium-sized vision LLMs, and lightweight, text-only models that fit onto edge an...

Tired of AI? ... then the latest episode of ColdFusion is for you. It covers real world applications like regeneration of kelp plants, AI powered prostheses and different kind of assistance within healthcare. Exciting stuff! There's more to this than some funny images. $NVDA #ai #healthcare

Broken Money by @Lyn Alden Almost done with this excellent book. Highly recommend it! Especially enjoyed the third and fourth part. In fact it's so good I bought 2 more copies for 2 of my closest friends. Hopefully they'll both read it. We're very lucky to have Lyn.

Salesforce launch AI agents $NVDA $CRM Salesforce had their Dreamforce conference a couple of hours ago. Do you care? Me neither, but Jensen showed up to talk AI. This due to Salesforce launching Agentforce which is a platform for creating AI agents. Agents for assisting in customer support, sales and other areas. Marc Benioff and Jensen talk Yahoo finance on Salesforce's AI Agents Main keynote

Why don't more charities accept #bitcoin ? About 1,5 months ago I realized most charities don't accept bitcoin. Why is that? Shouldn't this be something they could do with little effort with the possibility of getting more funds for their operations? I got the tip the British Red Cross accepts bitcoin and other crypto. I made a donation that same day. Worth noting, The Red Cross in the country I live in doesn't accept crypto so I guess it's up to each country office. In any case, I decided to write an email to two charities I've donated fiat to before. First one is a national one with a couple of hundred people working for them. They have dedicated people doing the finances, IT and so forth. They are known by more or less everyone. Second one is a local one in my city, I'm guessing about 10 people run the whole operation. Not very known even in my city. I sent both of them the same email. It was professionally written signed with my real name. I asked them how come they don't accept bitcoin for donations. If it was a policy or if it was due to them not having enough time and resources to implement such a solution? If time and resources was a factor, would they accept help pro bono implementing it? I was thinking they could use BitPay, or something similar, since they probably won't get an actual bitcoin wallet and learn all ins and outs of self custody. I could help them implement it. The national one answered after about a month: * They haven't thought about this before. I'm the first one who have asked * They asked if I could donate the bitcoin to a regular brokerage account * Sent me their document on donations where it says stocks, land and other assets are OK to donate but will be sold for fiat money when received. It also included some environment policies. * Need to check with their finance and legal people * Didn't answer or comment on the offer to help them implement Bitpay * I wrote a reply where I expanded on how they could accept bitcoin and how this could lead to more donations * Haven't received any reply after the above one The local charity answered after 6 weeks and one reminder: * Politely turned down the offer for a bitcoin donation due to them not having resources to handle it * Didn't answer or comment on the offer to help them implement Bitpay Unfortunately this is the current state of affairs. I don't think these two examples are unique in any way. I did a similar thing some months ago where I mailed a political party about #bitcoin.

anubisSonOfRa

Getting answers from politicians

3 weeks ago I decided to email the political party which got my vote in the latest election. I wanted to ...

As a bitcoiner I think it's good to keep asking these questions now and then even if the answers are more or less known beforehand. One day they'll come around, I'm sure of it!

We Study Billionaires - Hermès Stock Deep Dive Yesssir! This just dropped. One of their best episodes and I'm not saying that just because $RMS.PA is my largest stock position. Yes, larger than $NVDA $NKE $H $META $MSTR etc. Guest Shree Viswanathan talks about Hermès' history, what luxury principles they've implemented, what makes them unique, growth opportunities, potential risks and much more. Shree has deep knowledge about the company and it shows. I agree with almost everything said. In fact, it could've been me talking, but I'd like to add: Positives * CEO Axel Dumas. Shree touches on this, but it can't be stressed enough. Axel is one great CEO. Listen to an interview or earnings call. He doesn't just do this, he lives this. He won't mess this up. * Small product portfolio given their size. Less risk of excess stock. * Small marketing budget and no celebrities for ad campaigns. They don't pay or give clothes to celebrities to wear on red carpet events. Everyone pays for their Hermès pieces. * Extremely tight control on supply and distribution chain. Risks * Shree mentions reputation as a risk which I agree with. The example mentioned refers to the scandal with a certain crocodile farm which applied horrendous practices. It was later shown this farm had nothing to do with Hermès, but this is the kind of stuff that could change people's perception of the brand. Hermès buys leather from producers so it is a risk. I'm not worried about child/slave labour. I might be I'm naive, but this should be a non issue here. * Losing the aura of exclusivity due to increased sales. If anyone can buy an item it's not longer exclusive. It's as simple as that. The pressure on Hermès to keep growing sales is a real one. So far they've managed to balance this perfectly, but who knows what the future holds? Good luck! Source

The Investor

Hermès Stock Deep Dive w/ Shree Viswanathan

TIP659: HERMÈS STOCK DEEP DIVE W/ SHREE VISWANATHAN 12 September 2024 On today’s episode, Clay is joined by Shree Viswanathan for a st...

Rick Owens designs a mobile studio for rapper Travis Scott. Interesting, didn't know having a designed studio when on tour was a thing. I guess it helps the artist feel comfortable at different locations. Still don't have any furniture from Rick Owens. I need a bigger home and bigger wallet. Not the best photos from Nick Knight but you get the picture of how it's supposed to look.

Architectural Digest

Travis Scott Joins Forces With Rick Owens to Design a Lavish Backstage Sanctuary for His Utopia—Circus Maximus Tour

“I envisioned a space that feels like an extension of my brain,” the rapper exclusively tells AD of his collaboration with the fashion phenom�...

Jensen Huang, big boss at Nvidia, in a navy suit. He also answers some questions about the energy usage by AI, export controls, tariffs, taxes, the next administration and some others. The guy is a class act. $NVDA

Oracle announces world’s first Zettascale cloud cluster! Up to 131,072 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs. Insane! Larry happy. Jensen happy. $NVDA $ORCL https://www.oracle.com/sk/news/announcement/ocw24-oracle-offers-first-zettascale-cloud-computing-cluster-2024-09-11/

Mistral AI strikes again! Pixtral 12 billion parameter model with support for image input.

mistral-community/pixtral-12b-240910 · Hugging Face

We’re on a journey to advance and democratize artificial intelligence through open source and open science.

Kendrick Lamar doing Super Bowl ‘25! The look on Drake’s face when he got the news.

Kendrick Lamar Is 2025 Super Bowl Halftime Show Headliner

Kendrick Lamar will headline the 2025 Apple Music Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show, set to take place Feb. 9 in New Orleans.

Hernö Gin - Highly recommended Not a fan of gin myself, but yesterday me and some friends tried it. I must say I'm impressed. Tried both straight and as an ingredient in drinks.

Bought $NVDA & $MSTR today. For better or worse.

Sakana AI - this is some next level ish They've developed a way to create AI agents who do the whole scientific process from coming up with an idea, writing code, visualise results and summarise it all. OK, sure no, lab work but this is amazing.

Sakana AI

The AI Scientist: Towards Fully Automated Open-Ended Scientific Discovery