I want to tell you about the time I became a real life Doug Stamper.

Doug Stamper’s job was to clean up messes and keep everyone in line, ultimately ensuring Frank could get what he needed to get done.  With a little less crime and deception, but just as much drama (!), I became something of similar nature in 2015 when I was asked to support the country general manager for IBM in Canada.  

My interview for the job consisted the GM asking me if I liked it at IBM...no I did not.  Asking me if I could find him a car in Miami if he needed a car...sure why not?  And asking me if I was ready to follow him around everywhere being his eyes and ears to everything...y-y-yes I was.  Truthfully I had no idea what I was getting myself into, let alone the world I was going to live in for the next 6 months.  

As much as every aspect of my life was now scheduled on a calendar (because his life was all on a calendar) every day was a new adventure.  From briefing him 15 seconds before he had to get on stage to talk to the entire company for half an hour to responding to emails from CEO’s of banks on his behalf, to spending the day taking his car in for servicing, the level of energy and versatility I needed to have daily was nothing like I had ever experienced.  

You are a rock - you hear nothing, you see nothing, you say nothing.

This was the advice given to me when I first started and frankly, it worked.  Oh the secrets I knew and things I found out about the company, it was enough to write my own version of “House of Cards”.   The theme of the times back then was playing chess, not checkers. There was at least one meeting each week where he would be telling someone we needed to play chess, not checkers - think two moves ahead of your competition.  The smarter you played the corporate game, the more likely you were to win (duh).

And we had to BEAT Microsoft and Google (duh).

What I didn’t know is that the corporate world takes the whole playing chess not checkers thing literally. The World Corporate Chess Championship is taking place this weekend in New York City where teams from companies like UBS, Deutsche Bank, Google, and Goldman Sachs will all be competing against each other to try and crown themselves, the World Corporate Champions (of chess).  

It’s kinda funny that corporations use chess as the formal competition to vouch for calling themselves the World Corporate Champion - cliché almost.  What is the most vanilla activity we can use to compete against each other with?  CHESS.  Couldn’t they have done something like, who can make the most money from insider trading?  Or who can cover up their politically incorrect emails the fastest?  Or volleyball? 

(We used to play volleyball at IBM in front of the building, it got very competitive).  

This week's issue is a 3 minute read:

🍎 Apple finally admits they can’t build their own AI

🐩 Soho House but make it for dogs

🏀 Who complains the most in the NBA?

Apple + OpenAI = Apple Intelligence

You probably saw the announcement already this week - essentially ChatGPT is going to be living within your iPhone in the relative near future.  OpenAI has managed to slither into Apple’s world and install their seeds of artificial generative intelligence into the most valuable company in the world (at the time of writing this) creating, Apple Intelligence.  Now read that last sentence over again but with a Cobra Commander voice. 

With this announcement, iPhone users can expect to do things like:

• Ask Siri (yep Siri is still around) questions about things that are already within your phone, like where does Adam live and then you get a map to Adam’s house from the text message he sent

• Use the search bar on your phone to ask questions about what’s on your device like, how many photos of the exact same dog do I have?

• Leverage AI within the apps you already use, like writing an email to someone within the mail app and then asking AI to re-write it in the tone of your choice.

All this to say, AI will be embedded in iPhones for free as an additional reason to own one.  Because Apple didn’t try to put AI into their phones and sell you on it in the past cough Siri cough

Siri reminds me of the coworker at the office who is like middle-aged, joined the company as a young go-getter with real skills, and then everyone kind of forgot about them and now they work there while people wonder, what do they do again?  And then one day the office gives that person a MacBook Pro and they discover how to swipe between windows with their fingers and build presentations in Canva and they’re all of the sudden accepted again.

Siri, you have a lot of thank you cards to write OpenAI now.

Soho House For Dawgs Dogs

At the height of the pandemic,  there were two things people REALLY wanted: a bike and/or a dog.  The amount of people I saw walking dogs through my neighbourhood was PREPOSTEROUS.  The bike riding, not so much.  Heck, I wanted a bike but they basically don’t make bikes for 6’4 people...at least that’s what it felt like when searching for one.  

The whole dog craze has died down but it does not mean people aren’t still spending on their pups - like FR FR spending.  I used to think the doggy daycare thing was a farce given as a kid, we just left our dog home alone all day whenever we needed to go anywhere - as long as she got a walk and didn’t pee in the house we were gucci.  But now dogs are being sent to places like they’re kids to interact with other dogs…like they’re kids.  Which I get, dogs should learn how to be around other dogs without trying to bite and mangle each other.  

Leave it to LA to level up the existence of anything.  

In LA, there’s a place you can take your dog that is being dubbed, the “Soho House for dogs”.  DOG PPL is a members only club where for $120/month, you can bring your dog in to socialize with other dogs and you can socialize with their owners.  But don’t get it twisted, the dogs are the members here and the owners are their guests.  

DOG PPL’s set up includes a lounge and work area, free wifi, free parking, a bar, and social events - so, seriously, picture Soho House and then bring your dog.  But what kind of events do the put on?  Amongst other things, you’ve got trivia night, boot camps (for the owners), and on the last Wednesday of every month they host a Member Mingle where you can meet other owners.  There’s stuff for dogs too but those things mainly sound like bring your dog to eat fancy dog food type of events.  

Would you take your dog to doggy Soho House for $120/month?

Game 4 Tonight!

In a must win game at home, the Dallas Mavericks are currently looking at their championship hopes slip right through their brick-laying fingers.  If you watched the game on Wednesday then yes, there were finally sparks that showed that the Mavericks could actually be the better team after coming back from being down 21 points in the 4th quarter. Except Boston’s just been the much more consistent team in the series.  In all honesty, I didn’t expect Boston to be this dominant the whole series nor did I expect Jaylen Brown to actually play like the highest paid player in the league...arguably the first and most important time to do so all season.

No team has ever come back to win a series after being down 3-0 in the history of the NBA, let alone the NBA finals.  In all nine instances in the finals, the teams down 3-0 were swept four games to none.  Just last year the Celtics forced a game 7 after being down 3-0 to the Heat in the Eastern Conference Finals.  

If you read the New York Times, a big reason, according to them, is that Luka complains too much to the refs. But in my opinion, there’s far worse players in the league that complain too much. Also Luka is damn good, I think he’s earned that respect.

Let me convince you otherwise and give you my top 3 complainers in the NBA:

When trusting the process goes wrong, it goes REALLY wrong. And then you complain about it, a lot. This guy hurts people and then complains about the foul call face palm.

Any list that involves ejections, complaining…violence…has to include Draymond:

And lastly, the KING…of complaining to the referees. The fun part (because I AM NOT A FAN) is there’s a few times where LeBron is standing there complaining to the ref as the game goes on and his team totally gets beat:

Until next week…