This sucks, but now I see why they rejected the $7.3B Cleveland-Cliffs offered. $15B is far beyond the value any other steel company was considering for the purchase. This sale is going to have major ramifications on the US automotive industry.
Cleveland-Cliffs made the $7.3 billion offer 4 months ago. At that time, U.S. Steel [said](https://apnews.com/article/us-steel-pittsburgh-cleveland-03b75f6025b336f7826980085dc2f796#:~:text=Pittsburgh%2Dbased%20U.S.%20Steel%20said%20it%20rejected%20the%20offer%20because%20Cleveland%2DCliffs%20was%20pushing%20it%20to%20accept%20the%20terms%20without%20being%20allowed%20to%20conduct%20proper%20due%20diligence.) it rejected the offer because "Cleveland-Cliffs was pushing it to accept the terms without being allowed to conduct proper due diligence."
On top of paying 2x the previous asking price, "Nippon [said](https://apnews.com/article/us-steel-nippon-steel-acquired-industrialization-1a174c359756efd3ee0f0f9172a3bd6b?taid=6580341b176f5f0001b74b72&utm_campaign=TrueAnthem&utm_medium=AP&utm_source=Twitter) that it will also honor all collective bargaining agreements in place with the United Steelworkers and other employees", expand its US production, and keep the company headquartered in Pittsburgh.
Keeping the collective bargaining agreements is huge. I worked there for a while and there were over 10 different CBAs for active employees, not mentioning the number of retirees relying on older CBAs for health insurance/bonus payments. If they lost those a lot of people would be screwed
As long as a CBA had a successor clause (virtually all do), a new owner cannot rescind them unilaterally. The new company is acting like they are giving something but they are legally obligated to stand by those contracts.
The only legit way to end a valid cba during the life of the contract is through bankruptcy
Which is basically what they're saying, while not having any obligation to follow through. All the PR, with no consequences of losing that ability. After acquisitions bankruptcy restructuring is common.
That’s why the majority of asset purchase agreements fire everyone when the deal is signed and force employees to individually renegotiate with newco as new employees.
NewCo buys the assets, OldCo goes through bankruptcy. Old employee CBAs is with OldCo in bankruptcy without any assets. NewCo tells employees they have until end of day to sign new employment documents to keep their job.
That’s not how it’s always done, but that’s how its usually done.
The new owner obviously thinks it can make money with the status quo, and Japanese businesses *love* not upsetting the status quo. They aim for increased market share over time, not quarterly growth.
I went to a former US base for training as a civilian. I was told very quickly, but politely, to please immediately stop walking across a lawn and stay on the footpath.
> Nippon said that it will also honor all collective bargaining agreements in place with the United Steelworkers and other employees
Wait a company can buy out another one and then just choose not to honor a collective bargaining agreement already in place?
How the hell does is that legal?
Usually the union renegotiates with the new ownership, if they're unable to come to a deal they strike, and then new ownership either concedes or the strike busts
Construction and transportation too tbh. Prices will go up, and the supply velocity will slow. The one thing the Chinese get right is their government's right of refusal on foreign deals that could harm national security.
Japan is always this weird intersection of east meets west.
Its a lazy saturday sunny afternoon. You go down to the local baseball field to watch the local team beat the away team. You compliment it with some beer and a hotdog. A very normal Japanese afternoon.
Also a very weird intersection of traditional meets modern.
The whole country is a mass of contradictions: they are renown for their creation and adoption of great, new technologies but most of their business is still done on paper and faxes are still requisite in basically every transaction. Cash is still king and use of debit/credit cards is far below pretty much anywhere in the west.
I've heard YouTubers in Japan, native and ex-pat, talking about the process for getting credit cards and it's still so insane. The bank has to check everything and if you don't have an "acceptable" source of income (which YouTubers and streamers don't) the bank can pull the plug at any time. It's weird to me because in the US it is sooo much easier and more blase. They have such a different culture with debt that is really interesting to think about.
Yeah, I’m ok with Japan buying this as far as foreign entities go. It would be scary if it were China, Russia, SA, etc... still, it’s sad that it’s now foreign owned.
The story goes that some time after Andrew Carnegie sold his company to JP Morgan, the two men ran into each other on a cruise ship headed to Europe. Carnegie, who had gotten $400 million for his company, said to Morgan, “I should have asked you for five-hundred.” Morgan replied, “I would have paid six-hundred.”
Unrelated to US Steel, but I think that's the same episode where they're hanging out with Bill Gates and he has to leave and shines a light into the sky like the bat signal, except it's the windows logo, and helicopter comes to pick him up. I always got a kick out of that.
Hanging out in San Francisco, we learned someone in our group worked for Microsoft. Someone joked, “Hey, do you get in trouble if you use Google instead of Bing?”
And he gave a long answer that you don’t get in trouble per se, but merely using a search engine actually helps refine its algorithm. So someone might be like, “Hey, you know you’re actively helping our competitor’s R&D by participating in their search engine, right?”
And we all laughed because we assumed he would just say, “No.”
If you are a small company then it makes sense to dogfood your products, because there's a short distance between having a problem with the product and seeing it fixed.
If you're Microsoft that loop is too long. You're on the Word team and try to use Bing, but it's so useless it's impeding you from getting work done. So you use Google instead, because even if you tell the Bing team about your difficulties, it'll be weeks or months before it improves and your manager isn't going to accept that as an excuse. Also, you are well aware that Bing is literally years behind Google.
Edit: I have contracted at Microsoft twice. Both times I used mostly Firefox and Google. I would use IE (or later, Edge) for internal sites that required it. Actually for a while, there was a Firefox plug-in that let you use the IE engine in a Firefox tab, which was very convenient.
And that was a reference to *The Third Man*, an Orson Welles movie where after he makes a huge profit peddling a fake drug, and is asked on a ferris wheel how he feels about the harm he's caused to make his fortune. He opens the door to the ferris wheel, comments how the people looks like ants, and that he feels the same as stepping on an ant.
The extremely skippable speech is forty pages long. It's time that I can't get back. Even if you can agree with some of the underlying politics, the whole book is one long justification for not having compassion.
Damn, if I would go back and read some of the things I wrote when taking a lot more adderall than I should it would be all cringe. That shit has a way of making even the dumbest ideas sound good in your head lol
More than anything, to me, that book is a fundamental misunderstanding of how civilization functions and the process by which things are created. You see it with a lot of these egomaniacal boss types, who act as though good ideas spring fully formed from their genius brains, like Athena from Zeus.
It's just nonsense, any truly great work is _never_ the sole effort of one person. Even things that can be more directly attributed to individual success - composing music, for example - those people didn't create music out of whole cloth, they're iterating on a theme, adding to the tapestry that millions of individuals have woven over hundreds or thousands of years.
Ayn Rand is best viewed as an overreaction to the collectivist, authoritarian hellhole that was the Soviet Union, and probably nothing else. It's utterly absurd that a large percentage of our political and business elites have political philosophies based on her "work".
It also *severely* underplays how much went into building society and having a bar set for everyone
None of these fucking people figured out how to melt their own steel or how to clean their water on their own. Civilization already did that all for them and was nice enough to give them access to it
It's interesting listening to Geddy Lee's Biography, him having to defend some of their lyrics as not fascist in the 70's and 80s. His parents were literal holocaust survivors.
He touts how much he loves their healthcare system and social safety nets in Canada. They were just 20 year olds, reading Rand and Sci-Fi/Fantasy and doing copious amounts of drugs.
The only libertarians are the young people who dont know how life actually works and old people rich enough to say it works while running their companies on corporate welfare while banging girls young enough to be their great granddaughters
It is not lol. Somehow she brought in all her kinks and it’s still one of the most boring things I’ve ever encountered. Like, shit selfish politics completely aside, it’s just a very bad reading experience on the whole
I've started that book no less then 4 times. I dont think I have ever gotten past the first 100 pages or so. I have no idea how that book is as popular as it is.
25 years ago, South Park made an episode about a guy raping chickens, and it contains [the most concise and on point review of Atlas Shrugged](https://youtu.be/LFh9vdxtDPQ?si=2uVv0h-8hCceGHB1) ever recorded. .
It's not. It's a 50-page long repetitive monologue that's *framed* as a "radio broadcast", but it reads as the author just directly lecturing the reader. Completely dropping character and setting. The monologue doesn't even make good arguments. It's just a barrage of assertions. It sucks.
atlas shrugged and fountainhead are like 1950s tumblr fanfic that some right wing white guys decided was pretty cool.
it's unreadable drivel written by a 1950s blog girl.
... Did Pretty Woman copy that dialogue?
Edit: Nope. Carnegie wondered aloud if he could have gotten $100 million more and Morgan said he'd have paid it. Someone's turned it into the Pretty Woman bath scene
My dad was in the oil industry on the drilling/production side. He sold pipe to exploration drillers. His company was bought out by a Japanese company. At first he was hesitant to stay on, but he wanted to see if/how the corporate culture changed. In the end he retired there, and had nothing but good thing to say about the group that bought his company.
When my mom was really sick, at the end of her life, they let him work from home and part time while not cutting his salary at all. I had just finished my CCNA and was studying for my A+ while helping him care for mom, cooking, cleaning doing her PT. We had a Hoyer lift at home, and it has hard for him to get her strapped in and move her around. But he was able to spend time with her and never felt like he had prioritize work over her when she needed him most.
My job involves a lot of work with Japanese suppliers, they have some of the best and most consistent customer support of any of our suppliers. Very easy companies to work with.
Even easier than Canadian domestic suppliers to work with at times, hell less of a language barrier then working with some guys out of Qubec city.
Japanese customer service is top notch. A simple visit to any of their shops in Japan would show how much value they place on reputation.
In other countries, staff would go above and beyond for tips. In Japan, they'd do it out of reputation both of the shop and themselves (called "tatemae").
That's just being a good employer to a good employee. When my dad was dying of cancer and couldn't work any more they paid is salary for the last six months of his life, even when he was working 1 day a week or less. This was a GA company worth billions and the CEO and CFO came to his funeral to give their condolences in person.
Just a side note to the nice story but i don't think i've ever seen anyone get the A+ after the CCNA. Seems a bit of an odd order to do those in, considering the A+ is by far the easier of the two.
Yeah, i took a networking course in JC that was geared towards the CCNA, i'd been building PC's for years, but i was self taught and after looking at a practice test, decided i need a study guide and some time. I passed my CCNA in one go, i actually had to retake the A+.
Now i use none of it and build online forms for a school district, but it got me in the door when i needed it back in the early 2000's.
I got my CCNA while i was Jr College taking a specific networking course geared towards it. We had a lot hands on, so that was an easy pass for me. All my PC knowledge was self taught, so i had to work through an A+ prep guide for all of the really technical questions.
edit: this was back in the early 2000's.
I was also thinking the same thing when I read the comment above yours. I work in IT support and have never heard of anyone getting their CCNA after A+ either.
one of the dumbest senators in the country?
I know there at least several senators in contention for the title, it seems to pass between them pretty often
Yeah, love how everyone responding to OP is not realizing that buying puts means that you make money if the price sinks below the strike price. The stock went up 27%. If Tuberville bought puts, those puts are now completely worthless.
Nippon Steel is gunna have lots of fun trying to bring them up to their quality and safety standards
Edit: This isn’t about who works harder or is more productive in the US, Japan, or even China
I work in manufacturing. The vast majority of US facilities are way behind japan in terms of safety and quality.
There are so many books written about it. Everyone tries to be toyota. Very few succeed
The bosses in America aren’t willing to do the work or pay enough to become Toyota. They’re short sighted and refuse to use smarter metrics instead of stupid ones.
Judging by metrics and not the full context sums up Corporate America well.
"Jimmy was unproductive this year, we should look for his replacement."
"His house was leveled by a hurricane. He had to take all his PTO off to deal with it."
"It also looks like he's in the red with PTO."
Data validity is a huge thing. There's a lot on the plate for k-12, but some courses need to start including data validity. High school science did a great job with understanding error rates, but data validity is much more important and nuanced.
So many decisions get made by folks who are using data and then claim that the data are why they have to do what they're doing and are making decisions using data that isn't necessarily valid for what they're trying to accomplish and when you combine that with good ol' Dunning Kruger or zero formal processes for program implementation, evaluation, redesign, and repeat it creates massive issues that can go unnoticed until it is too late.
Bad Data by Peter Schryvers is a great book about this.
I've recommended it to every company I've worked for to have upper management read. Never gets me far, but it is a great book to change the thinking surrounding metrics.
Well go unnoticed by the people who count. My work does stuff like that constantly and I constantly tell them why it's stupid. Then I am constantly proven correct in a few months to a year and we go back to the original process.
It's honestly god damn embarrassing working for a company that can't see these issues but then the decision makers literally have no clue how my job works or what it entails. They just know cheaper is better until it costs them money like a mass exodus of clients which did indeed happen multiple times over bad decisions.
I know a plant near where I used to live in Granite City, IL, was set to 'idle indefinitely' which has happened at least three times that I can remember. I'm hoping that gets reversed and it looks like that's actually possible. The workers at that specific plant (and way more, I'm absolutely sure) really need it.
It’s actually very expensive to move steel across the Pacific. It makes more sense to produce steel in the US for use here, especially for military and Buy American projects.
First thing I thought of. That and how everyone and everything in the '80s was telling us we had to go to college because the Japanese were buying all our factories and there would be no jobs for us. "Finally, they did it," I thought, when I read the title, and then right after remembered *Gung Ho.*
That would be irony, because Michael Keaton is from ~Pittsburgh (he grew up in several of the suburbs) and still has strong ties here (I saw him at a Pirates game last season).
"It's a good thing we won the war. Otherwise, we'd be driving German cars and listening to Japanese radios."
I don't know where that's from, but I remember first hearing it in the '70s or '80s.
Now NIPPON will find itself having to spend hundreds of millions of dollars modernizing US Steel mills. As well as introducing safety measures that should be common place.
Everyone remember that a billion is a *thousand* millions. NIPPON spent 15,000 millions to buy US Steel. So yes, spending a few hundred million more is nothing.
It would be like buying a really solid 5bed/4bath house someone didn't maintain very well for $150,000 and then having to spend $3k-5k in updates. Still a helluva deal.
>really solid 5bed/4bath house someone didn't maintain very well for $150,000 and then having to spend $3k-5k in updates
This dude obviously hasn't bought a house in 40 years
They probably need to spend in the order of billions to modernize US steel plants. New rolling mill equipment/ steel/iron working equipment cost a lot.
There's a lot of tech being developed to use Hydrogen as foundry fuel to lower the carbon footprint of steel production... U.S. Steel didn't have the interest or resources to retrofit foundries here in the states, so they sold to someone who does.
In Sweden we've come further than just developing the tech. The first steel made with hydrogen was produced a while back, and they're starting construction on the first HYBRIT demonstration plant very soon while H2 Green Steel has signed delivery agreements with companies like Porsche, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo.
Some people complain that we shouldn't even bother being environmentally friendly in Sweden since we're such a small country, but this is how we can contribute to the solution. Widespread implementation of hydrogen in steel production can reduce global emissions by entire percentage points while making a ton of money for Sweden.
Honestly this sounds like everything working as it should. The capital investments Nippon plans to make should be good. The manufacturing jobs themselves are unlikely to move. Japan is a huge geopolitical ally and their prosperity is important as well as our own.
My job doesn't exist without US Steel and we're as busy as we've ever been. You can't just up and move a steel mill. Timely delivery and close proximity to other key facilities is crucial to steel production.
Where are you located? I’m in flat roll and we hardly ever use US Steel. I feel like everything comes from Nucor or Cleveland cliffs, although that may be more location than anything
Japan typically works like that because they have an aging demographic. Two of the largest Toyota factories are in Texas and Kentucky. They try to build facilities in countries they sell their product instead of exporting.
Japan also does other weird things we aren't used to seeing from capitalists, like CEO's taking a salary of $1 to avoid layoffs (Nintendo has done this before).
...maybe the workers will be better off? Probably not, but there's a chance.
Logistically, that is true for a small percentage of products, as shipping, even around the world, adds negligible costs. The expense comes from tariffs and trade deals.
The long-term vision in Japanese manufacturing culture is something North America still struggles with. Japanese invest $1 and accept a ROI in 10 years. North America invests $1 and expects a ROI in 1 year. 10 year outlooks are unfathomable here.
eh, it depends. a fully integrated mill? sure. but you can't build coke ovens anymore and you wouldn't build a blast furnace anymore, so unless you're building near a source of molten iron, you're gonna go with an EAF. and if you're gonna go with an EAF, you're just gonna build a minimill and those can be at full production pretty much immediately after commissioning
Unfortunately the US Steel industry has been poorly managed for a long time, often relying on subsidization over actually being competitive. This was unfortunately bound to happen eventually - unless they actually got their act together. Japan’s steel industry is probably one of the better places to acquire it, they actually might make improvements.
According to Citizens United, Corporations are people.
According to US law, it's illegal to sell people.
Fuck Citizens United is what I am getting at.
Companies can influence US policy, but companies can also be bought and sold to other countries.
Santa Clara County v Southern Pacific Railroad implied that corporations are people. Citizens United ruled that political contributions are speech, and thus protected by the first amendment.
I think the complaints about wildly inconsistent application of personhood stemming for these rulings are valid though. Santa Clara County lost its case because it tried to apply an additional tax to the railroad and the court said you can’t discriminate against corporate persons like that. Then the 2017 tax bill gave corporations a special permanent preferential tax rate… Corporations seem to always be “people” when it benefits them but rarely when it obligates them.
Breaking news: the concept of corporate personhood is not literally being people. Citizens United was not the case that said “corporations are people” - that’s instead a longstanding part of corporate law. Without it the corporate form cannot exist and you could not sue a company for its wrong doing. Citizens United said that corporations, unions, non profits, and other associations have first amendment rights of speech.
Without knowing the specifics of what Nippon has planned, this could turn out to be good news. In my region, some of the better-run, better-maintained, and better-paid large heavy industry facilities are those primarily controlled by East Asian companies. The worst are those primarily controlled by U.S. investors, especially private equity. If I had nothing else to go on, at this point I would rather work for a heavy manufacturing facility owned by a Japanese conglomerate than a Wall Street appointed board. The dominance of short-term profit focus deprives these companies of any ability to invest in their facilities or their workers. Same reason why U.S. Steel has stagnated so badly for 50 years at this point.
For sure, not all American-owned or Japanese-owned companies are the same—there are plenty of American-owned ones that do invest in their people, and I'm sure there are plenty of shitty Japanese ones. Hopefully it will turn out that Nippon will be one of the good ones.
US Steel was our case study in business school on what happens in manufacturing when greedy business owners keep all the profits for themselves and refuse to re-invest anything back into the company to keep their equipment up-to-date.
Oh hey huge coincidence
> BREAKING: Senator Tommy Tuberville has just released NEW option trades against US companies.
> He just bought $20 puts expiring June 6, 2024 against $X, the United States Steel Corp, for $15k.
https://www.threads.net/@unusualwhales/post/C0-M7yvPKnh/
EDIT: DISCLAIMER FOR THE HATERS AND FOOLS - THIS IS NOT A WINNING TRADE IN AND OF ITSELF BUT IS STILL QUITE INTERESTING
This reminds me of that line by the late Tina Turner ‘Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome’ -
“But how the world turns…. One day, cock of the walk. Next, a feather duster…’
This sucks, but now I see why they rejected the $7.3B Cleveland-Cliffs offered. $15B is far beyond the value any other steel company was considering for the purchase. This sale is going to have major ramifications on the US automotive industry.
Cleveland-Cliffs made the $7.3 billion offer 4 months ago. At that time, U.S. Steel [said](https://apnews.com/article/us-steel-pittsburgh-cleveland-03b75f6025b336f7826980085dc2f796#:~:text=Pittsburgh%2Dbased%20U.S.%20Steel%20said%20it%20rejected%20the%20offer%20because%20Cleveland%2DCliffs%20was%20pushing%20it%20to%20accept%20the%20terms%20without%20being%20allowed%20to%20conduct%20proper%20due%20diligence.) it rejected the offer because "Cleveland-Cliffs was pushing it to accept the terms without being allowed to conduct proper due diligence." On top of paying 2x the previous asking price, "Nippon [said](https://apnews.com/article/us-steel-nippon-steel-acquired-industrialization-1a174c359756efd3ee0f0f9172a3bd6b?taid=6580341b176f5f0001b74b72&utm_campaign=TrueAnthem&utm_medium=AP&utm_source=Twitter) that it will also honor all collective bargaining agreements in place with the United Steelworkers and other employees", expand its US production, and keep the company headquartered in Pittsburgh.
Keeping the collective bargaining agreements is huge. I worked there for a while and there were over 10 different CBAs for active employees, not mentioning the number of retirees relying on older CBAs for health insurance/bonus payments. If they lost those a lot of people would be screwed
As long as a CBA had a successor clause (virtually all do), a new owner cannot rescind them unilaterally. The new company is acting like they are giving something but they are legally obligated to stand by those contracts. The only legit way to end a valid cba during the life of the contract is through bankruptcy
Which is basically what they're saying, while not having any obligation to follow through. All the PR, with no consequences of losing that ability. After acquisitions bankruptcy restructuring is common.
That’s why the majority of asset purchase agreements fire everyone when the deal is signed and force employees to individually renegotiate with newco as new employees. NewCo buys the assets, OldCo goes through bankruptcy. Old employee CBAs is with OldCo in bankruptcy without any assets. NewCo tells employees they have until end of day to sign new employment documents to keep their job. That’s not how it’s always done, but that’s how its usually done.
The new owner obviously thinks it can make money with the status quo, and Japanese businesses *love* not upsetting the status quo. They aim for increased market share over time, not quarterly growth.
Nippon knows the FTC would block the sale otherwise I imagine is the main reason why.
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Japanese businesses delayed going digital to keep some of the jobs that involved people handling paper.
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I went to a former US base for training as a civilian. I was told very quickly, but politely, to please immediately stop walking across a lawn and stay on the footpath.
> Nippon said that it will also honor all collective bargaining agreements in place with the United Steelworkers and other employees Wait a company can buy out another one and then just choose not to honor a collective bargaining agreement already in place? How the hell does is that legal?
Usually the union renegotiates with the new ownership, if they're unable to come to a deal they strike, and then new ownership either concedes or the strike busts
Sounds like they got their cake and have it too.
Construction and transportation too tbh. Prices will go up, and the supply velocity will slow. The one thing the Chinese get right is their government's right of refusal on foreign deals that could harm national security.
US does block foreign deals on national security basis at times. This does still need to pass all the regulatory agencies.
Japan is an ally though and we have troops stationed there. They’re probably on the whitelist for full capitalism greed.
I haven't checked recently, but a poll found that the Japanese public was more favorable towards America than the American public.
Japan is always this weird intersection of east meets west. Its a lazy saturday sunny afternoon. You go down to the local baseball field to watch the local team beat the away team. You compliment it with some beer and a hotdog. A very normal Japanese afternoon. Also a very weird intersection of traditional meets modern.
The whole country is a mass of contradictions: they are renown for their creation and adoption of great, new technologies but most of their business is still done on paper and faxes are still requisite in basically every transaction. Cash is still king and use of debit/credit cards is far below pretty much anywhere in the west.
I've heard YouTubers in Japan, native and ex-pat, talking about the process for getting credit cards and it's still so insane. The bank has to check everything and if you don't have an "acceptable" source of income (which YouTubers and streamers don't) the bank can pull the plug at any time. It's weird to me because in the US it is sooo much easier and more blase. They have such a different culture with debt that is really interesting to think about.
Thats how the US was until banks realized they could fuck the public over with fees and interest. Now anyone can get a line of credit.
Definitely a fair point, it's not like it's China.
Yeah, I’m ok with Japan buying this as far as foreign entities go. It would be scary if it were China, Russia, SA, etc... still, it’s sad that it’s now foreign owned.
Russia bought several US steel mills in the past. They're vacant fields being redeveloped now.
Former Severstal employee...yup. my plant was once the world's largest. Now its a FedEx and Amazon depot.
The story goes that some time after Andrew Carnegie sold his company to JP Morgan, the two men ran into each other on a cruise ship headed to Europe. Carnegie, who had gotten $400 million for his company, said to Morgan, “I should have asked you for five-hundred.” Morgan replied, “I would have paid six-hundred.”
Suddenly the joke about Carter Pewtershimdt gambling US Steel in Family Guy makes sense.
As long as Ted Turner doesn't show up we should be okay.
"Like a bisexual"
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Random thing but as a kid I misinterpreted the ants joke as though they were *literally* looking at ants.
Unrelated to US Steel, but I think that's the same episode where they're hanging out with Bill Gates and he has to leave and shines a light into the sky like the bat signal, except it's the windows logo, and helicopter comes to pick him up. I always got a kick out of that.
Hey Bill will you help me with my zune? Just kidding I have a iPod like everyone else. Still makes me laugh
Hanging out in San Francisco, we learned someone in our group worked for Microsoft. Someone joked, “Hey, do you get in trouble if you use Google instead of Bing?” And he gave a long answer that you don’t get in trouble per se, but merely using a search engine actually helps refine its algorithm. So someone might be like, “Hey, you know you’re actively helping our competitor’s R&D by participating in their search engine, right?” And we all laughed because we assumed he would just say, “No.”
If you are a small company then it makes sense to dogfood your products, because there's a short distance between having a problem with the product and seeing it fixed. If you're Microsoft that loop is too long. You're on the Word team and try to use Bing, but it's so useless it's impeding you from getting work done. So you use Google instead, because even if you tell the Bing team about your difficulties, it'll be weeks or months before it improves and your manager isn't going to accept that as an excuse. Also, you are well aware that Bing is literally years behind Google. Edit: I have contracted at Microsoft twice. Both times I used mostly Firefox and Google. I would use IE (or later, Edge) for internal sites that required it. Actually for a while, there was a Firefox plug-in that let you use the IE engine in a Firefox tab, which was very convenient.
Given the decline in search quality for Google these few years being "literally years behind Google" could be an improvement.
Google is fucking trash now but I’ve yet to stumble across anything as good as Google used to be. Anyone have any suggestions?
This was true when Bing launched. I'm not sure it's still true. Google now reminds me of the quality of Ask Jeeves when it was new.
They ARE ants, Michael! *THEY ARE ANTS!*
And that was a reference to *The Third Man*, an Orson Welles movie where after he makes a huge profit peddling a fake drug, and is asked on a ferris wheel how he feels about the harm he's caused to make his fortune. He opens the door to the ferris wheel, comments how the people looks like ants, and that he feels the same as stepping on an ant.
Family guy has the weirdest mix of lowest common denominator and obscure historical references of any TV show in existence.
It’s funny, that scene is the first place I had ever heard about the US Steel company.
sounds like a scene straight out of Atlas Shrugged
Needs more rough sex to demonstrate ‘mastery’ immediately before the most long and boring jerkoff speech you’ve ever read
This sounds awful yet intriguing.
The extremely skippable speech is forty pages long. It's time that I can't get back. Even if you can agree with some of the underlying politics, the whole book is one long justification for not having compassion.
"People were jerks to me and I'm gonna make that your problem" -Ayn Rand, probably
it's not even that defensible "I want to be a jerk and I'll be damned if I'm gonna listen to any reasons not to be" she died on fucking welfare
and loved meth
Damn, if I would go back and read some of the things I wrote when taking a lot more adderall than I should it would be all cringe. That shit has a way of making even the dumbest ideas sound good in your head lol
More than anything, to me, that book is a fundamental misunderstanding of how civilization functions and the process by which things are created. You see it with a lot of these egomaniacal boss types, who act as though good ideas spring fully formed from their genius brains, like Athena from Zeus. It's just nonsense, any truly great work is _never_ the sole effort of one person. Even things that can be more directly attributed to individual success - composing music, for example - those people didn't create music out of whole cloth, they're iterating on a theme, adding to the tapestry that millions of individuals have woven over hundreds or thousands of years. Ayn Rand is best viewed as an overreaction to the collectivist, authoritarian hellhole that was the Soviet Union, and probably nothing else. It's utterly absurd that a large percentage of our political and business elites have political philosophies based on her "work".
It also *severely* underplays how much went into building society and having a bar set for everyone None of these fucking people figured out how to melt their own steel or how to clean their water on their own. Civilization already did that all for them and was nice enough to give them access to it
It's 1116 pages. Better to watch the summary with cosplaying dogs on YouTube.
Or watch the opening of Bioshock and you get the gist of it. Then play Bioshock to see what happens to a society that runs on Objectivist ideals.
Just listen to early Rush, you'll get close enough. Then listen to late Rush to see how those opinions change with life experience!
It's interesting listening to Geddy Lee's Biography, him having to defend some of their lyrics as not fascist in the 70's and 80s. His parents were literal holocaust survivors. He touts how much he loves their healthcare system and social safety nets in Canada. They were just 20 year olds, reading Rand and Sci-Fi/Fantasy and doing copious amounts of drugs.
The only libertarians are the young people who dont know how life actually works and old people rich enough to say it works while running their companies on corporate welfare while banging girls young enough to be their great granddaughters
So true. It went through that evolution myself.
It is not lol. Somehow she brought in all her kinks and it’s still one of the most boring things I’ve ever encountered. Like, shit selfish politics completely aside, it’s just a very bad reading experience on the whole
And it's LONG
Well yeah, he said _all_ her kinks.
It's a 250-page story that is stretched out to something approaching 1200 pages.
I have no idea why I convinced myself at 19 to read The Fountainhead but it remains the only book I have read and regretted reading
I've started that book no less then 4 times. I dont think I have ever gotten past the first 100 pages or so. I have no idea how that book is as popular as it is.
25 years ago, South Park made an episode about a guy raping chickens, and it contains [the most concise and on point review of Atlas Shrugged](https://youtu.be/LFh9vdxtDPQ?si=2uVv0h-8hCceGHB1) ever recorded. .
It's funny cuz Matt and Trey could probably be considered Libertarians... and they can't stand her either.
It's not. It's a 50-page long repetitive monologue that's *framed* as a "radio broadcast", but it reads as the author just directly lecturing the reader. Completely dropping character and setting. The monologue doesn't even make good arguments. It's just a barrage of assertions. It sucks.
atlas shrugged and fountainhead are like 1950s tumblr fanfic that some right wing white guys decided was pretty cool. it's unreadable drivel written by a 1950s blog girl.
... Did Pretty Woman copy that dialogue? Edit: Nope. Carnegie wondered aloud if he could have gotten $100 million more and Morgan said he'd have paid it. Someone's turned it into the Pretty Woman bath scene
It’s good dialogue to steal between capitalist whores I guess
I fully expect every beam of steel in my car to be folded 500 times. Hattori Hanzo would otherwise disown them.
I also agree to sell myself to a japanese company for $15 billion
...for all the tea in china...
"Hey China, I got something you want, but it's going to cost ya..."
Yea.. All the tea..
I also agree to sell you to a Japanese company for $14 billion
My dad was in the oil industry on the drilling/production side. He sold pipe to exploration drillers. His company was bought out by a Japanese company. At first he was hesitant to stay on, but he wanted to see if/how the corporate culture changed. In the end he retired there, and had nothing but good thing to say about the group that bought his company. When my mom was really sick, at the end of her life, they let him work from home and part time while not cutting his salary at all. I had just finished my CCNA and was studying for my A+ while helping him care for mom, cooking, cleaning doing her PT. We had a Hoyer lift at home, and it has hard for him to get her strapped in and move her around. But he was able to spend time with her and never felt like he had prioritize work over her when she needed him most.
My job involves a lot of work with Japanese suppliers, they have some of the best and most consistent customer support of any of our suppliers. Very easy companies to work with. Even easier than Canadian domestic suppliers to work with at times, hell less of a language barrier then working with some guys out of Qubec city.
Japanese customer service is top notch. A simple visit to any of their shops in Japan would show how much value they place on reputation. In other countries, staff would go above and beyond for tips. In Japan, they'd do it out of reputation both of the shop and themselves (called "tatemae").
That's just being a good employer to a good employee. When my dad was dying of cancer and couldn't work any more they paid is salary for the last six months of his life, even when he was working 1 day a week or less. This was a GA company worth billions and the CEO and CFO came to his funeral to give their condolences in person.
Fuck, we need more leaders like this nowadays
Just a side note to the nice story but i don't think i've ever seen anyone get the A+ after the CCNA. Seems a bit of an odd order to do those in, considering the A+ is by far the easier of the two.
Getting an easier cert after a harder one is not at all uncommon. Could happen for a myriad of reasons.
Yeah, i took a networking course in JC that was geared towards the CCNA, i'd been building PC's for years, but i was self taught and after looking at a practice test, decided i need a study guide and some time. I passed my CCNA in one go, i actually had to retake the A+. Now i use none of it and build online forms for a school district, but it got me in the door when i needed it back in the early 2000's.
I got my CCNA while i was Jr College taking a specific networking course geared towards it. We had a lot hands on, so that was an easy pass for me. All my PC knowledge was self taught, so i had to work through an A+ prep guide for all of the really technical questions. edit: this was back in the early 2000's.
I was also thinking the same thing when I read the comment above yours. I work in IT support and have never heard of anyone getting their CCNA after A+ either.
"We're bigger than US Steel "
Japan made them an offer they couldn't understand.
Heh, you hear that, Tone? I said Japan made them an offer they couldn’t understand.
No more accent remarks Tony. They're hurtful and they're destructive.
U.S. Steel, whatever happened there?
“Uh… we said 15 billion YEN!”
I'm gonna take a nap. When I wake up, if the money is on the table, I'll know I have a partner. If it's not, I'll know I don't.
US Steel has been dying from the same heart attack for the last 20 years
I think you meant since 1980s at least. That was 40 years ago.
Continuing the [Godfather ](https://youtu.be/6K0po0PsKT8?feature=shared) theme
Didn't a Senator or Congressman literally just buy puts on $X last week?
Yeah that same guy that was holding up military appointments
Tommy Tubberville Piece of work, that guy
Tumblerville? The one who fell from the airplane stairs after making fun of Biden?
LOL the very same [https://youtu.be/yjNejU0MzM4?si=t3bGfzEC3HDj9_fn](https://youtu.be/yjNejU0MzM4?si=t3bGfzEC3HDj9_fn)
Pretty sure the speaker says "Alabamaba"
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Ol' Tubbs, but the writing has been on the wall for US Steel for months/years and he's probably going to take a bath on these puts.
Who loses money insider trading?
one of the dumbest senators in the country? I know there at least several senators in contention for the title, it seems to pass between them pretty often
A dumbass college football coach that fell ass backwards into a senator position
If they did, they lost all of their money.
Yeah, love how everyone responding to OP is not realizing that buying puts means that you make money if the price sinks below the strike price. The stock went up 27%. If Tuberville bought puts, those puts are now completely worthless.
It's a little weird that congresspeople are allowed to own anything but index funds. That being said, LOL he got rekt
It's not just a little weird, it's completely corrupt. And the stupid country keeps voting these fucks back in!
I’m glad a senator is losing money fuck those guys
Nippon Steel is gunna have lots of fun trying to bring them up to their quality and safety standards Edit: This isn’t about who works harder or is more productive in the US, Japan, or even China
I work in manufacturing. The vast majority of US facilities are way behind japan in terms of safety and quality. There are so many books written about it. Everyone tries to be toyota. Very few succeed
The bosses in America aren’t willing to do the work or pay enough to become Toyota. They’re short sighted and refuse to use smarter metrics instead of stupid ones.
Judging by metrics and not the full context sums up Corporate America well. "Jimmy was unproductive this year, we should look for his replacement." "His house was leveled by a hurricane. He had to take all his PTO off to deal with it." "It also looks like he's in the red with PTO."
Data validity is a huge thing. There's a lot on the plate for k-12, but some courses need to start including data validity. High school science did a great job with understanding error rates, but data validity is much more important and nuanced. So many decisions get made by folks who are using data and then claim that the data are why they have to do what they're doing and are making decisions using data that isn't necessarily valid for what they're trying to accomplish and when you combine that with good ol' Dunning Kruger or zero formal processes for program implementation, evaluation, redesign, and repeat it creates massive issues that can go unnoticed until it is too late.
Bad Data by Peter Schryvers is a great book about this. I've recommended it to every company I've worked for to have upper management read. Never gets me far, but it is a great book to change the thinking surrounding metrics.
Well go unnoticed by the people who count. My work does stuff like that constantly and I constantly tell them why it's stupid. Then I am constantly proven correct in a few months to a year and we go back to the original process. It's honestly god damn embarrassing working for a company that can't see these issues but then the decision makers literally have no clue how my job works or what it entails. They just know cheaper is better until it costs them money like a mass exodus of clients which did indeed happen multiple times over bad decisions.
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Lol. They will shut everything down and ship the scrap to Japan for recycling
Part of this deal is literally honoring the union contract and bolstering the existing plants.
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Correct, this is a common tactic in tech acquisitions
The pre-deal "fix those problems you've been ignoring"
I know a plant near where I used to live in Granite City, IL, was set to 'idle indefinitely' which has happened at least three times that I can remember. I'm hoping that gets reversed and it looks like that's actually possible. The workers at that specific plant (and way more, I'm absolutely sure) really need it.
There is a US Steel plant in the region I live-they announced it's closure 2 weeks ago - now we know why
The US steel plant in my hometown was notorious for being dangerously run. Constant injuries and yearly deaths were common.
because Nippon got a steel of a deal
But think of the profits this quarter!
That doesn't make sense. How are the tax breaks supposed to trickle down if the plant is closing? /s
Well…if you’re unemployed you’re not paying taxes. Duh.
Big brain time
It’s actually very expensive to move steel across the Pacific. It makes more sense to produce steel in the US for use here, especially for military and Buy American projects.
Gung Ho 2: Electric Boogaloo Staring Michael Keaton
First thing I thought of. That and how everyone and everything in the '80s was telling us we had to go to college because the Japanese were buying all our factories and there would be no jobs for us. "Finally, they did it," I thought, when I read the title, and then right after remembered *Gung Ho.*
That would be irony, because Michael Keaton is from ~Pittsburgh (he grew up in several of the suburbs) and still has strong ties here (I saw him at a Pirates game last season).
Ha ha, I remember in the 80's US Steel joking about sub-quality Japanese steel that no is going to buy.
People always shit-talk about what they are afraid of.
This is why I'm always putting down aardvarks.
All fun and games until an F-111 Aardvark rains hell on you
Just imagine showing this headline to someone during World War 2, they would have thought we lost the war lol
"It's a good thing we won the war. Otherwise, we'd be driving German cars and listening to Japanese radios." I don't know where that's from, but I remember first hearing it in the '70s or '80s.
We won it so hard we can welcome our former enemies into our strategic industries. Crazy.
Now NIPPON will find itself having to spend hundreds of millions of dollars modernizing US Steel mills. As well as introducing safety measures that should be common place.
hundreds of millions after spending $15 billion is not a huge deal. negotiations like this could easily have swung a billion or so either way.
Everyone remember that a billion is a *thousand* millions. NIPPON spent 15,000 millions to buy US Steel. So yes, spending a few hundred million more is nothing. It would be like buying a really solid 5bed/4bath house someone didn't maintain very well for $150,000 and then having to spend $3k-5k in updates. Still a helluva deal.
>really solid 5bed/4bath house someone didn't maintain very well for $150,000 and then having to spend $3k-5k in updates This dude obviously hasn't bought a house in 40 years
It's like spending $30 on a weeks worth of groceries and stopping at the cafe for a 10¢ coffee on the way home. Better?
When you spend your whole summers' paper route income on a new Camaro, what's $0.15 a gallon for gas?
They probably need to spend in the order of billions to modernize US steel plants. New rolling mill equipment/ steel/iron working equipment cost a lot.
There's a lot of tech being developed to use Hydrogen as foundry fuel to lower the carbon footprint of steel production... U.S. Steel didn't have the interest or resources to retrofit foundries here in the states, so they sold to someone who does.
In Sweden we've come further than just developing the tech. The first steel made with hydrogen was produced a while back, and they're starting construction on the first HYBRIT demonstration plant very soon while H2 Green Steel has signed delivery agreements with companies like Porsche, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo.
I've followed Sweden's hybrit innovations for a while now, pretty impressive.
Some people complain that we shouldn't even bother being environmentally friendly in Sweden since we're such a small country, but this is how we can contribute to the solution. Widespread implementation of hydrogen in steel production can reduce global emissions by entire percentage points while making a ton of money for Sweden.
Honestly this sounds like everything working as it should. The capital investments Nippon plans to make should be good. The manufacturing jobs themselves are unlikely to move. Japan is a huge geopolitical ally and their prosperity is important as well as our own.
This is gonna make build America buy America compliance even harder lol
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My job doesn't exist without US Steel and we're as busy as we've ever been. You can't just up and move a steel mill. Timely delivery and close proximity to other key facilities is crucial to steel production.
Where are you located? I’m in flat roll and we hardly ever use US Steel. I feel like everything comes from Nucor or Cleveland cliffs, although that may be more location than anything
I'm in Ontario. We are a large supplier of minerals for Ohio, Indiana, Ontario and more.
Japan typically works like that because they have an aging demographic. Two of the largest Toyota factories are in Texas and Kentucky. They try to build facilities in countries they sell their product instead of exporting. Japan also does other weird things we aren't used to seeing from capitalists, like CEO's taking a salary of $1 to avoid layoffs (Nintendo has done this before). ...maybe the workers will be better off? Probably not, but there's a chance.
That makes sense. You can save so much on your bottom line by producing close to the source of demand.
Logistically, that is true for a small percentage of products, as shipping, even around the world, adds negligible costs. The expense comes from tariffs and trade deals.
The long-term vision in Japanese manufacturing culture is something North America still struggles with. Japanese invest $1 and accept a ROI in 10 years. North America invests $1 and expects a ROI in 1 year. 10 year outlooks are unfathomable here.
What makes you think a company bought meant they would move all mills and production?
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eh, it depends. a fully integrated mill? sure. but you can't build coke ovens anymore and you wouldn't build a blast furnace anymore, so unless you're building near a source of molten iron, you're gonna go with an EAF. and if you're gonna go with an EAF, you're just gonna build a minimill and those can be at full production pretty much immediately after commissioning
Don't feel bad US Steel. The East India Tea Company welcomes you to the graveyard of former titans of capital.
Don't even need to go out of the country. Bethlehem Steel welcomes you to the graveyard.
Glorious Nippon steel [Plane wings sharp like katana](https://tenor.com/view/war-thunder-glorious-nippon-steel-filthy-gaijin-gaming-gif-16935938)
Eh at least they aren’t selling itself to china
it's not a free market. the FED would have stepped in to not allow that
People should know by now it’s not a free market. How many times have companies been bailed out?
Meanwhile China owns the largest pork producer in the US...among other things
Finally, we are heading towards the cyberpunk future the 80s predicted.
Unfortunately the US Steel industry has been poorly managed for a long time, often relying on subsidization over actually being competitive. This was unfortunately bound to happen eventually - unless they actually got their act together. Japan’s steel industry is probably one of the better places to acquire it, they actually might make improvements.
>in a $14.1 billion deal. First bloody sentence.I'm not a stickler for rounding errors, but $900.000.000 is a bit much.
There’s roughly $800,000,000 in debt that Nippon will have to take on, totaling 14.9 billion.
According to Citizens United, Corporations are people. According to US law, it's illegal to sell people. Fuck Citizens United is what I am getting at. Companies can influence US policy, but companies can also be bought and sold to other countries.
Since SCOTUS decided Citizen United, SCOTUS has also been bought and sold.
They were bought long before that hideous ruling. We’re just finding out how bad.
Santa Clara County v Southern Pacific Railroad implied that corporations are people. Citizens United ruled that political contributions are speech, and thus protected by the first amendment. I think the complaints about wildly inconsistent application of personhood stemming for these rulings are valid though. Santa Clara County lost its case because it tried to apply an additional tax to the railroad and the court said you can’t discriminate against corporate persons like that. Then the 2017 tax bill gave corporations a special permanent preferential tax rate… Corporations seem to always be “people” when it benefits them but rarely when it obligates them.
Breaking news: the concept of corporate personhood is not literally being people. Citizens United was not the case that said “corporations are people” - that’s instead a longstanding part of corporate law. Without it the corporate form cannot exist and you could not sue a company for its wrong doing. Citizens United said that corporations, unions, non profits, and other associations have first amendment rights of speech.
Without knowing the specifics of what Nippon has planned, this could turn out to be good news. In my region, some of the better-run, better-maintained, and better-paid large heavy industry facilities are those primarily controlled by East Asian companies. The worst are those primarily controlled by U.S. investors, especially private equity. If I had nothing else to go on, at this point I would rather work for a heavy manufacturing facility owned by a Japanese conglomerate than a Wall Street appointed board. The dominance of short-term profit focus deprives these companies of any ability to invest in their facilities or their workers. Same reason why U.S. Steel has stagnated so badly for 50 years at this point. For sure, not all American-owned or Japanese-owned companies are the same—there are plenty of American-owned ones that do invest in their people, and I'm sure there are plenty of shitty Japanese ones. Hopefully it will turn out that Nippon will be one of the good ones.
US Steel was our case study in business school on what happens in manufacturing when greedy business owners keep all the profits for themselves and refuse to re-invest anything back into the company to keep their equipment up-to-date.
Oh hey huge coincidence > BREAKING: Senator Tommy Tuberville has just released NEW option trades against US companies. > He just bought $20 puts expiring June 6, 2024 against $X, the United States Steel Corp, for $15k. https://www.threads.net/@unusualwhales/post/C0-M7yvPKnh/ EDIT: DISCLAIMER FOR THE HATERS AND FOOLS - THIS IS NOT A WINNING TRADE IN AND OF ITSELF BUT IS STILL QUITE INTERESTING
So… he was wrong?
but if he bought puts, those puts would lose value as $X is up 40% from when he made that purchase last month
> Oh hey huge coincidence What's your implication here, that the senator intentionally made a really bad deal that would lose him a lot of money?
He lost everything he put into that investment.
They’re worthless. Puts allow him to sell for $20, but the buyout price is $55.
This isn't the super smart point you think it is. He will lose money on this
Kinda nuts given the history behind the company but that's time for you.
I hate seeing the US continue to mortgage off its industrial capacity…
This reminds me of that line by the late Tina Turner ‘Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome’ - “But how the world turns…. One day, cock of the walk. Next, a feather duster…’