When you're in the shirt laundering business, margins are tight enough to give you ring around the collar. "Few people understand the shirt's transformation from dirty to clean, which at Kingbridge Cleaners & Tailors will run you $6. Kingbridge, with stores in Brooklyn and Manhattan, makes a profit of about 13 cents from a single laundered shirt, after the cost of labor, utilities, rent, insurance, supplies and administration." So yeah, taking the shirt off your back and cleaning it is volume business. It's also one where any rise in prices, even when it comes to something as simple as a lowly hanger, can leave your business hung out to dry. "An imported container of hangers, shipped to Kingbridge’s cleaning facility in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, cost about $3,500 in 2019. During the peak of the pandemic, the same container shot up to $22,000. It’s now settled at about $14,000." A look at the economics of having a clean shirt from the NYT (Gift Article): They Charge $6 to Clean Your Shirt. They Make 13 Cents On It. (Now I have another excuse for never wearing a collared shirt like an adult. Too much financial risk.)

2

An Open(AI) Marriage

Readers everywhere just got a lucky break. If you asked ChatGPT who would write a great piece on its relationship with Microsoft, it would probably suggest the The New Yorker's Charles Duhigg. It just so happens that Duhigg was wrapping up just such a piece when we were hit with the recent craziness involving the firing and rehiring of Sam Altman and the overthrow of OpenAI's board. That craziness aside, the Microsoft/OpenAI partnership is important and one that could directly impact how you work and live. So here's Duhigg with The Inside Story of Microsoft’s Partnership with OpenAI. The piece is not about the hiring/firing stuff, but of course, you have to start somewhere. "An executive from OpenAI, an artificial-intelligence startup into which Microsoft had invested a reported thirteen billion dollars, was calling to explain that within the next twenty minutes the company’s board would announce that it had fired Sam Altman, OpenAI’s C.E.O. and co-founder. It was the start of a five-day crisis that some people at Microsoft began calling the Turkey-Shoot Clusterf-ck." (Like turkeys didn't already have it bad enough last week...)

3

A Singular Swing Vote

"Justice O’Connor was referred to, accurately, as the most powerful woman in America. Very little could happen without Justice O’Connor’s support when it came to the polarizing issues on the court’s docket, and the law regarding affirmative action, abortion, voting rights, religion, federalism, sex discrimination and other hot-button subjects was basically what Sandra Day O’Connor thought it should be. That the middle ground she looked for tended to be the public’s preferred place as well was no coincidence, given the close attention Justice O’Connor paid to current events and the public mood. 'Rare indeed is the legal victory — in court or legislature — that is not a careful byproduct of an emerging social consensus.'" (That, for the record, is not the doctrine that drives the current court.) NYT (Gift Article): Sandra Day O’Connor, First Woman on the Supreme Court, Is Dead at 93.

+ William H. Rehnquist served as chief justice during much of O'Connor's tenure. They were also classmates at Stanford Law. An interesting sidenote: They dated in school and Rehnquist even proposed. Sadly for William, Sandra Day had the swing vote. O'Connor, Rehnquist And A Supreme Marriage Proposal.

4

Weekend Whats

What to Watch: Paramount Plus says The Curse "centers on Whitney and Asher Siegel, a newlywed couple struggling to bring their vision for eco-conscious housing to the small community of Española, New Mexico." At that is what the show is about. But it's a lot weirder than that. Emma Stone and Nathan Fielder star is this show that will definitely keep you feeling a little uncomfortable. Give it a try.

+ What to Book: I'm currently reading The Wife by the excellent Meg Wolitzer, and it's sharp and funny. I also loved her novel, The Interestings.

+ What to Read: Wegovy and Ozempic may end up being miracle drugs with acceptable side-effects. But there's still something about this Reuters report that sounds a little too familiar. Maker of Wegovy, Ozempic showers money on U.S. obesity doctors. "Drugmaker Novo Nordisk paid U.S. medical professionals at least $25.8 million over a decade in fees and expenses related to its weight-loss drugs, a Reuters analysis found. It concentrated that money on an elite group of obesity specialists who advocate giving its powerful and expensive drugs to tens of millions of Americans." (The Novo Riche.)

5

Extra, Extra

Seeing, Not Believing: "Israeli officials obtained Hamas’s battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents, emails and interviews show. But Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for Hamas to carry out." This is an jaw-dropping and disturbing, must-read piece. NYT (Gift Article): Israel Knew Hamas’s Attack Plan More Than a Year Ago. As of last night, the cease-fire extension ended and talks have reportedly collapsed. Here's the latest from CNN, BBC, and Times of Israel.

+ Bye George: "The vote brings an end to a scandal-plagued and tumultuous tenure on Capitol Hill for the freshman New York congressman. Expulsion is the most severe form of punishment for a lawmaker in the House. It is exceedingly rare and requires a two-thirds majority vote to succeed – a high bar to clear." House votes to expel George Santos. (Give the guy some credit. It's hard for one's fraud and lies to stand out in this Congress.)

+ I Remember It Differently: "Decades of treatment of military veterans and sexual assault survivors have left little doubt that traumatic memories function differently from other memories. A group of researchers at Yale University and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai set out to find empirical evidence of those differences." NYT (Gift Article): Brain Study Suggests Traumatic Memories Are Processed as Present Experience. (It's amazing how often modern technology confirms the theories of Einsteen and, and in this case, Freud.)

+ Oahu Goes There: The iceberg cometh: It's the size of Oahu, and it's moving into the open ocean.

+ A Show About Nothing: Politics has long been covered like a sport. With Newsom debating DeSantis, two candidates who are not running against each other, politics has fully become a sport. Why on earth did Ron DeSantis think it was a good idea to debate Gavin Newsom? (In addition to all the other material he's barred from the state, DeSantis must have banned all the books on effective debating.)

6

Feel Good Friday

"The plan turned out a little too well, the company said in its third quarter earnings. More customers took advantage of the seafood chain’s 'Ultimate Endless Shrimp' than expected — the key reason for the chain’s roughly $11 million loss in the third quarter of 2023." Red Lobster’s endless shrimp deal was too popular. (America, you still got it!)

+ "And thus began an unlikely friendship, an exchange of letters that began in 1967 and spanned years, continents, and deep cultural divides. Felder was 30 years old, a Black man raised in poverty in South Carolina who had lifted himself through college and law school and had become a captain in the U.S. Army. Olson, who is White, wrote to him about her school, which was in an apple orchard. About Camp Fire Girls, practicing piano and learning to play the French horn." WaPo (Gift Article): A soldier in Vietnam and a girl wrote letters. Decades later, they finally met.

+ These penguins take 10,000 little naps a day — seconds at a time.

+ ‘I was told not to make eye contact with Tom Cruise’: meet the world’s most prolific film extra.

+ Detroit's newest road can charge electric cars as they travel on it.

+ Principal adopts student who was sent to his office.