TeeJay Tech Bro

  With the fervor of a 20-slide Notes app callout, Bob Chapek wants you to know who’s at fault for his short tenure as CEO of Disney: the other Bob. In excerpts from his new memoir, Behind the Castle Walls: My Thirty Years at the Happiest Place on Earth, which Simon & Schuster is releasing next week, Chapek claims that former CEO Bob Iger (who had the role before and after him) launched a “relentless three-year campaign to push me out.” ICYMI: In February 2020, Iger abruptly stepped down as CEO of Disney, but stayed on as executive chair of the board. Chapek was his successor, but he was unceremoniously ousted on a Sunday after a three-year stint at the top that involved Covid turbulence, an unpopular take on Florida’s so-called “Don’t say gay” bill, and a compensation fight with Scarlett Johansson. Then Iger took the reins once more. In his new tell-all: Chapek says he spent years being teased with the CEO role, but only found out he got it weeks before his 2020 appointment...

  A French novel published earlier this year about a Haitian refugee fleeing to Canada was headed for top literary prizes in France until an anonymous X account claimed its writer committed a bigger sin than overusing similes: using AI. Thélyson Orélien’s debut novel, C’était ça ou Mourir (which translates to It Was That or Dying ), was taken off the longlist yesterday for the Prix Goncourt, one of France’s most prestigious awards, because of the allegations. Quel scandale: The accusations came from a small anonymous account that claimed to have fed random passages of the novel into the AI detection program Pangram, which determined the selected passages were 100% AI generated based on patterns in the writing. Academics subsequently using similar programs also found high percentages of AI-generated content in Orélien’s book. Orélien has denied the accusations, saying that his writing style uses Haitian and Caribbean repetition and rhythms. He told news outlets he is preparing a ...

  Home financing costs are doing the part of the Cha-Cha Slide where they bring it to the top like they’ll never ever stop. Amid ongoing inflation, economists are wondering how high average 30-year US mortgage rates will go after topping 7% this week for the first time since early 2025, according to Freddie Mac. The surge comes after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates last week for the first time in three years, a decision that markets saw coming: Before the rate hike, mortgage rates and Treasury bond yields—which generally move in tandem—spiked in anticipation. Forecast: “There’s no reason to think that the rout [in bonds] couldn’t continue, and rates get closer to 8%, or even higher,” the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics told Barron’s. But… This worst-case scenario—as another economist characterized it to Barron’s—would require “significant deterioration” in the US dollar’s safe-haven status and a continued Treasury bond sell-off . Those factors hinge largely on the ...

  Why try to figure out how an earnings report will affect a stock when you can figure out how an injury report will affect a sports team? That’s the attitude that some—including a wide swath of Gen Z—are taking when it comes to how to grow their money. One in five Americans view wagering on sports as an investment tool , and for Gen Z, it’s two in five, according to a recent Bank of America survey. And they’re acting on those feelings: A Betterment survey of 1,000 investors found that 52% of Gen Zers redirected money intended for investing into sports betting instead. All this is despite the odds and history screaming to do the opposite: There’s a fee built into the odds of wagers called a vig . The vig is how sportsbooks ensure they make money, and it turns bets with a 50/50 outcome into one where bettors must put down $110 to win $100, which means even if you win 50% of those bets, you will still lose money long term. Meanwhile, the stock market has delivered an average annual ...

  You know your corner of the market has made it to the big leagues when JPMorgan honcho Jamie Dimon cautions that it might bring about the next financial crisis—as he did with private credit earlier this year. Of course, not all the attention private credit has gotten has been negative—or has compared it to a “ cockroach ,” as Dimon memorably did following the collapse of two private credit-backed firms. So, what is it? Basically, private credit means loans from investment funds rather than banks. These loans are often riskier than bank loans, so the companies taking them pay more in interest, and the funds typically intend to hold them until maturity. Despite its reputation for high risk, the boom in private credit traces back to regulations put in place in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis meant to get banks out of the risky lending game. With banks facing more rules, companies without a big track record or seeking to add on to already large debt needed to turn to someone e...

  Burning Man, the annual event in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, kicked off earlier this week—and the folks biking around in goggles and gaudy costumes are a little older than they used to be. Just 10% of burners at last year’s event were in their 20s, a record low, according to the Black Rock City annual census. Gen Z seems less charmed by the “radical inclusion” of Burning Man than previous generations. In 2015, 30% of attendees at Burning Man were in their 20s. But the younger crowd has steadily declined over the last decade, mostly because of the cost: A ticket has ballooned from $390 in 2015 to $550 this year as the festival has struggled to stop hemorrhaging money. With a vehicle pass, camping gear, fees, and food, attendees are typically looking at a minimum $1,000 trip, according to Business Insider. It hasn’t just gotten older. John Law, one of the co-founders of Burning Man, wrote last month that the current festival has “lost its anarchist soul.” Silicon Valley elites an...

  You may never be able to fully recapture the magic of staring out the bus window listening to a grainy YouTube-to-MP3 version of Relient K, but you can try. Amid a Gen Z retro tech renaissance, Bose announced its first pair of wired headphones in 11 years yesterday. The Bose Noise Cancelling Wired Earbuds will be available for $99 on October 15, but preorders are live. Because traditional aux ports have been eradicated everywhere but tiny airplane TVs, the Bose headphones have a USB-C plug. The headphones must be plugged into a device to use since they have no batteries (that also means nothing to charge). The reviews are in: Testers have celebrated the more durable cord and good audio quality, but found the noise canceling to be slightly less impressive than other Bose devices. Reviewers are lauding the pair as one of the best wired headphones on the market…which the new headphones probably should be considering they cost much more than the sub-$30 price tag such products typi...