#Jesus Revers Ortiz

[betterdaysareatoenailaway]

TO HAVE & HAVE NOT #2: STARTUPS FOR SHITHEADS

I have never understood the borderline hagiographical hoopla that surrounds startups. Even the fucking name suggests a kind of nascent know-nothing numbskullery. The “it’s my first day” excuse. Vaporware. Half-formed ideas surrounded by full-time douchebaggery. Such were my impressions before I ever read anything about startups. Now that I have done so, I can see that I was underestimating just how poorly run these companies can be. 

As far as I can tell, it works like this: A middle-aged white man gets an idea to fill a need in [insert industry here]. This man always lacks the necessary skill to deliver the product, so he cherrypicks undergraduate college kids (knowing they will work for very little money) to do the hard work in an open-concept office while he hides behind the foreboding oak door that he slams every time he enters his office, lest the underlings deign to ask the question they’re all dying to ask, which is....what do you do?

In the movie Steve Jobs (not the Ashton Kutcher one, though the fact that I have to differentiate shows just how revered these do-nothing con men are) there is a great scene where Seth Rogen asks the titular fuckhead that very question.

I won’t ruin the answer for you, but you can probably guess it’s a needlessly convoluted rationalization that boils down to: “umm...not much.” The only thing the middle-aged white male CEO can do is sell his vision. He cannot sell his product because it doesn’t exist. And as the upcoming selected quotes will show, sometimes he doesn’t even want the product to exist. A physical product necessarily has features and details, a pesky sentience that weighs it down and keeps it from flying.  But dreams float forever. So the company exists to sell the dream, to peddle a promise of a future world where the product exists and has improved the lives of those (and only those) who use it.

A series of high-level meetings take place either in golf clubs or conference rooms or both, and money starts pouring in. Said money is promptly spent on sex workers, booze, and/or drugs. There is nothing wrong with any of these things, I’m merely pointing out that the money is spent fast and spent stupidly. Not to wag my finger, but if you can’t pay your lowest paid employees’ paycheques and they’re late on rent and have empty fridges...you should lay off the rippers and the blow. Furthermore you are a shithead and your hubris has a very real human cost. But the shitheads keep coming. I read an article this week that talked about the history of the coded, racialized term “superpredator” and its very real consequences on incarceration and Black youth in America. The news media should have warned us about the shitheads instead. Think of the headlines! THE SHITHEADS ARE COMING. Or the news media should have kept the term but replaced its description from African-American gang member to middle-aged white golf club member. 

See, even though over 95% of startups fail to recoup the money it cost them to...ahem...start up...people keep falling for this shit. The shitheads keep coming. It’s like nobody can say no. Such largesse is bound to give birth to arrogant assholes who are bad at numbers and can’t code. And the absenteeism reported on in these articles is nothing short of miraculous. So when you’re a CEO you can just...not go to work? That’s an option?

Apparently. In the two examples I read, the boss comes in late if he comes in at all. It all reminds me of the scene in Apocalypse Now where a weary Martin Sheen, huddled in a trench to escape mortars fired by an unseen enemy, barks “Who’s in charge here?” and the guy next to him says “I thought you were.”

The two different articles I read are about corporate impropriety. Both feature eerily similar quotes about eerily similar situations in which the CEO - the ostensible leader of the company and therefore the shepherd and spokesperson for its “product” - actually does not want the software to be completed, because by leaving the product in a state of perpetual almost-thereness, more investors can be duped, which means more hookers rented, more booze bought, and more drugs done. 

And more entry-level workers fucked over by their paycheques either bouncing or not coming up at all.

It all sounds like reality TV. When Startups Close Down or When Idiots Collapse.

Here’s a quote from a Toronto Life article about a Canadian capitalist named Boaz Manor who used the fake name Shaun McDonald to start a new venture (of course a rich guy’s last name is Manor...to the manor born, amirite?): 

“Leong, Ortiz and others who did the demos insist the terminals would have worked, or could have. But they say Shaun seemed to be more interested in the marketing than in the product itself. ‘I believe the tech was never finished because Shaun didn’t want it finished. What he wanted was to raise more money,’ Ortiz says.”

And here’s a quote from an article in The Verge that details the almost-boring-because-so-inevitable rise and fall of a company called Oomba, run by a douche named Michael Williams:

“After four years, the company’s core product was never able to do what it said it was supposed to: work with any game. It’s possible this was because many of Oomba’s engineers were college students whom Williams apparently sometimes paid in free food and the promise of stock options. Or maybe, a few employees suggest, he preferred to keep the software unfinished. ‘There’s glitches and glitches and glitches, but he didn’t want it to work. He wanted it to stay almost done, to raise more money from investors,’ one senior-level employee believes.”

Bearing such malfeasance in mind, I’d like to announce that I’m starting my own startup called...uhhh....let’s go with Revivify. Our product will be vaguely revolutionary in [insert field or industry here] and our company will stay private by courting the interest and support of venture capital firms. In the hawkish world of venture capital and leveraged buyouts, “interest” means time-consuming meetings and “support” means money. Our CEO shall be me, and I will be spending $500 a day on heroin, $500 a day on coke, and $1000 a day on crack. $2 for my morning double-double. I will be arrested sometime in late 2022 and go to jail for four years. The day I am released I will overdose on fentanyl in a Starbucks bathroom in Guelph. 

I’m kidding, of course. But Jesus F Christ, what a fucking hustle these guys ran. An eternal “coming soon” sign. Always almost done. Brilliant assholes, these startup starters. All of them. I’m neither creative nor mercenary enough to do what these CEOs did, though I have done terrible things in my life to get the money that pays for heroin. I’m just smart enough to know that my life is essentially tainted, just talented enough to know I don’t have enough talent to make a living from it. Let me leave you with a quote from Mary Robinson’s “Yours”, a story that appeared in The New Yorker in the early 1980s, a story with a quote that explains my conspicuous lack of accomplishment and achievement in my 34 years on this planet:

“...to own only a little talent....was an awful, plaguing thing...being only a little special meant you expected too much, most of the time.”

Here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson.

To have just enough talent to know you’re not talented enough to get paid for the one thing you’re good at doing sucks. Lockdown is back again and my job is gone. Therefore I am currently selling the lower half of this photograph to the highest bidder. Bidding started this morning at 35 cents and I’m already up to $4. Go capitalism. As Alan Greenspan once proclaimed, perhaps unwittingly displaying the kind of circular logic only Americans seem capable of: “The regulatory mechanism that oversees the market is...the market.”

This is the financial version of “we had to destroy the village in order to save it.”

Anyway I’m kidding. There isn’t really a lower half to that photograph. There’s nothing to see. I’m selling you the hope that you will see my penis. I can’t believe someone has offered me $4 for it. I didn’t expect to clear $3.25.

ANYWAY that’s it for me, for now. I’m heading back to fictionland, where I actually wield a modicum of power, though it’s not power I want.

It’s comfort. Comfort for me and my cat. I just got over an illness that might have been COVID and I have my cat Cookie to thank for assisting my speedy recovery. The only reason I read about the above-mentioned startups is because I was lying prone for ten days, groaning and reading articles. So if you’re bored or perhaps sick, here’s a link to an excellent Stephen King short story, also published in The New Yorker: http://writ101van.weebly.com/uploads/2/2/7/3/22735066/king_the_man_in_the_black_suit.pdf And here is an impeccably well-crafted piece on self-respect, something I decidedly lack, by Joan Didion: https://www.vogue.com/article/joan-didion-self-respect-essay-1961 Sorry about the lack of updates on here, all one or two of you who read this. I’ve been writing a new novel and trying to find a publisher or agent for my first one, a decidedly non-commercial affair. 900+ pages. I gtg. Sleep awaits. I have a startup to start tmrw. 

#betterdaysareatoenailaway #startups #millions #losers

[westernmanews]

BOSTON (WWLP) - Twenty-five people, including a woman living in Springfield, were charged in federal court in Boston Thursday as a result of an investigation targeting offenders of document and benefit fraud.

According to a news release from U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling's office, 21 of the suspects are unlawfully present in the United States. 

Homeland Security Investigation's Document and Benefit Fraud Task Force conducted the "Double Trouble" investigation, which focused on suspected aliens, predominately from the Dominican Republic, who are believed to have obtained stolen identities of U.S. citizens living in Puerto Rico.

They are alleged to have used those stolen identities to obtain documents and health benefits that they would otherwise not be eligible to receive, such as RMV identity documents, social security numbers, Medicaid, unemployment benefits, and public housing subsidies.

The following 25 individuals have been charged in connection with the investigation:

Carmen Sanchez Garcia De Martinez, 64, a Dominican and/or Venezuelan national residing in Springfield, was charged with one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of false representation of a Social Security number.

Alejandra Eulalia Baez Arias, 40, a Dominican national residing in Lawrence, was charged with one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of false representation of a Social Security number.

Saddan Rafael Bautista Diaz, 27, a Dominican national residing in Dorchester, was charged with one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of false representation of a Social Security number.

Kelvin Bautista Valdez, 31, Dominican national residing in Lynn, was charged with one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of false representation of a Social Security number.

Robert Crisologo Bobadilla Baez, 43, a Dominican national formerly residing in Mattapan, was charged with one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of false representation of a Social Security number. 

Fernando Cedeno Carpio, 34, a Dominican national residing in Houston, Texas, was charged with one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of false representation of a Social Security number.

Fausto Feliz Feliz, 39, a Dominican national residing in Malden, was charged with one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of false representation of a Social Security number.

 Luis Alberto Fernandez Fernandez, 27, a Dominican national residing in Salem with legal permanent resident status, was charged with one count of false representation of a Social Security number.

Domingo Garcia Suero, 54, a Dominican national formerly residing in Haverhill, was indicted in May 2018 on five counts of distribution and possession with intent to distribute fentanyl; one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm; two counts of false representation of a Social Security number; and one count of aggravated identity theft. 

Santo Jesus Gonzalez Villar, 48, a Dominican national residing in Lawrence, was charged with one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of false representation of a Social Security number.

Ramon Lara Martinez, 45, a Dominican national residing in Hyde Park, was charged with one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of false representation of a Social Security number.

Jose Lopez Rosado, 53, formerly residing in Worcester County, was charged with one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of false representation of a Social Security number.  

Viterbo Enrique Minaya Melo, a Dominican national residing in Lawrence, was charged with one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of false representation of a Social Security number. Minaya Melo is currently in state custody.

Ulises Francisco Mota Carmona, 35, a Dominican national residing in Lawrence, was charged with one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of false representation of a Social Security number.

Yhoan Alexis Nivar Rodriguez, 29, a Dominican national residing in Mattapan with legal permanent resident status, was charged with one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of false representation of a Social Security number.

James Alfred Pena Guerrero, 30, a Dominican national residing in Dorchester, was charged with one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of false representation of a Social Security number.

Ramona Maribel Perez Peguero, 38, a Dominican national residing in Lawrence, was charged with one count of false representation of a Social Security number.

Fiumen Alexis Pimentel, 47, a Dominican national residing in Hyde Park, was charged with identity fraud.

Jose Mercedes Polanco Guerrero, 47, a Dominican national residing in Dorchester, was charged with one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of false representation of a Social Security number.

Joaquin Ruiz Mota, 47, a Dominican national residing in Dorchester, was charged with one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of misuse of a Social Security number.

Wanyer Manuel Soto Pimentel, 27, a Dominican national residing in Roslindale, was charged with one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of false representation of a Social Security number.

Edward Elias Villar Ortiz, 42, a Dominican national residing in Brockton, was charged with one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of false representation of a Social Security number.

John Doe, an individual residing in Roxbury whose true identity remains unknown, was charged with one count of aggravated identity theft; one count of false representation of a Social Security number; and one count of theft of government funds.

John Doe, an individual residing in Lynn whose true identity remains unknown, was charged with one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of false representation of a Social Security number.

John Doe, an individual residing in Revere whose true identity remains unknown, was charged with one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of making a false statement in an application and use of a U.S. passport.

#Western MA news #westernmanews