We have a long illustrious history here at Three Point Four Media of paying, and messing up paying, our taxes. We pay many different kinds of taxes. Corporation taxes. Pass-through entity taxes to three separate entities. Federal taxes. Capital gains (read: losses) taxes. Some other taxes I’m probably forgetting about because it’s hard to keep everything straight and we have a wonderful accountant.
I find paying taxes weirdly satisfying because it means we made some profit and because every quarter we pay estimated taxes and it’s a nice reminder that ah yes there’s another three months I won’t get back. Okay, one of those reasons is more positive than the other, but there’s a nice cadence to it all. In a small business, you have to find rhythms and taxes are one of those regular things that keep us on track.
That said, I look forward to the day when we are profitable enough to open an off-shore account.
A Pair of Articles
Wealthy Executives Make Millions Trading Competitors’ Stock With Remarkable Timing + A High-Stakes Divorce Illustrates How the Rich Play Real Estate Tug of War
A perfect pairing, like rabbit with a Beaujolais. A ProPublica joint on CEOs doing definitely not insider trading—there’s no actual definition of insider trading is a thing I learned—and a WSJ piece piece from 2020 about a brutal divorce and a bunch of secret trusts. Seems like South Dakota is the place to go if you want to set up trusts that can really cheat someone you plan on divorcing out of assets they very well might deserve. Knowledge is power, I suppose?
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A Description
This about Mark Zuckerberg, from Paul Murray’s piece on the Metaverse, made me laugh a lot. It’s catty and vicious and perfect. The article it comes from is also very fun but way too long.
His curious IRL appearance—of a human designed by a computer or of a Styrofoam cup that a wizard decided to turn into a person but then changed his mind about halfway through—adapts unexpectedly well to the Meta-cartoonization algorithm.
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A Project
We made a mini-site for Dropbox about creating the ultimate sales video. It features an embedded video about how to make a sales video. Very meta! But not in a wizardified styrofoam cup sort of way.
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A Book
Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon
This is an impressive and exhaustive history of General Electric. At one point, Cohan goes on for like 10 pages into the backstory of the executive who finished fourth (out of four) in the race to succeed Jack Welch as CEO. I dunno, man, maybe leave that on the cutting room floor? Bloat aside (or perhaps because of?), it’s fascinating in as much as a book about a pretty boringly successful company can be.
If you don’t like this one, perhaps The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America—and How to Undo His Legacy is more your style. Book subtitles should be shorter.
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A Run
Down and back to Coney Island. This is one of my favorite New York City long runs. Jogging through different parts of Brooklyn, getting south of the Belt Parkway, wandering around trying to find the boardwalk, and there’s the ocean. Fun stuff. A strong north wind on way back was less fun, but you can’t win ‘em all. Highly recommend.
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That’s all folks. Thanks for reading.