Tootfinder

Morgan Stanley says xAI raised $5B of equity in addition to $5B in debt; the company raised $6B in December from a16z and others (Miles Kruppa/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/elon-musks-xai-raises-10-billion-debt-equi…

Elon Musk’s xAI Raises $10 Billion in Debt, Equity
Elon Musk’s xAI raised $5 billion of equity in addition to $5 billion in debt, according to Morgan Stanley, which advised on the debt transactions. “The combination of debt and equity reduces the overall cost of capital and substantially expands pools of capital available to xAI,” Morgan Stanley wrote in a post on X , which did not name any investors in the debt or equity. XAI raised $6

Here Lies Hudson’s Bay Company, Murdered by Private Equity https://jacobin.com/2025/06/hudsons-bay-canada-private-equity/

Here Lies Hudson’s Bay Company, Murdered by Private Equity
Hudson’s Bay Company, Canada’s oldest retailer, didn’t die of natural causes — it was gutted by private equity. Stripped of assets and loaded with debt, it leaves behind job losses, endangered pensions, and a hollowed-out legacy reduced to branding rights.

A former leader of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights during the Obama and Biden administrations
called the Trump administration’s targeting of undefined diversity, equity and inclusion legally spurious
and urged colleges and universities to stand up for their values.
At a panel last week at the annual Education Writers Association conference here,
Catherine Lhamon said it’s “enormously frustrating to me to see the federal government use its voice to sa…

Biden Civil Rights Chief: Trump Anti-DEI Orders Aren’t Law
Catherine Lhamon joined the American Council on Education’s president and a student in criticizing the current federal administration’s targeting of universities over diversity, equity and inclusion.

Why isn't this considered wage theft? "“All Common Stock will be canceled for no consideration and all Options will be canceled and extinguished for no consideration,” "
Apparently employees were given stock options, and were encouraged to buy stock - ALL shares held by employees were Common Stock. When Private Equity bought the company, the shares were declared worthless (of course the the CEO, etc all will receive payouts).

Philz Coffee close to closing deal to sell to private equity firm for $145 million
Employee stocks will be canceled as part of the deal; former employees point to culture change across Philz Coffee.

Why isn't this considered wage theft? "“All Common Stock will be canceled for no consideration and all Options will be canceled and extinguished for no consideration,” "
Apparently employees were given stock options, and were encouraged to buy stock - ALL shares held by employees were Common Stock. When Private Equity bought the company, the shares were declared worthless (of course the the CEO, etc all will receive payouts).

Philz Coffee close to closing deal to sell to private equity firm for $145 million
Employee stocks will be canceled as part of the deal; former employees point to culture change across Philz Coffee.

HHS faces transparency lawsuit over race-focused organ transplant reforms under Biden (Kaelan Deese/Washington Examiner)
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/3459882/hhs-transparency-lawsuit-race-focused-equity-organ-transplants-biden/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250701/p159#a250701p159

Wall Street giants like Blackstone, KKR, and BlackRock are pouring hundreds of billions into AI data centers, creating concerns of "oversupply" and a bubble (Maureen Farrell/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/02/business/ai-da…

Are A.I. Data Centers a Sure Thing or the Next Real Estate Bubble?
Private equity firms like Blackstone are using their clients’ money to buy and build data centers to fuel the artificial intelligence boom.

AMC Entertainment reaches an agreement with creditors to reduce debt, including raising ~$223.3M and converting $143M of debt into equity; AMC falls ~6% (Connor Hart/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/bus…

NC Republicans Banished Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Now the Only Perspective That Matters to Them Is Their Own (Herald Sun, 30 June 2025)
https://www.heraldsun.com/opinion/article309546875.html

WikiGap: Promoting Epistemic Equity by Surfacing Knowledge Gaps Between English Wikipedia and other Language Editions
Zining Wang, Yuxuan Zhang, Dongwook Yoon, Nicholas Vincent, Farhan Samir, Vered Shwartz
https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.24195

WikiGap: Promoting Epistemic Equity by Surfacing Knowledge Gaps Between English Wikipedia and other Language Editions
With more than 11 times as many pageviews as the next, English Wikipedia dominates global knowledge access relative to other language editions. Readers are prone to assuming English Wikipedia as a superset of all language editions, leading many to prefer it even when their primary language is not English. Other language editions, however, comprise complementary facts rooted in their respective cultures and media environments, which are marginalized in English Wikipedia. While Wikipedia's user i…

OpenAI says the tokenized OpenAI shares Robinhood has started offering are not equity: "We did not partner with Robinhood...and do not endorse it" (MacKenzie Sigalos/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/02/openai-robinhood-tokens.html

OpenAI says Robinhood's tokens aren't equity in the company
OpenAI said it was not involved in Robinhood’s launch of tokenized shares in Europe, warning users the assets were issued without its approval.

The gradual transformation of inland countries -- human plowing, horse plowing and equity incentives
Hongfa Zi, Zhen Liu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.00067 h…

The gradual transformation of inland countries -- human plowing, horse plowing and equity incentives
Many modern countries have not learned their lessons and often hope for the wisdom of later generations, resulting in them only possessing modern technology and difficult to iterate ancient civilizations. At present, there is no way to tell how we should learn from history and promote the gradual upgrading of civilization. Therefore, we must tell the history of civilization's progress and the means of governance, learn from experience to improve the comprehensive strength and survival ability o…

Warner Music and Bain announce a $1.2B joint venture to buy song rights; sources: Warner is in talks to acquire the Red Hot Chili Peppers' catalog for $300M (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/8e50bf81-d346-49ec-a4a5-6b379e632140

Warner Music and Bain target $300mn Red Hot Chili Peppers catalogue deal
Acquisition would be a coup for record company and private equity firm’s new song rights joint venture

Trump tariffs cut off recovery in private equity dealmaking (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/c4681db5-b939-4d4a-84d6-6b8f9405281a
http://www.memeorandum.com/250602/p4#a250602p4

VC firms Thrive Capital and General Catalyst are adopting the "roll-up" strategy from the PE playbook, as Khosla Ventures, 8VC, and others explore similar moves (George Hammond/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/74db4959-5980-4ca3-8a46-f058ef4774…

Tech venture firms deploy private equity ‘roll-up’ strategy
Thrive Capital’s backing of Savvy Wealth is part of growing effort to fund groups that go on to buy similar companies

Overparametrized models with posterior drift
Guillaume Coqueret, Martial Laguerre
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.23619 https://arxiv.org/…

Overparametrized models with posterior drift
This paper investigates the impact of posterior drift on out-of-sample forecasting accuracy in overparametrized machine learning models. We document the loss in performance when the loadings of the data generating process change between the training and testing samples. This matters crucially in settings in which regime changes are likely to occur, for instance, in financial markets. Applied to equity premium forecasting, our results underline the sensitivity of a market timing strategy to sub-…

When no one shows up (at first): Navigating the uncertainties of participatory workshops in interdisciplinary research
Monique Munarini
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.22894 https://…

When no one shows up (at first): Navigating the uncertainties of participatory workshops in interdisciplinary research
This reflective paper explores often-unspoken challenges of designing and facilitating co-design and participatory workshops, offering practical strategies for early career researchers (ECRs) navigating these methods. Drawing from personal experience conducting a series of workshops titled: How to Think About Equity in the AI Ecosystem. It follows the full arc of the workshop experience, from conceptualization and activity planning to participant recruitment and facilitation, offering a grounde…

Dotdash Meredith rebrands to People to capitalize on the brand equity of its most popular and recognizable title (Sara Fischer/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2025/07/31/people-magazine-publisher-rebrand-dotdash-meredith

Dotdash Meredith rebrands as People Inc.
Dotdash Meredith's rebrand into People Inc. capitalizes on brand equity in a way that its current name does not.

Quantifying Institutional Gender Inequality in Contemporary Visual Art
Xindi Wang, Alexander J. Gates, Magnus Resch, Albert-Laszlo Barabasi
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.22103

Quantifying Institutional Gender Inequality in Contemporary Visual Art
From disparities in the number of exhibiting artists to auction opportunities, there is evidence of women's under-representation in visual art. Here we explore the exhibition history and auction sales of 65,768 contemporary artists in 20,389 institutions, revealing gender differences in the artist population, exhibitions and auctions. We distinguish between two criteria for gender equity: gender-neutrality, when artists have gender-independent access to exhibition opportunities, and gender-bala…

Stoller: “Private Equity, UnitedHealth Take a Huge Loss as Oregon Bans Corporate Control of Doctors”.
Here in Canada, the home of single-payer free-for-residents healthcare, we’ve also had financiers rolling up a variety of healthcare operations and we should do like Oregon.
https://www.

Private Equity, UnitedHealth Take a Huge Loss as Oregon Bans Corporate Control of Doctors
Oregon passes SB 951, a bill that prohibits private equity and corporate decision-making in health care. UnitedHealth Group, Amazon, and private equity lobbied fiercely, but lost. Is it a trend?

#ContemporaryContradictions #HashTagGames
Rules: include as many contradictions s you'd like. Can be profound or trivial. Each contradiction is stated via exactly 1 or 2 questions, no statements and not more than 2 questions. Try to group yours into a single post, rather than one post per contradiction, so that it's easier to see more voices when scrolling the hash tag.
Why does "race" work according to the "one drop rule" if you have Black ancestors, but according to "blood quantum" if you have Indigenous ancestors? Who benefits from this arrangement?
Why do we think of seeds as merely a reproduction mechanism for trees, instead of thinking of trees as merely a reproduction mechanism for seeds, especially since some plants can spend millennia as seeds but can survive for only part of a year after sprouting? Are metabolic activity or structural complexity really so important?
If Columbus discovered America, did Batu Khan discover Europe? What is an "Age of Discovery?"
Why don't corporations in the US try to lobby the government for a single-payer healthcare system where the government foots the bill for healthcare instead of companies paying to deeply subsidize their employees' healthcare? What benefit do they gain that's worth that cost, which in other countries is paid for via taxes?
Why is the cost of renting (which gets you zero equity) anywhere close to the cost of a mortgage (which eventually gets you ownership)? If the costs are similar but the benefits are so different, why does anyone ever rent?
Why do we obsess over the fruit/vegetable classification of tomatoes, but not corn, okra, cucumbers, zucchini, etc.?

HELOC = "home equity induced loss of consciousness"

📉 Private Equity, UnitedHealth Take a Huge Loss as Oregon Bans Corporate Control of Doctors
#business

An Explainable Equity-Aware P2P Energy Trading Framework for Socio-Economically Diverse Microgrid
Abhijan Theja, Mayukha Pal
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.18738 https://

An Explainable Equity-Aware P2P Energy Trading Framework for Socio-Economically Diverse Microgrid
Fair and dynamic energy allocation in community microgrids remains a critical challenge, particularly when serving socio-economically diverse participants. Static optimization and cost-sharing methods often fail to adapt to evolving inequities, leading to participant dissatisfaction and unsustainable cooperation. This paper proposes a novel framework that integrates multi-objective mixed-integer linear programming (MILP), cooperative game theory, and a dynamic equity-adjustment mechanism driven…

When We Get Komooted - BIKEPACKING.com
https://bikepacking.com/plog/when-we-get-komooted/

"We shouldn’t be surprised, because capturing communities with false promises only to sell us out is business as usual in the corporate internet. The founders handled the transition horribly, even by tech industry standards, and the pain and disruption it creates in our lives is real. Yet capital is constantly pulling the rug on online communities... For corporations, it’s always profits over people"

When We Get Komooted
Following the sale of Komoot to private equity, Josh Meissner explores the broken relationship between corporate capital and our communities...

"The tragedy of digital media isn’t that it’s run by ruthless, profiteering guys in ill-fitting suits,”
Megan Greenwell wrote in an eviscerating blog postannouncing her departure.
“It’s that the people posing as experts know less about how to make money than their employees, to whom they won’t listen.”
Greenwell’s entire staff followed her lead shortly after, mass quitting largely in protest of a mandate to abandon higher-traffic stories about politics and internet od…

Inside the Private Equity Scam—and the Livelihoods It Has Destroyed
Financiers have bamboozled the public for years about their expertise in “fixing” companies. Yet they often—and sometimes deliberately—run them into the ground.

This is why people are sending donations to Luigi's defense lawyers...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/may/27/exactech-tpg-medical-devices-bankruptcy

Replaced article(s) found for cs.LG. https://arxiv.org/list/cs.LG/new
[5/5]:
- NY Real Estate Racial Equity Analysis via Applied Machine Learning
Sanjana Chalavadi, Andrei Pastor, Terry Leitch

AI-Driven Media & Synthetic Knowledge: Rethinking Society in Generative Futures
Katalin Feher
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.19877 https://arxiv.org/pdf/25…

AI-Driven Media & Synthetic Knowledge: Rethinking Society in Generative Futures
Generative AI is not just a technological lea- it is a societal stress test, reshaping trust, identity, equity, and authorship. This exploratory PhD seminar examined emerging academic trends in AI-driven synthetic media and worlds, emphasizing ethical risks and societal implications. In Part One, students explored core concepts such as generative AI, fake media, and synthetic knowledge production. In Part Two, they critically engaged with these challenges, producing actionable insights. The two…

Mexico City-based digital bank Klar raised a $190M Series C led by General Atlantic, including $170M in equity and $20M in debt, valuing the company at $800M (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-30…

The board decision that sent the MLB, NFL unions into controversy https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6442699/2025/06/22/nflpa-mlbpa-investigation-one-team-partners-equity-controversy/

London-based Dojo, a payments tech provider to over 140K businesses, raised $190M from Vitruvian Partners in its first equity raise since launching in 2021 (Vishal Singh/Silicon Canals)
https://siliconcanals.com/dojo-secures-investment-of-e168-6m/

UK’s payments tech provider Dojo secures investment of €168.6M
Dojo is a payments technology provider that aims to expand its presence in the payments sector with a focus on supporting in-person commerce.

Replaced article(s) found for econ.GN. https://arxiv.org/list/econ.GN/new
[1/1]:
- Accelerating Equity: Overcoming the Gender Gap in VC Funding
Chuan Chen, Michele Fioretti, Junnan He, Yanrong Jia

Coinbase says its new "everything exchange" will include tokenized assets, stocks, derivatives, prediction markets, and more, for US users in the coming months (Tanaya Macheel/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/31/coinbase-t

Coinbase says it's launching tokenized stocks, predictions markets for U.S. users in coming months
The expansion puts Coinbase in even closer competition with Robinhood, Gemini and Kraken, all of whom have tokenized equity offerings for users outside the U.S.

Nexstar has deleted references to DEI and data on its workforce composition from its site; it is interested in acquisitions that are subject to FCC approval (Matthew Keys/The Desk)
https://thedesk.net/2025/05/nexstar-ends-dei-programs-policies/

Scoop: Nexstar pulls back on DEI programs amid FCC lobbying efforts
The broadcaster removed references to its diversity, equity and inclusiveness programs from its website and social media profiles.

In this moment when equity & inclusion efforts are being hindered & erased, the DLF Committee on Equity & Inclusion is creating a Zotero library of related resources for the GLAM community. Let us know what topics would be most helpful to you: https://docs.google.com/f…

Pakistan arrests over a dozen suspects as ‘honour killing’ video goes viral | Gender Equity News | Al Jazeera
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/21/pakistan-arrests-over-a-dozen-suspects-as-honour-killing-video-goes-viral?traffic_source=rss

Vista Equity Partners agrees to acquire ERP software provider Acumatica from PE firm EQT, sources say in a deal that values Acumatica at ~$2B including debt (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-0…

Buyout Firm Vista to Acquire EQT’s Acumatica in $2 Billion Deal
Vista Equity Partners agreed to acquire Acumatica Inc., a software company that helps businesses streamline workflows.

“How did a sports scene like #MiLB minor league #baseball—with a more than 100-year history of silly mascots, intimate hometown stadiums, and local ownership—get devoured so quickly by #PrivateEquity?”

Private Equity Now Owns More Than 40 Minor League Baseball Teams, And The Number Keeps Growing | Defector
Private equity is the steamroller that crushes all your favorite things. Journalism, for one, and also a once iconic toy store; even bowling these days. Now it has come for minor league baseball, where in little more than three years one private equity firm has managed to buy up a healthy percentage of the MiLB […]

The Tech DEI Backlash -- The Changing Landscape of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Software Engineering
Sonja M. Hyrynsalmi, Mary Sanchez-Gordon, Anna Szlavi, Letizia Jaccheri
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.14232

The Tech DEI Backlash -- The Changing Landscape of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Software Engineering
Not long ago, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives were a top priority for leading software companies. However, in a short period, a wave of backlash has led many firms to re-assess their DEI strategies. Responding to this DEI backlash is crucial in academic research, especially because, currently, little scholarly research has been done on it. In this paper, therefore, we have set forth the following research question (RQ): "How have leading software companies changed their DEI s…

Strict Comparisons of Infinite Utility Streams
Michael Greinecker, Michael Nielsen
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.20567 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.20567…

Strict Comparisons of Infinite Utility Streams
There exists a preference relation on infinite utility streams that does not discriminate between different periods, satisfies the Pareto criterion, and so that almost all pairs of utility streams are strictly comparable. Such a preference relation provides a counterexample to a claim in [Zame, William R. ``Can intergenerational equity be operationalized?'' Theoretical Economics 2.2 (2007): 187-202.]

Replaced article(s) found for q-fin.PM. https://arxiv.org/list/q-fin.PM/new
[1/1]:
- Isotropic Correlation Models for the Cross-Section of Equity Returns
Graham L. Giller

For DC's upcoming report on how historic preservation promotes equity, here's a fine case study.
Guy bought historic townhouse in Alexandria in 2021. Converted three apartments “into something that Louis XIV would be proud of.” A 6-bedroom house with inlaid marble, gold leaf ceilings, gold toilets & a gold fireplace grate from a French chateau.
https://

Ornate Alexandria townhouse is styled after Versailles
House of the Week | Six-bedroom, five-bath ‘The Prince’ has a Midas touch, selling for $4 million.

I am using Desktop Linux¹ for decades because it is woke and gay²!
We want all the gay and merry people playing together :-)
__
¹specifically Debian
²read @… in https://

To What Extent Can Public Equity Indices Statistically Hedge Real Purchasing Power Loss in Compounded Structural Emerging-Market Crises? An Explainable ML-Based Assessment
Artem Alkhamov, Boris Kriuk
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.13055

To What Extent Can Public Equity Indices Statistically Hedge Real Purchasing Power Loss in Compounded Structural Emerging-Market Crises? An Explainable ML-Based Assessment
This study investigates the extent to which local public equity indices can statistically hedge real purchasing power loss during compounded structural macro-financial collapses in emerging markets. We employ a non-linear multiplicative real return calculations consistent with Fisher-parity logics for both domestic and foreign investors with a principled quantile regression, tail dependence copula analysis, and Shapley Additive Explanations (SHAP) to assess the explanatory power of macro variab…

"…so what exactly is going on between publishers and the NIH?" @ ACRLog: https://acrlog.org/2025/07/15/so-what-exactly-is-going-on-between-publishers-and-the-nih/

CNN Doctor Who Raised Alarms Over Trump Diagnosis Is an NAACP 'Health Equity' Director, Not a Practicing Physician (Jon Levine/The Washington Free Beacon)
https://freebeacon.com/media/cnn-doctor-who-raised-alarms-over-trump-diagnosis-is-an-naacp-health-equity-director-not-a-practicing-physician/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250722/p160#a250722p160

Winnipeg-based Conquest Planning, which uses AI to help financial advisors and other clients make decisions, raised an $80M Series B led by Goldman Sachs (Jon Fingas/BetaKit)
https://betakit.com/conquest-planning-

Conquest Planning raises $110-million Series B to fuel US expansion of its financial management platform | BetaKit
Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives led the Winnipeg startup’s latest funding round.

micro victory: a now-discontinued power adapter (manufactured by a private equity-screwed company) broke last night. had a vague memory of ordering a spare several years ago & it was exactly where i vaguely remembered stashing it, ready to go.

lol this project can go fuck itself
https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/10/xlibre_new_xorg_fork/

Forked-off Xlibre tells Wayland display protocol to DEI in a fire
: Project to modernize the X.org X11 server seems to actively court controversy

Trump claimed that Joe Biden had “established toxic diversity, equity and inclusion ideology as a guiding principle of American AI development”.
“But the American people do not want woke Marxist lunacy in the AI models,” Trump said
Trump told assembled industry leaders that he wants them to “change the name” of artificial intelligence
and that they should not be forced to pay the authors of articles or books they use to train their large language models

Sources: the NFL is in talks to take a minority stake of up to 10% in ESPN, which would own NFL Network and RedZone rather than just hold a controlling stake (Alex Sherman/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/24/nfl-media-espn-equity-ownership-deal.html

NFL in talks to take a 10% stake in ESPN
ESPN would own all of NFL Network and NFL RedZone, rather than just a controlling stake, if the deal moves forward as currently constructed, CNBC has learned.

I'm heading to London for Games Transformed: Smash the Fash event.
I'll be on a panel titled "What Can the Left Learn From Struggles in the Games Industry?" & speaking on our @gwuireland.bsky.social union organising with game workers in Ireland.
It's this weekend! Tickets here: https://www.

After the spinoff, WBD's streaming and studios business will be called The Warner Bros Company and its cable networks business will be called Discovery Global (Matthew Keys/TheDesk.net)
https://thedesk.net/2025/07/wbd-new-names-discovery-global-warner-bros/…

WBD reveals new names for cable networks business, film studio segment
The spin-off is expected to be finalized in the near future, with the cable networks company owning equity in the film and streaming business.

Green schoolyard investments influence local-level economic and equity outcomes through spatial-statistical modeling and geospatial analysis in urban contexts
Mahshid Gorjian
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.14232

Green schoolyard investments influence local-level economic and equity outcomes through spatial-statistical modeling and geospatial analysis in urban contexts
Investing in urban green schoolyards is becoming more popular around the world because they could enhance health, education, and community outcomes. There is still considerable debate regarding the impact of urban green schoolyards on economic growth, equity, and community stability, particularly when analyzed using spatial-statistical and geospatial methods. The current study focuses mostly on health or individual case results and avoids looking at broader economic and equality concerns. It al…

U-RWKV: Lightweight medical image segmentation with direction-adaptive RWKV
Hongbo Ye, Fenghe Tang, Peiang Zhao, Zhen Huang, Dexin Zhao, Minghao Bian, S. Kevin Zhou
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.11415

U-RWKV: Lightweight medical image segmentation with direction-adaptive RWKV
Achieving equity in healthcare accessibility requires lightweight yet high-performance solutions for medical image segmentation, particularly in resource-limited settings. Existing methods like U-Net and its variants often suffer from limited global Effective Receptive Fields (ERFs), hindering their ability to capture long-range dependencies. To address this, we propose U-RWKV, a novel framework leveraging the Recurrent Weighted Key-Value(RWKV) architecture, which achieves efficient long-range …

Alternative Loss Function in Evaluation of Transformer Models
Jakub Micha\'nk\'ow, Pawe{\l} Sakowski, Robert \'Slepaczuk
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.16548

Alternative Loss Function in Evaluation of Transformer Models
The proper design and architecture of testing of machine learning models, especially in their application to quantitative finance problems, is crucial. The most important in this process is selecting an adequate loss function used for training, validation, estimation purposes, and tuning of hyperparameters. Therefore, in this research, through empirical experiments on equity and cryptocurrency assets, we introduce the Mean Absolute Directional Loss (MADL) function which is more adequate for opt…

Ex-NFLPA boss resigns role at equity firm Carlyle https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/45790595/ex-nflpa-boss-howell-quits-role-consultant-carlyle-group

If a sitting president can direct the IRS to investigate political enemies, revoke nonprofit status from dissenting institutions, or selectively enforce tax law to reward loyalty,
the agency no longer serves the public.
It serves power.
The slow hollowing of the IRS through funding cuts, staff attrition, and the erosion of norms yields the same result:
a weakened institution unable to enforce the law, uphold equity, or hold the powerful to account.
And when th…

The Fiscal State Under Siege: Why People Hate the IRS, and Why You Should Care
How Trump, DOGE, and Project 2025 Are Turning the IRS Into a Tool of Authoritarian Rule Editor’s Introduction: Hello readers, it's Nathan Tankus and I am very happy to bring to you the first in a long multi-part series on the IRS spearheaded by Anisha Steephen. Anisha worked for

UK Co-op shops / Israel
Nice one Co-op. I do sometimes shop there, and this'll encourage me to do so. Good to see principle being upheld over profit.
"British food retailer the Co-op Group will cease sourcing products and ingredients from 17 countries, including Israel, where there are "internationally recognised" human rights abuses and violations of international law, it said on Tuesday.
"The Co-op, which is owned by its members and trades from over 2,300 food stores across the UK, said it would stop selling carrots from Israel from this month as part of a commitment to no longer stock Israeli goods."
Commiserations to any Israeli food-growers who _don't_ support the atrocities in Gaza and are caught up in this.
#CoOp #food #shopping #Israel #UKPol

DC historic districts, where it's very hard to build new housing, contain 20% of city's population. All but a few are wealthy white areas. DC Office of Planning agrees to study historic districts' equity effects.
Then it turns around & turns study over to preservation advocates.

Petty Assifer Hegseth orders #HarveyMilk name to be removed from US Naval vessel
https://apnews.com/article/harvey-milk-navy-ship-rename…

Pete Hegseth orders Harvey Milk's name scrubbed from US Navy ship
U.S. officials say Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy to rename the USNS Harvey Milk in a highly rare move. The ship was named after the slain gay rights activist who served as a sailor during the Korean War. The officials say Navy Secretary John Phelan put together a small team to rename the replenishment oiler, and that a new name is expected this month. It marks the latest move by Hegseth to purge diversity, equity and inclusion references, and it comes during Pride Month. T…

Does Private Equity Hurt or Improve Healthcare Value? New Evidence and Mechanisms
Minghong Yuan, Wen Wen, Indranil Bardhan
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.14717

Does Private Equity Hurt or Improve Healthcare Value? New Evidence and Mechanisms
What is the impact of private equity (PE) investment on healthcare value? Does PE investment hurt or improve healthcare value, and if so, can its effect be mitigated through the use of health information technologies (IT)? Given the significant investments by PE firms in the healthcare sector in recent years, these are important research questions. Stakeholders, including policy makers, care providers, and patients, need to understand their likely impact and whether PE ownership is aligned with…

Dynamic allocation: extremes, tail dependence, and regime Shifts
Yin Luo, Sheng Wang, Javed Jussa
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.12587 https://

Dynamic allocation: extremes, tail dependence, and regime Shifts
By capturing outliers, volatility clustering, and tail dependence in the asset return distribution, we build a sophisticated model to predict the downside risk of the global financial market. We further develop a dynamic regime switching model that can forecast real-time risk regime of the market. Our GARCH-DCC-Copula risk model can significantly improve both risk- and alpha-based global tactical asset allocation strategies. Our risk regime has strong predictive power of quantitative equity fac…

London- and Paris-based Animaj, a kids' media company that uses proprietary generative AI production tools to automate animation pipelines, raised $85M (Elsa Keslassy/Variety)
https://variety.com/2025/digital/global/…

HarbourView Equity Leads $85 Million Investment in Animaj
HarbourView Equity Partners is leading a $85-million investment in Animaj, the AI-powered media company specializing in kids & family entertainment.

“Equity will no longer be treated as the responsibility of a single team,” he said. “It will be a shared expectation for every team.”
WA Commerce Department dissolves standalone equity team | The Olympian
https://www.theolympian.com/news/politics-government/article308352160.html

Dinari, which offers blockchain-based US stocks, secures a broker-dealer registration to become the first tokenized equity platform to secure approval in the US (Hannah Lang/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/sustai…

Predicting Stock Market Crash with Bayesian Generalised Pareto Regression
Sourish Das
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.17549 https://arxiv.…

Predicting Stock Market Crash with Bayesian Generalised Pareto Regression
This paper develops a Bayesian Generalised Pareto Regression (GPR) model to forecast extreme losses in Indian equity markets, with a focus on the Nifty 50 index. Extreme negative returns, though rare, can cause significant financial disruption, and accurate modelling of such events is essential for effective risk management. Traditional Generalised Pareto Distribution (GPD) models often ignore market conditions; in contrast, our framework links the scale parameter to covariates using a log-line…

Transit for All: Mapping Equitable Bike2Subway Connection using Region Representation Learning
Min Namgung, JangHyeon Lee, Fangyi Ding, Yao-Yi Chiang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.15113

Transit for All: Mapping Equitable Bike2Subway Connection using Region Representation Learning
Ensuring equitable public transit access remains challenging, particularly in densely populated cities like New York City (NYC), where low-income and minority communities often face limited transit accessibility. Bike-sharing systems (BSS) can bridge these equity gaps by providing affordable first- and last-mile connections. However, strategically expanding BSS into underserved neighborhoods is difficult due to uncertain bike-sharing demand at newly planned ("cold-start") station locations and …

London- and Paris-based Animaj, a kids' media company that uses proprietary generative AI production tools to automate animation pipelines, raised $85M (Elsa Keslassy/Variety)
https://variety.com/2025/digital/global/…

HarbourView Equity Leads $85 Million Investment in Animaj
HarbourView Equity Partners is leading a $85-million investment in Animaj, the AI-powered media company specializing in kids & family entertainment.

DC historic districts, where it's very hard to build new housing, contain 20% of city's population. All but a few are wealthy white areas. DC Office of Planning agrees to study historic districts' equity effects.
Then it turns around & turns study over to preservation advocates.

Trump Tax Bill Bails Out Private Equity's Layoff Scheme (Luke Goldstein/The Lever)
https://www.levernews.com/trump-tax-bill-bails-out-private-equitys-layoff-scheme/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250619/p132#a250619p132

Optimal Coordination of Flexible DERs in Local Energy and Flexibility Markets to Ensure Social Equity
Niloofar Pourghaderi, Milad Kabirifar, Payman Dehghanian
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.02179

Optimal Coordination of Flexible DERs in Local Energy and Flexibility Markets to Ensure Social Equity
Local electricity markets offer a promising solution for integrating renewable energy sources and other distributed energy resources (DERs) into distribution networks. These markets enable the effective utilization of flexible resources by facilitating coordination among various agents. Beyond technical and economic considerations, addressing social equity within these local communities is critical and requires dedicated attention in market-clearing frameworks. This paper proposes a social equi…

NFLPA executive director Lloyd Howell steps down amid conflict of interest, collusion controversies

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/nflpa-e

Josh Kesselman, founder of rolling paper brand Raw, acquires High Times magazine for $3.5M, after its private equity owner failed to make loan payments in 2024 (Emmett Lindner/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/18/business/high-times-mag…

New Owner for High Times Magazine Bets on a Counterculture Comeback
The anti-establishment magazine, which was taken over by a private equity firm in 2017, was purchased this week by an avid fan and reader for $3.5 million.

Source: Founders Fund and Dragoneer have committed to investing $1B each in OpenAI's second, $30B installment of its $40B round announced in March (Sri Muppidi/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/founders-fund-dragon…

Founders Fund, Dragoneer Each Commit $1 Billion–Plus to OpenAI Deal
As OpenAI tries to raise a record-breaking $40 billion in equity funding this year, it’s getting help from more of its existing investors. Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and Dragoneer Investment Group have committed to investing more than $1 billion each in the second, $30 billion installment of ...

Equity Markets Volatility, Regime Dependence and Economic Uncertainty: The Case of Pacific Basin
Bahram Adrangi, Arjun Chatrath, Saman Hatamerad, Kambiz Raffiee
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.05552

Equity Markets Volatility, Regime Dependence and Economic Uncertainty: The Case of Pacific Basin
This study investigates the relationship between the market volatility of the iShares Asia 50 ETF (AIA) and economic and market sentiment indicators from the United States, China, and globally during periods of economic uncertainty. Specifically, it examines the association between AIA volatility and key indicators such as the US Economic Uncertainty Index (ECU), the US Economic Policy Uncertainty Index (EPU), China's Economic Policy Uncertainty Index (EPUCH), the Global Economic Policy Uncerta…

Amsterdam-based Finom, a neobank targeting SMBs, raised a €115M Series C led by AVP after raising €92.7M from General Catalyst in May (Anna Heim/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/23/smb-focused-finom-closes-e115m-as-european-…

SMB-focused Finom closes €115M as European fintech heats up | TechCrunch
Finom, an Amsterdam-based challenger bank for SMBs that claims to have doubled its revenue in 2024, closed a €115 million Series C equity round (around $133 million).

Homeownership as Life Cycle Goldmine: Evidence from Macrohistory
Yang Bai, Shize Li, Jialu Shen
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.17624 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507…

Homeownership as Life Cycle Goldmine: Evidence from Macrohistory
Should a household buy a home? Using data from 16 developed countries spanning 1870 to 2020, this study provides a resounding affirmative answer. Contrary to popular expert advice, homeownership enhances life cycle wealth by up to 9% and welfare by up to 23%, compared to all-equity investment strategy. Homeownership reduces wealth portfolio risk and improves wealth equality, though it comes at the cost of lower working-life wealth and curtailed financial asset holdings. Gains are heterogeneous:…

Designing for Community Care: Reimagining Support for Equity & Well-being in Academia
Beatriz Severes, Ana O. Henriques, Rory Clark, Paulo Bala, Anna Carter, Rua Mae Williams, Geraldine Fitzpatrick
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.01690

Designing for Community Care: Reimagining Support for Equity & Well-being in Academia
Academic well-being is deeply influenced by peer-support networks, yet they remain informal, inequitable, and unsustainable, often relying on personal connections and social capital rather than structured, inclusive systems. Additionally, institutional well-being responses frequently focus on student populations, neglecting the emotional labour of faculty and staff, reinforcing an exclusionary academic culture. Drawing on HCI methodologies, participatory design, and care ethics, this workshop w…

Q&A with Megan Greenwell, author of Bad Company, a book on PE firms' impact on media and other industries, on unionization efforts, nonprofit outlets, and more (Camille Bromley/Columbia Journalism Review)
https://www.cjr.org/the-interview/megan-gr

Megan Greenwell on How Private Equity Is Devastating the Media
A conversation with the author of Bad Company.

Sources: Elon Musk's xAI is in talks to raise $4.3B via an equity investment on top of the $5B it has recently been trying to borrow from debt investors (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-17…

NFL backs NFLPA executive director Lloyd Howell after potential conflict of interest arises

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/nfl-backs-n…

Sources: after raising $10B, xAI is now working with a trusted financier to secure up to $12B to buy Nvidia chips, led by Elon Musk-linked Valor Equity Partners (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/elon-musk-x-ai-funding-feecede1

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy to rename the
USNS Harvey Milk,
a highly rare move that will strip the ship of the moniker of a slain gay rights activist who served as a sailor during the Korean War.
The change was laid out in an internal memo that officials said defended the action as a move to align with Trump and Hegseth’s objectives to
“re-establish the warrior culture

Pete Hegseth orders Harvey Milk's name scrubbed from US Navy ship
U.S. officials say Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy to rename the USNS Harvey Milk in a highly rare move. The ship was named after the slain gay rights activist who served as a sailor during the Korean War. The officials say Navy Secretary John Phelan put together a small team to rename the replenishment oiler, and that a new name is expected this month. It marks the latest move by Hegseth to purge diversity, equity and inclusion references, and it comes during Pride Month. T…

Boulevard, which provides business management software for the self-care sector, raised an $80M Series D led by JMI Equity at an ~$800M post-money valuation (Mary Ann Azevedo/Crunchbase News)
https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/saas-ai-scheduling-startup-boule…

Salon Software Platform Boulevard Nearly Doubles Valuation To $800M With $80M Series D
Los Angeles-based Boulevard, a business management software platform for self-care businesses, has raised $80 million in Series D funding led by JMI Equity, the company announced on Thursday.

Seattle-based tax compliance software maker Avalara, acquired by Vista Equity Partners in a 2022 deal valuing it at $8.4B, confidentially files for a US IPO (Prakhar Srivastava/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/tax-software-compan…

Conflict of interest now clouds tenure of NFLPA chief Lloyd Howell, who faces what should be an easy decision

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/conflic…

Byron Allen settles with McDonald's over his $10B 2021 lawsuit accusing the fast food chain of racial stereotyping in its ads budget; terms were not disclosed (Jonathan Stempel/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/sus…

Decentralized messaging protocol XMTP developer Ephemera raised a $20M Series B at a $300M equity and $750M network valuation, following a $20M Series A in 2021 (Yogita Khatri/The Block)
https://www.theblock.co/post/363026/ephemera-xmtp-fu…

CB Insights: VCs and private equity firms poured $3.1B to fund 144 deals in the LA area in Q1 2025, up from $2.7B in Q1 2024 and $1.4B in Q1 2023 (Los Angeles Times)
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-06-06/venture-capital-…

Venture capital investment rises in L.A., and not just for AI startups
Venture capital investors and private equity firms poured $3.1 billion to fund 144 deals in the L.A. area in the first quarter of this year, up 15% from a year ago.

Sources: Cantor Equity Partners 1, a SPAC backed by Cantor Fitzgerald, is in late-stage talks with Blockstream Capital founder Adam Back to buy $3B in bitcoin (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/a4a362a6-cc8b-4188-8658-75183a3d6f5f

Sources: SpaceX has agreed to invest $2B in xAI, as part of xAI's $5B equity fundraise announced by Morgan Stanley last month (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/spacex-to-invest-2-billion-into-el…

Airalo, which offers affordable eSIM roaming packages for travelers, raised $220M at a $1B valuation (Kelsey Warner/Semafor)
https://www.semafor.com/article/07/11/2025/singapore-esim-startup-raises-220-million

Singapore eSIM startup raises $220 million
Airalo, led by a Dubai-based founder, was valued at more than $1 billion in its latest funding round, led by private equity giant CVC.

Sources: Mistral AI is in talks to raise as much as $1B in equity from several investors including Abu Dhabi's MGX; it has raised €1B since its 2023 founding (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-…

CapVest-owned Datasite, which offers workflow automation tech for dealmaking, acquires Grata, which helps users with all aspects of the deal process, for $200M (Maria Armental/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/private-equi…

Blackstone acquires Vista Equity Partners' minority stake in event software company Cvent, sources say for $1.3B; Blackstone acquired Cvent for $4.6B in 2023 (Ryan Gould/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Thoma Bravo raised $34.4B across three funds, including $24.3B for its main software company buyout fund and $8.1B for its midsize software-focused fund (Miriam Gottfried/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.

Founders Fund-backed Ondo Finance and Pantera Capital launch a $250M fund to invest in real-world asset tokenization projects via equity stakes and tokens (Lucinda Shen/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/pro/fintech-deals/2025/07/03/ondo-…

Exclusive: Ondo and Pantera Capital earmark $250 million for real-world asset tokenization
Tokenization lags only stablecoins in crypto activity.