Three Easy Don’ts + Six Sobering Minutes June 7, 2025 1. Don’t specify your pronouns unless you think people need guidance. It’s one thing to be supportive of gender nonconforming people; quite another to play into MAGA hands and lose elections. For more on this, see: Enough With The Pronouns. (If you have any doubt that we should support gender nonconforming people, watch this straight Navy flyer’s 60-second appeal.) 2. Don’t spread the TACO meme. I’ve been thinking this from the minute I first heard it and should have spoken up sooner: ‘TACO’ is an awful political slogan, and it could backfire terribly. 3. Don’t vote with Oportun management. This applies only to those bought OPRT before May 27 and should thus have received an e-ballot from your broker (probably this past Wednesday around 3am or 4am, if you’re searching for it). I voted AGAINST retaining the first two board members and FOR the third, whom management recommends you reject. (On the remaining questions, I voted FOR.) If management defeats the challenge, I’d hope the stock doubles over the next year or two. If the challenge prevails, I’d hope it quintuples. (Needless to say: only with money you can truly afford to lose.) BONUS With all that’s going on . . . . . . a fake wrestling entrepreneur tapped to head the Department of Education, a Fox News host tapped to head the Department of Defense, Chainsaw Musk battling with our twice impeached Commander-in-Chief — three examples that barely begin to scratch the surface . . . . . . one would be forgiven to think (if one hadn’t just lost one’s job or weren’t about to lose access to healthcare or hadn’t lived through our last stagflation) that’s it’s all just a reality TV show of sorts, and really kinda fun. This six-minute video about Alfred Hugenberg — of whom I had never heard — could make such a person think twice. It will enrage anyone who thinks that I’m suggesting Trump is a modern-day you-know-who. As Al Gore recently said, “I understand very well why it is wrong to compare Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich to any other movement. It was uniquely evil, full stop. I get it.” I get it, too. (And I apologize that Thursday’s link was broken. Here are the 90 seconds I meant for you to see. And here’s a transcript of to Gore’s full speech.) That said, try to find six minutes to watch. The parallels strike me as significant.