Dez Reads. Decimal Points and the Gates of Hell

There are two kinds of people in the world – those who trust the process and those who immediately question why the speed limit is suddenly 17.3 mph.

Mark Emerson here with the pen, and this week is full of people trying to reshape systems that no longer feel quite right. Anne Marie Malecha opens with a look at the SEC’s potential move away from quarterly reporting. It’s a change that could upend the entire cadence of Wall Street, media cycles, and corporate strategy itself.

Josh Culling follows with a reminder that politics is often hyper-local, oddly specific, and occasionally hilarious. His hoodie-wearing Massachusetts YIMBY captures the reality that meaningful civic engagement usually comes from the people who actually show up.

Madeline Nagler delivers a powerful argument about who gets excluded from major cultural and medical debates, while Phil Bogdan reminds us that sometimes the strangest ideas are the ones that actually make people pay attention.

MaryGrace Lucas brings us perhaps the most absurdly effective headline of the week with the New York Times’ Gates of Hell clickbait masterclass, proving once again that curiosity remains undefeated. And Sam Jefferies closes things out in the increasingly ruthless world of college football buyouts, where universities are learning that for cause can be stretched just about as far as donors need it to go.

A week of systems under pressure, narratives under construction, and people trying to game both.

Thanks, as always, for reading along with us.

Here we go.

Less Noise, More Strategy.

Axios. SEC proposes rule to allow public companies to report twice a year.

Quarterly reporting has run U.S. markets for fifty-plus years. Dimon and Buffett have called for this for years. Plenty of business leaders agree. Less short-termism. Fewer earnings-driven contortions. More room for an actual long-term strategy.

If it lands, the entire investor relations and influence ecosystem reshapes. The sell-side analysts whose models assume four data points a year. CNBC’s earnings season machinery. The retail investor chatter that lives and dies on each print. The activist investors that use a soft quarter as the wedge for a board fight. The short sellers that time their attacks to a miss. All of it gets fewer reps, fewer headlines, fewer hot takes.

The 60-day public comment window is now open. As someone who observes influence and works with corporate clients living the quarterly earnings hamster wheel, I’m watching this one closely. Where the comments come from will be telling.

– Anne Marie Malecha

Town Hall Heroics.

WSJ. The Latest Hero of the ‘Yimby’ Movement Is a Massachusetts Man in a Hoodie

While I do agree with this Masshole on the substance, I’d instead like to make a point about the beauty of local politics. This is actually how it works in the real world. It is parochial, it is hyper-specific, and it is often hilarious.

Kudos to David Modica. Not for going viral, or even for making me laugh audibly. Kudos for being impactful in local politics and fighting for what you think is best for your community. Some see a surly and borderline rude voter; I see someone who cares deeply and did something interesting about it.

– Josh Culling

The Silent, but Most Important, Stakeholders.

Bloomberg. America’s Go-To Autism Therapy Is Also the Most Controversial.

I’m the older sister of someone who went from non‑verbal and high‑risk to low‑support needs, and here’s what bothers me most about this debate: who actually gets to sit at the table.

Right now, the loudest voices shaping the narrative are mostly late‑diagnosed, level 1 autistic adults with strong verbal and writing skills. They can publish essays, give talks, and frame ABA, and autism itself, in very sophisticated, theoretical language. That perspective is important. But it’s not the whole story, and it often drowns out everyone else.

My sister will never write an online post about her experience. Many profoundly autistic people can’t safely advocate for themselves in public, or at all. Their realities get filtered through others or erased entirely. And families and caregivers, who live the realities of developmental disability every hour of every day, are increasingly treated as if their input is inherently suspect or oppressive.

If we’re serious about justice and dignity, the conversation must change. We need structured ways for families and caregivers to be heard without being immediately dismissed, and for the needs of more profoundly disabled people to be represented even when they can’t self‑advocate in polished language. Otherwise, “nothing about us without us” becomes “nothing about the most vulnerable, decided by the most articulate.”

– Madeline Nagler

Safety by Oddity.

UPI. Wisconsin recycling center posts 17.3 mph speed limit sign

I may not be a genius, but I pride myself on recognizing genius when I see it. And what can be more genius than posting a speed-limit sign with an arbitrary decimal number?

Outagamie County Recycling and Solid Waste station in Appleton, Wisconsin, recently announced such a speed-limit sign: 17.3 miles per hour. Why the decimal? Because, they say, it makes you pause and look twice; it takes you out of autopilot mode. That’s so true! Who wouldn’t turn their heads toward that sign… and try to process it… while they’re driving… in an area where giant garbage trucks and smaller cars are moving in and out throughout the day?

Seriously, it was a great social media idea, a unique way of promoting safety that could easily be explained in a post that should have gotten much more engagement than it did. But on the road, where all people see is “SPEED LIMIT: 17.3,” there’s no room for messaging or a discussion about safety; there’s only room for safety. Sometimes less – in mundane repetition – is more in communication.

– Phillip Bogdan

The Clickbait Gates of Hell.

The New York Times. The ‘Gates to Hell’ Are Dimming. That May Not Be a Good Thing.

Y’all, the NYT did us dirty with this 12-word headline whiplash. Who wouldn’t read the phrase “The ‘Gates to Hell’ Are Dimming” and feel a little relief?

But of course, the “click me” chaser, “That May Not Be a Good Thing,” did the bigger lift. Even if hellfire is dying down, things still suck.

No, we’re not talking about the actual fires of hell, which admittedly would be tough to measure. The piece is about a decades-long natural-gas fire burning inside the soccer field-sized Darvaza Crater in Turkmenistan.

It’s an insane visual, hence its “Gates of Hell” nickname. And it’s a bit of a tourist attraction and just an overall curiosity for nerds like me.

The New York Times reports, “The intensity of heat from the flames has diminished by more than 75 percent over the last three years,” which a layman like me who just wants some nice, clean air would think is a good thing.

But then comes the gut punch. NYT goes on to report that while the flames are getting smaller, greenhouse gas emissions from the inferno are still increasing. So now we’re left with a burning hell hole that looks way less cool than it did, and yet, it’s still bad for the planet.

Thanks for nothing, Gates of Hell.

However, I will concede that the NYT headline itself did its job, because I clicked it, read the piece, and learned something I didn’t know. So, there’s a small win in this.

Or as the NYT might describe it, Reader Harrumped at Headline She Clicked. That May Be a Good Thing.

– MaryGrace Lucas

Getting Sacked off the Field.

The Athletic. Fired for cause, or for losing? Why more schools are betting they can fire coaches for free.

The drama of the college coaching carousel has become its own form of sporting entertainment.

Who’s on the hot seat, who needs to win which game in order to survive, how much boosters need to contribute to golden parachute, a losing coach out of town. It’s a form of semi-controlled chaos that invites spectators to be participants; in the modern era, a vocal fanbase can send a Saturday night loser to the unemployment line by Sunday afternoon.

There’s a catch, of course. The cost of paying fired coaches has reached astronomical levels. Universities are on the hook for tens of millions for years following the last play call, and their donors and financial officers are sick of it. This new reality has forced schools into increasingly creative termination clauses, broadly expanding the use of “cause” for ending employment. As sports attorney Martin J. Greenberg told The Athletic this week, “The trend seems to be to find the magic words that are undefinable, maybe illusory, fire the coach for cause, then there’s negotiations (on a buyout).”

He’s right. Those magic words are becoming even more magical. Schools use them as a shield of self-defense at the inevitable moment they need to find an excuse to exit an athletic director or coach.

In doing so, they wisely insulate themselves from a full buyout, but they also contribute to more churn. Which may be good fodder for sports pundits, but bad news for bench bosses already afraid of their next firing.

– Sam Jefferies

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