Ryan Stottlemyer

Attorney by training. Sports junkie by choice. Opinions and views are mine...

[Alex @ajak1033]

The Spurs know how to TAKE the lead, they just don't know how to HOLD the lead. And that's really the most important part of the lead: the holding

[IBC 2025 Chronicle @DBacksBeisbol]

The summer routine hits a little different for one of our OG DBacks…

@HWonderlick5 🫡🇺🇸

[Ryan Stottlemyer @stottle4375]

@mtaibbi You’ll never get intellectually honest dialogue/discourse on X. App has many attributes, but that’s not one of them…

[Ryan Stottlemyer @stottle4375]

@DavidArtGar @mtaibbi Our esteemed state assembly has already protected folks from this alleged pickle:

https://t.co/4qnBYJ8YMv

[Ryan Stottlemyer @stottle4375]

@terrybythebay @patrickblong @mtaibbi By definition, no one notoriously waits longer to vote than those who do so in person on Election Day…

[Bitcoin Teddy @Bitcoin_Teddy]

Elon Musk used a joke to perform an autopsy on the American economy.

Two economists go for a hike. They find a pile of shit. One pays the other $100 to eat it.

They keep walking. Find another pile. The second economist pays $100 back to eat that one.

They stop. Neither man gained a dollar. Both ate shit for nothing.

But on paper they just generated $200 in GDP.

Musk: “That basically would count as a job. This is to illustrate the absurdity of economics.”

That is not a punchline. That is the operating system of the federal government.

Every time a politician celebrates “record job creation” this is what they are describing. Not output. Not value. Not progress. Motion.

The entire bureaucratic machine exists to manufacture friction and then invoice for it.

Compliance layers built to justify the next compliance layer. Oversight committees that produce nothing but the need for more oversight. Consulting firms hired to audit the work of other consulting firms.

Trillions circulating through systems that have never produced a single thing you can hold in your hands. But the GDP number ticks up. So everyone applauds.

The shit gets eaten. The scoreboard moves. Nobody asks what actually got built.

This is why Washington treats AI like a five alarm fire.

AI does not play the friction game. It does not form a committee. It does not schedule a review. It does not file 400 pages of paperwork no one will ever read.

It just solves the problem.

And that is the one thing the machine cannot survive.

The government does not tax results. It taxes the process. The longer the process, the deeper the cut.

AI compresses a ten day workflow into seconds. There is nothing left to bill. Nothing left to tax. Nothing left to skim.

So they will spend the next decade warning you that AI threatens the economy.

What they will never say is what it actually threatens.

The illusion that activity equals progress.

The $200 economy where both men ate shit and called it a job.

The machines are not coming for your purpose.

They are coming to prove that half the economy never had one.

[Ryan Stottlemyer @stottle4375]

@Zigmanfreud @TheLaurenChen By definition, those who decide “latest” are in-person Election Day voters. So your thesis would suggest mail-in ballots that arrive AFTER Election Day would track with in-person voting — i.e., those who decide “latest.” Instead, we have statistical anomalies that fuel suspicion

[IBC 2025 Chronicle @DBacksBeisbol]

@ScoopRomero 2 for 3 in his Riptide debut… 👇👇

[Ryan Stottlemyer @stottle4375]

@AdamStensonACS Equally true for JuCo programs — if you reflexively play/favor a D1 bounce back over a kid in your program who is objectively better…I have questions

[Daniel Priestley @DanielPriestley]

Under capitalism, socialists are free to build socialism.

Under socialism, capitalists aren’t free to build anything.

Nothing stops a group of socialists pooling their money, forming a company, and splitting every wage and every pound of profit perfectly equally.... Or to donate all profit to the government.

It’s legal. It’s easy. Owning the means of production is as simple as setting up a company.

Marx wrote his manifesto before the invention of limited liability companies. Back then “seize the factory” meant seizing it from the handful of families who could afford one.

That argument expired the day anyone could start a company with limited liability, raise investment and hire who they want.

Socialists are free to lead by example and demonstrate their system works. They can out-recruit, out-motivate, out-build and out innovate based on their ideas if they like. It would prove the philosophy works. Capitalism will happily host their experiment.

The fact that nobody does this tells you a lot.

[Gad Saad @GadSaad]

It is difficult to imagine an American who has been a greater parasite on the public coffers than @BernieSanders. He has contributed NOTHING to the United States other than decades of cantankerous and sullen envy-fuelled anger at those who create.

[Mike Bales 🫡🇺🇸 @MikeBales]

He’s the President of the United States — not your ex, not your personal villain, and not the cause of your misery. You don’t have to support him. That’s America.

But if someone is simply backing the sitting President and it makes you rage, cut people off, attack families, or act like garbage — you are the problem.

You’ve turned politics into a personality disorder: nonstop outrage and toddler meltdowns online. Grow up. He won. The sky didn’t fall. Pay your bills, care for your family, touch grass, and move on.

[Julianna Romero #17 2027 @JulesRomero17]

Final 2026 numbers for Freeway League Champs @VPSoftball

• .323 AVG | 1.069 OPS | 10 HR | 37 RBI

• 12 wins | 145 IP | 125 Ks | 3.227 era

• Freeway League Pitcher of the Year | 1st Team All-League | Scholar Athlete

• CIF Quarterfinalists

Highlights from season 👇👇

[Tristin Hopper @TristinHopper]

Life advice: The guy in a "fuck you" hat would almost certainly pull you out of a burning car if needed. Anybody wearing a shirt mentioning "love" or "kindness," meanwhile, might feign concern while watching you burn to death.

[Ryan Stottlemyer @stottle4375]

@leftcoastbsbl D1 Dead Period 😒

[Ryan Stottlemyer @stottle4375]

@ChrisRBarron @DigitalFringed1 Unfollow…🤪

[So Cal Birds (Baseball Training Academy) @SoCalBirds]

HUGE congrats to my good friend @tomnilles and his staff @SACDons along with these Birds alum for winning the CA state JC championships

[Bridget Phetasy @BridgetPhetasy]

That Hasan’s first thought when Ashley mentioned Providence was of a Michelin restaurant in L.A. and not Rhode Island tells me everything I need to know about his “socialism.”

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am the Senior Vice President of Late Night Strategy at CBS. I am the person who turned a comedian into a priest and charged advertisers to watch the congregation.

I want to be precise about what I built. Not a comedy show. A permission structure. For eleven years, six million Americans tuned in every night to find out what they were allowed to believe by morning. We didn't sell jokes. We sold certainty. Certainty costs nothing to produce. People will pay anything for it. We charged $50 million a year and still lost money because it turns out permission is even cheaper than we thought.

In 2014, we had a genuinely dangerous comedian. A man who once testified before Congress in character as a fictional conservative pundit and made the entire chamber look like they'd been pantsed on C-SPAN. His fake persona was the most brilliant satire on television. Layered. Ironic. Unpredictable. The character could say anything because nothing was real. The character was the art. The character was the comedian.

We killed the character and put the real man on stage. The real man was a lecturer. Earnest. Thoughtful. Correct about everything. Correct is not funny. Correct is not dangerous. Correct is the absence of danger. We promoted the absence of danger and called it growth. His character could make a Senate committee squirm. The real him makes an audience nod. Nodding pays the same as squirming. Nodding is easier to produce.

His final words on air were "We love doing this show for you, but what we really, really love is doing this show with you." The audience wept. I wrote that line. Not the words. The architecture that made those words feel true. For eleven years, the audience believed they were participants. They were not participants. They were the product. "With you" is what you say to a congregation. A comedian says "at you." We hadn't said "at you" since 2015.

Our internal metric was called Affirm Rate. It measured the percentage of monologue segments that generated applause instead of laughter. I invented this metric. I also invented the bonus structure tied to it. In 2015, our Affirm Rate was 34%. By 2022, it was 94%. I received a raise every year. We are crushing it. At the things I made up. That's performance management.

But I need to tell you about the real discovery. The one I put in a deck called "Content Strategy 2019-2024." The one that got me promoted.

Agreement gets applause. I knew that early. But correction — telling the audience their vocabulary is slightly outdated, their outrage is aimed two degrees off-center, their feelings are valid but their phrasing needs work — correction gets them back tomorrow. Agreement is a transaction. Correction is a subscription. We converted a comedy show into a nightly software update for moral vocabulary. Churn was near zero. They couldn't afford to miss an episode. Missing an episode meant using last week's words in this week's meeting. That's social death. We monetized the fear of social death and called it entertainment.

I want to be honest about something. The content was not bipartisan. We chose a side. But I need you to understand: we did not choose it because we believed in it. We chose it because that side's audience is more responsive to correction. They want to be updated. They want to be told their language is outdated. They experience correction as care. The other side does not respond to correction. They respond to provocation. Provocation is harder to monetize. You can't build a subscription on provocation because the audience doesn't come back to learn — they come back to fight. Fighting is unpredictable. Correction is scheduled. We optimized for the audience that wants to be told what to think. That audience leaned one direction. That's not ideology. That's market segmentation.

The writers' room had a whiteboard. In 2015 it said "What's funny?" In 2018 it said "What should they feel?" By 2021 it said "What are they still saying wrong?" I watched that whiteboard evolve like a finch beak and I never intervened. The market was speaking. We listened. Listening to the market is the same as leading the audience. They can't tell the difference.

A writer named Marcus raised his hand in 2019. "What if we just tried to make them laugh again?" I thanked him for his passion and scheduled a creative alignment conversation. He transferred to streaming development within the month. The Affirm Rate the week he left was 91%. Laughter would have brought it down. That's risk management.

Here is what nobody will say out loud. I will say it because I am proud of it.

We made our audience worse at politics.

Not better. Worse. Every night for eleven years, we expressed their outrage for them. Professionally. With a band and good lighting. And because the outrage had been expressed — because a man in a suit had furrowed his brow with the precise calibrated degree of indignation — they didn't need to express it themselves. They watched. They clapped. They felt the catharsis of resistance without resisting anything. They went to bed having done nothing and feeling like they'd done something. That's the product. Not comedy. Not information. Catharsis. Catharsis is the enemy of action. A man who has screamed into a pillow does not then also scream in the street. We were the pillow. A $50 million pillow with a house band.

If you feel the outrage has been expressed for you, you will not march. You will not organize. You will not call your representative. You will tune in tomorrow to feel it expressed again. That's retention. Our retention was extraordinary.

I want to talk about the comedy-to-catechism pipeline because I think people underestimate what we achieved.

Stage one: comedian makes jokes about the powerful. Audience laughs because the powerful are absurd. This is the Carlin model. The jester punches up. Everyone below feels relief.

Stage two: comedian makes jokes about people who disagree with the audience. Audience laughs because disagreement is stupid. The jester has turned around. He's still on the stage but now he's facing the crowd with a pointer.

Stage three: comedian stops making jokes. Comedian identifies incorrect beliefs and explains why they're dangerous. Audience does not laugh. Audience claps. The jester is gone. In his place: a hall monitor with a desk and a band.

Stage four: audience watches not for entertainment but for certification. Having seen last night's episode means you know which words are current. Not having seen it means you might use yesterday's vocabulary in today's meeting. The show is no longer comedy. It is a credential. Watching it means you are educated. Not watching means you are the person being discussed. We made a show that you watch to prove you're not the kind of person who doesn't watch it. That's a closed loop. Closed loops don't need content. They need continuity. We provided continuity for $50 million a year.

A comedian — whose entire historical function was to say things too dangerous for anyone else to say — became the person who decides which things are too dangerous for anyone to say. And the audience applauded. Every night. For 2,500 nights. Because being told what is forbidden feels exactly like being told what you already knew. Prohibition performed as validation. I put that in the deck too.

Our audience was correct about everything. I know this because they applauded everything we said. The applause proved the correctness. The correctness justified the applause. We called this audience research. The methodology was peer-reviewed by the audience. They approved unanimously. Every night.

The actually funny comedians left. They went to podcasts. To clubs. To rooms where the audience doesn't know what's coming and that uncertainty is the point. They took the laughter with them. We kept the applause. We called those spaces problematic. That's market differentiation. The problematic spaces are funnier. But funny is not our product.

We lost $40 million a year. We didn't lose it because the show failed. We lost it because we spent $50 million producing what a podcast host in his garage gives away between mattress ads. The podcast is funnier. The podcast is more dangerous. The podcast has an audience that laughs instead of claps. But we had the Ed Sullivan Theater. We had 461 seats. We had a former Beatle play the farewell episode. Paul McCartney, Elvis Costello, Jon Batiste, and Louis Cato playing "Hello, Goodbye" like it was a benediction. I booked a Beatle for a funeral. The Beatles played that stage in 1964 and the audience screamed so loud you couldn't hear the music. Our audience didn't scream. They wept politely. That's the difference between entertainment and church. We ran a church.

Jon Stewart showed up to the finale and did a bit where he pretended to deliver a corporate statement from Paramount about the cancellation. The audience laughed. It was the first time they laughed in a way I didn't recognize. Involuntary. Surprised. Dangerous. For ninety seconds, a comedian was in that building. Then it was over.

John Oliver said "At some point, this may come for all of our shows" and then added "but Stephen, what's important to remember is that tonight, it is going to eat you." The audience laughed again. Involuntary again. Two moments of actual comedy in a three-hour farewell. Both of them about death.

The finale drew 6.74 million viewers. Biggest weeknight audience in our history. More people came to the funeral than ever visited the patient. I know what they were mourning. Not comedy. The comedy died in 2016. Not the man. The man is fine. He's wealthy. What they mourned was the permission structure. Starting today, they have to decide what to believe on their own. They have to form an opinion without waiting for a man behind a desk to form it first and deliver it with a knowing look. Some of them haven't done that since 2015. The funeral wasn't for the show. It was for the certainty.

He joked about the Peanuts theme music licensing cost on his last night. "Oh no! I hope this doesn't cost CBS any money!" The audience laughed. It was a joke about money. About the network losing money. The last joke was about money. Not about truth. Not about power. About a licensing fee for a cartoon piano riff. Eleven years and the final joke was about accounting. I think that's perfect. The show was always about accounting. We just dressed it up as conscience.

The President of the United States — the man we spent eleven years explaining was dangerous to an audience that already believed he was dangerous — posted an AI-generated video of our host being thrown into a dumpster on the Late Show set. Then Trump danced to "YMCA" in the clip. Viewed more times in four hours than our farewell managed in a week. His production cost: zero. Ours: negative $50 million a year. We manufactured his relevance every night at 11:35 for eleven years and he never paid us a dime. We were his marketing department. He turned our funeral into content. His ROI was infinite. Ours required a write-off and a farewell concert.

The Strike Force Five — Fallon, Kimmel, Meyers, Oliver — appeared in a segment about late-night losing "one middle-aged white man who makes jokes about the news." They were joking about their own obsolescence. All of them know. None of them will say it. The format is dead. The audience moved to phones. The phones don't have desks or bands. The phones have men in garages who are allowed to be wrong, allowed to be surprised, allowed to say something their audience hasn't already approved. That's comedy. We stopped doing that a decade ago. We did approval. Approval looks like comedy from a distance. Up close it's church.

I do not feel guilt. Guilt would require me to believe I took something from them. I didn't take anything. They came to us. Every night. They chose the catechism over the comedy. They preferred correction over surprise. Certainty over danger. Instruction over laughter. They wanted to be told. Not challenged. Not shocked. Not made to laugh against their will at something they didn't see coming. They wanted to see it coming. They wanted to mouth along. That's not comedy. That's karaoke. We ran the most expensive karaoke bar in television history and the only miscalculation was charging a cover when the songs are free on every phone.

We turned a jester into a priest. We turned an audience into a congregation. We turned laughter into obedience. We turned political engagement into passive consumption. We turned a comedy show into a permission structure and charged $50 million a year to tell people what they already believed in a voice slightly nicer than their own.

They were so grateful they showed up to mourn us. 6.74 million of them. Weeping. For the certainty.

Applause is more reliable than laughter. I proved it. The proof cost $450 million, one character, one comedian's capacity for danger, and one audience's willingness to act.

The metric went up.

[OC Riptide Baseball @ocriptide]

GETTING CAUGHT IN THE TIDE

OC native, @ScoopRomero, is bringing his skills as a catcher from @PepperdineBASE to our 2026 Riptide roster. Catch him this summer @YourGreatPark behind the plate.

Welcome to the #OCRiptideFamily, Shawn.