Breakdowns and takedowns

I decided I'd collect some of my favourite breakdowns, analyses, critiques, etc. These are things I've read over the years that I think are interesting, notable, or presented well. I don't necessarily agree with them, nor do I endorse them.

Inspired by /fast and /memos. I highly recommend checking them out.

1. The Resilience of Costco - Costco operates in a competitive market (against Amazon, no less) and uses high quality, bulk sizes, custom packaging, and the Costco Subscription to thrive.
2. A report alleging that Luckin Coffee is fraudulent - lots of interesting detective work to suggest that Luckin Coffee is overstating the numbers. I found this via Muddy Waters, but as far as I can tell it is not their work and it seems to be anonymous. Take with grain of salt.
3. Trian Captial on Disney - an investor presenting their case for Disney's underperformance and calls for change. Soon after, Bob Iger returns from retirement.
4. Blackwells Capital on Peloton - a scorching takedown of Peloton. They touch on poor decision making, lack of financial discipline, and misalignment of interests. CEO quits, Barry McCarthy takes over.
5. A leaked analysis of the New York Times - turning the investigative reporting inwards, the NYT critiques it's own digital strategy and makes proposals for what needs to change to remain a top tier publication. "The value of the home page is decreasing" / "We can be both a daily newsletter and a library" / "Just adding structured data, for example, immediately increased traffic..."
6. The World's Largest Hedge Fund is a Fraud - a breakdown of the Madoff Ponzi scheme.
7. Steve Yegge's Google Platform Rant - "Amazon does everything wrong, and Google does everything right." - a really interesting comparison of the two cultures, and why Amazon wins and Google loses.
8. Fail-safe airspace by James Haydon: how a single incorrectly filed flight-plan caused an air-traffic control failure that shut down UK airspace. (Are we not validating inputs for flight plans!?)