Joesthetics Passes, Monster Buys Bang, Metaverse Boxing (Vomit)

Powered by

GM,

Before I start, this is a long one so I’m going to start recording an audio reading of this email on Rafi’s Place on Spotify. So if you’re pressed for time or about to drive, you can still stay up to date on what’s going on.

It’s been a hell of a week. Jo Lindner passed away, the metaverse is being forced upon us again, the Canadian government is actually trying to oppress lifters, Monster is in the process of acquiring Bang energy, and more.

After I finished writing this, I realized that there’s more negative subject matter than usual, so I put a banger Jocko Willink edit at the end to help balance it out.

And if you’re looking for a preworkout that emphasizes clean caffeine, mental clarity, and sick pumps, check out this week’s sponsor: Crystal Pump.

Some of the Monday Iron gang have already tried it and loved it, give it a shot. Use MONDAY15 for 15% off.

It’s not a preworkout, it’s an experience.

Thank you mustache man, let’s get into this week.

At a Glance:

Entertainment

• Marc Lobliner Calls Out Arnold

• Jo Lindner “Joesthetics” Passes Away at 30

Sports

• Lee Priest Calls for Gutting “Useless” Bodybuilding Divisions

• Roy Jones Jr and NDO Champ Metaverse Match (WHY)

Business

• Monster Acquires BANG Energy

• Aspartame Causes Cancer, says WHO

• Canadian Supps in Danger

Tin Foil Hat

• EU Literally Wants to Take Away the Sun

• Zucc and Elon Fight Developments (It’s a psyop)

Let’s get into it.

Entertainment

Marc Lobliner Calls Out Arnold

Marc Lobliner (IFBB Pro and creator of Outright Bar) tweeted “Arnold is not a good person. Never has been. 2020 and beyond just exposed what a horrible person he is to everyone who didn’t know"

This was in agreement with a now deleted tweet shown here:

Jeffery’s tweet was in response to Arnold promoting his newsletter.

Background:

At the height of the insanity of the pandemic, Arnold discussed vaccinations and masks and made the “screw our freedom” comment in this interview.

This past April, Arnold publicly apologized via Twitter for making that comment.

Jo Lindner “Joesthetics” Passes Away at 30

Jo Lindner, German bodybuilder and influencer passed away from an aneurysm on Friday. The news was broken on Noel Dyzel and Jo’s girlfriend’s Instagram accounts on Saturday.

As Nicha (Jo’s girlfriend) explains in her post, Jo felt a pain in his neck 3 days ago, but they seemingly did not recognize it as a serious problem until it was too late.

Out of the many online tributes posted this weekend, I think the following video from Vanquish Fitness best captured Jo’s journey in bodybuilding as well as his perspective on his purpose.

As with all fitness athletes that pass, you always have the smooth brain dyels with the “drrrrrr steroid bad” comments.

Regardless of how you feel, this is a good reminder that if you’re an athlete performing at top levels, whether using PEDs or not, keep track of your bloods and get yourself checked out when your body feels abnormal.

Silver lining is that he didn’t go out like a sucker. Jo’s life may have been cut short, but all I see in the comments under these posts are how he inspired people to get into or stick with getting in better shape and being a better person. That’s something we all can shoot for even if you have no desire to be an online influencer. Even if it’s just the people around you, you can inspire others to be better by being better.

Sports

Lee Priest Calls for Gutting “Useless” Bodybuilding Division

Lee Priest started off his recent RxMuscle interview with a bang stating that many classes in modern bodybuilding shows are “fucking useless,” and that everyone else should go back to their “male model girl pageants in Hawaii.”

He also goes on to say that there should only be Men’s Open, Women’s Open, and Fitness divisions, and that would get it back to the old days where you would know everyone’s name because they would be the best of the best.

Pretty funny start to the whole thing, if you have any opinions shoot it on the subreddit.

Roy Jones Jr and NDO Champ Metaverse Match (WHY)

In a stunning twist from the architects trying to take us all out of the real world and into a virtual world where they can gather advertising data on every single movement and glance you take, our tech overlords and their minions may actually moving backwards.

What you’re seeing is real. On Friday, professional boxer Roy Jones Jr. and IFBB Pro NDO Champ physically boxed in a ring and they used motion tracking to make a shitty Playstation 2 live rendering of it. JUST SHOW US THE FUCKING VIDEO OF THE FIGHT.

As I was writing this, I thought of one use case, moving around in the ring to literally be as close as possible. I used to work in 3D / proptech industry, so I was looking into VR a lot from 2018-2021. What I’ll say is that the novelty wears off relatively quickly.

But in a perfect world, the graphics and tracking would look so realistic that you would be able to fly around the ring and view the fight from any angle at any time. Similar to what they do with the VR seats at NBA games but way better. However, the graphics would have a long way to go; recorded motion capture graphics still aren’t perfect, so live ones are gonna take a bit to perfect.

This is on some tin foil hat shit but it seems so transparent to me that the only reason anyone is pushing the metaverse is so that your behavior is easier to track.

At least with social media, this whole thing just kind of happened. They made something to connect people and then figured out they could sell advertising data. But the metaverse concept is just so obvious in what they want out off it.

And on some real shit, one of the reasons I want to stay out of office jobs and in stuff like construction is because I will not be forced to wear the VR headset at work whenever that becomes normal.

Business

Monster Acquires BANG Energy

In another stunning Joshua Schall prophecy fulfilled, Monster Energy Company is set to acquire the bankrupt assets of VPX Pharmaceuticals (BANG’s parent company) for up to $362M.

“According to a leaked court document on Thursday (29 June), Blast Asset Acquisition – a Monster subsidiary – was the only successful bidder for VPX’s assets, which had been due to go up for auction tomorrow (30 June).” | Justdrinks.com

According to Bloomberg, VPX said that the transaction is being held up by a US Federal Trade Commission review.

However, for Bang to continue operating without costing any jobs, the FTC would need to grant an early termination of the review that would have had to happen by end of day last Friday. There’s no word on whether that was granted or not.

Aspartame Causes Cancer, Says WHO

Aspartame, a popular artificial sweetener used in products from Coke to chewing gum, is set to be declared as a possible carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which is the World Health Organization’s (WHO) cancer research arm.

According to the Reuters story, this ruling would not account for how much of a product that a person can safely consume; which I think was inferred from the message at the bottom of the graphic that states, “This classification does not indicate the level of risk associated with exposure,” meaning how much you’re actually around it or how much you would consume.

Nothing is official yet, but there’s one insider sign that it could be named a carcinogen: Zoe Lofgren, a California representative.

This Tweet from @CeoWatchlist claimed that Lofgren dumped her Coke ($KO) stock before the announcement. According to the screenshot, the trade was made on May 25th and disclosed on June 7th of 2023.

Context is always important, so I cross-referenced this with a trading tool, Unusual Whales. According to Unusual Whales, Lofgren did sell between $1k-15k worth of Coke stock, but she also sold stock in 77 different companies that day. Most were in that $1-15k range with the exception of $UNP (Union Pacific Corp) and $OCLCF which appears to be Oracle Japan Stock.

Unfortunately, my tin foil hat doesn’t seem to belong here. Never hurts to check though.

via Reuters

Canadian Supps in Danger

Note: I am biased because I despise most regulations

Canadian Coach and Influencer Kaylor Betts called for action in this video warning citizens of how new proposed regulations would hurt Canada’s natural supplement industry.

Long story short, Health Canada is proposing two new regulations in the name of making sure that Natural Health Products (NHPs) are safe, effective, and of high quality.

Save Our Supplements Identified These Changes:

• New Labeling Requirements (aka Plain Language Labeling)

• New fees for regulatory activities.

If you look at the website that outlines the changes, The new labeling requirements would make all supplement facts look more like over the counter drug labels; which just by looking at the two options side by side, actually complicates the label.

In what universe is this easier to read than a straight vertical list of ingredients?

The other change, new user fees for regulatory activities, is going to include fees product evaluation, site licenses, and annual renewal fees. I can understand product evaluation and site licenses, but the new annual renewal fees is likely just a money grab by a greedy organization.

It all boils down to sudden increased costs for companies that will skin small companies alive and may deter established companies from operating in Canada. Simply put, small companies would have to pull products from shelves to relabel and big companies would have to adjust international labels if they operate in Canada.

I think the main issue is the forced elimination of choice. There are some things that companies shouldn’t be forced to do if they’re willing to accept the consequences of doing so; like choosing not to pay for a certain certification and so that might turn away a customer who needs products with that certification to buy it. They lose out on a sale, but they’re still allowed to operate.

The proposed changes wouldn’t go into effect until 2025, so the urgency may be slightly overstated, but I also don’t have a ton of inventory that I have either sell or pull from shelves by then.

Via | Save Our Supplements

Tin Foil Hat

EU Literally wants to Take Away the Sun

“The European Union will join an international effort to assess whether large-scale interventions such as deflecting the sun’s rays or changing the Earth’s weather patterns are viable options for fighting climate change”

Please make it stop. Weather machines aren’t a secret anymore and they’re likely already using it “in the name of climate change.” Their big brain plan for blocking out the sun is “stratospheric aerosol injection”, which involves increasing the concentration of particles in the atmosphere to reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the earth’s surface.

This would likely be a sulfur compound since they are the best studied so far. I’m no scientist but if it’s not oxygen in the air I think it’s not great. Bros are trying to stop climate change by putting more shit in our air. I hate it here.

Via | Bloomberg

Zucc and Elon Fight Developments (It’s a Psyop)

There’s not much meat to this bullet point I just think that its very strange that I’m seeing the story and its further developments (some shit about the Roman Colosseum) everywhere on mainstream and other news outlets.

Just seems like there’s something that we’re being distracted from again.

Probably nothing.

Rafi’s Desk

ANYWAY sorry for the downer shit this week but those are just the headlines I was keeping track of this week.

Not really much to report, wasn’t that active this week on account of an absolutely fucked work week. It’s been messy all month but this past week was particularly messed up. At least it’s work that I enjoy doing so it’s much easier to put up with.

To counteract some of the negative shit in this letter, I’ve been listening to a lot of Jocko Willink’s podcast recently and it reminded me of this great edit/video using his words on discipline and “not feeling it.”

Hope you have a fantastic week, get some rest tonight and get ready to kill it tomorrow.

Check out our Partners:

• Protochol Beverage (Anabolic Alcohol)

• Crystal Pump 

• Underdog Energy