KaaGee Notes

  Robert F. Smith, the private equity billionaire who is the nation’s richest Black person, said on Thursday that large corporations should use 2% of their annual net income for the next decade to empower minority communities. Smith made the comments after circulating a plan among CEOs that first calls on big banks to capitalize on the financial institutions that service Black-owned businesses and minority-run entrepreneurial ventures. In a keynote address, he gave at the Forbes 400 Summit on Philanthropy, Smith, 57, said Black and minority communities have been abandoned by large banks and are starved of the capital needed to build businesses and local institutions. Smith argued that pumping in what he described as “reparative” capital and investing directly in financial architecture would be a fast way to advance economic justice for Black Americans. “Nowhere is structural racism more apparent than in corporate America,” Smith said. “If you think about structural racism and ac...

  It appears that SpaceX has managed its first successful launch and landing sequence of a Starship prototype, as SN15 took off Wednesday afternoon and returned to the pad in Boca Chica, TX.  It landed in one piece and as the official live stream ended there's still a small methane fire at the base, but so far has remained intact. Elon Musk tweeted "Starship landing nominal" as he prepares for his appearance on Saturday Night Live, and a stream from observers in the area shows that SN15 continues to stand on the pad.   The SN11 vehicle didn't make it back to the ground, while SN10 landed briefly before exploding after landing too hard and crushing its legs. With one successful high-altitude test under its belt, SpaceX has moved much closer to its vision of reusable Starships that fly to the ISS, the Moon, around the Earth, and beyond.