Hi, James. Ben, how are you? I'm okay. How are you? Doing all right. It's been a little bit of a long

week. I've been a bit out of it, but I'm on the mend. It's been a rough run these past few weeks,

but I'm hoping I'm coming to the end of it. Yeah, nose is okay. Nose is all right. Eyes are right.

And then this, it's just like I've been taking a few punches.

But it's, you know, that old thing, it never rains at pause, right?

Yeah, it's been a rustle.

At least it's been a rainy spring for you as opposed to like the rest of California.

Yes, this is true.

This is true.

So this week, I thought there's one thing I wanted it.

We talked about it a little bit previously, but I, just this light bulb moment, I'm kind of annoyed at myself for not getting this before.

But you'll recall we talked about and I wrote about like the Amazon tax idea

a while ago. And this idea is that basically, if you squint, all of Amazon's businesses are

kind of the same. And you know, you start with AWS and retail. And yes, retail started with a

traditional retailer model where they would sell items and collect a margin on them.

But as they've shifted to this general merchandise that's taking off more and more of their profits, and this is a reason I was, you know, unfortunately temporarily bearish on them.

Like there's no margin there. Like just no margin at margin at all. And there wasn't going to ever be.

And is like, well, what were they doing now?

And, you know, kind of became clear over the past six months to a year that even the retail model is becoming more of a, it's a fulfillment model.

And they're skimming money off the top between not just the general merchandisers, but also third-party merchants, which is growing hugely as part of what they sell.

And they're just, they handle all the part in the middle and they own the customer relationship.

And then they're just, you know, they take off, they get $100 from the customers who are in prime.

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