Who Had the Worst Week?

• Colorado funeral homes have so badly bungled their jobs – illegally operating a body-brokering business out of a funeral home, for example – that state legislators have had to introduce a bill to expand oversight and inspections. I’d do my best not to pass away before the end of the legislative session in May.
• Colorado’s own Mikaela Shiffrin has experienced the thrill of victory while winning gold medals at the 2014 and 2018 Olympics, but the 2022 Olympics have been about the agony of defeat. She suffered DNFs in her first two events – going off the course in the first 11 seconds of the first race and the first 5 seconds in her second.
• Starbucks, the darling among progressive coffee drinkers, finds itself in an awkward battle with union organizers.
• Up to 40 of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites are expected to fall out of orbit after they were launched last week in the midst of a geomagnetic storm. The storm prevented the satellites from maneuvering into their proper orbital positions.
• The Washington Football Team Commanders are the NFL’s biggest dumpster fire. This week’s development is that the team hired outside lawyers to investigate yet another group of allegations of sexual harassment against owner Dan Snyder. The NFL then had to quickly step in and announce that it, not the Washington franchise, would investigate the claims.
• Adidas had quite a week. First, it was forced to cut sponsorship ties with soccer star Kurt Zouma after a video appeared on Snapchat of him drop-kicking and slapping his cat. Then, several days later, Adidas released a curious Instagram ad touting its new line of sports bra that featured a series of bare breasts presented Brady Bunch-style.
• The IRS has given up plans to use controversial face-recognition technology after an intense public backlash.
• Tesla seems intent on joining Uber and Facebook in the PR Disasters Hall of Fame. After numerous issues with build quality, long service waits and questionable “self-driving” capabilities, the state of California filed a complaint against the electric automaker alleging racial discrimination and harassment.
• Russia finds itself in the midst of yet another doping scandal now that Kamila Valieva, a 15-year-old figure skater prodigy, has tested positive for a banned substance. The award ceremony scheduled for Tuesday night still has not taken place while an appeal is considered.
• Speaking of the Beijing Winter Olympics, NBC is dealing with TV ratings that “aren’t just bad – they’re historically terrible.“

So, who won the week?

• King Soopers re-opened its Table Mesa store in Boulder nearly a year after a mass shooting killed 10 people.
• Lindsey Jacobellis, Chloe Kim, Nathan Chen and the members of the U.S. freestyle skiing and mixed aerials team have all won gold medals at the Beijing Olympics.
• Boulder native and Fairview High alumnus Tony Boselli was selected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
• New data gives hope that people are beginning to embrace – and pay for – online newspaper subscriptions at a level that is sustainable for the media outlets.
• The Broncos traded Von Miller to the L.A. Rams mid-season, and Miller now finds himself in his first Super Bowl since Peyton Manning quarterbacked the Broncos.