With the holidays fast approaching, I thought I’d use this opportunity to clear out a bunch of links I had saved over the past year-ish. I’ll be heading off on an adventure next week — somewhere far, far away (more on that in the links below). And I look forward to catching up on a lot of reading.1 Sort of like what I used to do with Pocket (though these days on Matter, a GV portfolio company). To reset, as it were, for 2023.

Speaking of, I clearly made the right call about a month ago to bring this newsletter back around these parts as sure enough, Revue was formally killed off today by Twitter. RIP, old friend. At least Twitter itself is still alive and kicking… us all in the head (or worse) on a seemingly daily basis. I’m honestly very, very excited for this news cycle to end. But it doesn’t seem like it will anytime soon, sadly.

Meanwhile, what did end was the second season of White Lotus. Still wrapping my head around it to distill thoughts. But mainly I’m impressed by how short the season was — just seven episodes. And I remain firmly in the camp that Netflix is shooting themselves in the foot with certain shows (not all of them) by sticking with the binge strategy. Part of the power of White Lotus is being able to talk about it for a week afterwards. The watercooler.

We’re currently watching the new season of The Crown on Netflix and there’s absolutely none of that — at least within my social graph. While they’re reconsidering almost everything, Netflix should consider at the very least a hybrid approach, where they release maybe the first season of a show in full binge mode to get people hooked and then if the show is a success, move to a more traditional weekly model to let natural buzz do its thing. Then again, I’ve been saying this nonstop for six and a half years at this point.

Just in case this is my last dispatch of the year (quite likely), Happy Holidays and New Year, all. 🎉🥳🍾

Drinking: a Brother McClane — it’s a Christmas movie! — hazy IPA from Laughing Monk Brewing 🍻

The Good Stuff

🤫 Secret Talks Could Have Prevented Apple vs. Facebook War

This is from back in August, but worth the read if you missed it because it feels like all of this is going to come to some kind of head in 2023. The reporting doesn’t put either Facebook or Apple in a particularly good light, but it’s more damning of Apple because it suggests just how far the company is pushing to not only keep their 30% cut from the App Store, but to milk companies, even and maybe especially the largest to get more, more, more.

☢️ How the War in Ukraine Might End

A comprehensive dive into what the history of other wars may point to for the end of this conflict, eventually. The range is from the literal bang to the whimper, but the most likely outcome is somewhere in between, and that will take a long time, even from now. Also, this quote by Hein Goemans is just fantastic: “Sometimes war generates its own causes of war.”

🚄 How California’s Bullet Train Went Off the Rails

A completely dispiriting look into why we can’t have nice things here in California — and really, likely the entire US, at least when it comes to infrastructure of this scale. Unsurprisingly, dreams are quickly crushed by political bullshit. “Then came the decision to start building a train between Los Angeles and San Francisco that reached neither city.” The current estimates for when this project will actually be done range from: will “not be completed in this century” to “it will never be operable.”

🏗️ What America Needs Is a Liberalism That Builds

Speaking of, here’s a great Ezra Klein op-ed on why we suck so much at building things like high speed rail in the US. And, provocatively, why Democrats are worse still. One thought: too many of the leaders in the party are or were lawyers.

👑 What Twitter King Dril Thinks of Musk’s Chaotic Reign

A fun interview with Dril, talking about the past and present of Twitter, as well as the other networks that are attempting to take the crown. “Dril is a community member, he was born of the internet, Elon merely adopted it.”

📈 How Jay Powell is Bending Time

With the latest Fed rate hike today, it seemed like a good time to share this piece by Matthew Yglesias. A good overview on the hikes, but I also appreciated his take on the VC vs. Journalist debate, which continues to rage.

📉 How Low Must Inflation Go?

On the flip side, here’s Paul Krugman with some historical context for the 2 percent inflation target. Which, of course, seems to be largely based on bullshit political dynamics forgotten to time and now are just taken as gospel. (Yes, I just used both “political bullshit” and “bullshit political” in one section.)

The Quick Stuff

• When I was a kid, I loved the movie Mr. Baseball, in which an aging American slugger (Tom Selleck) gets sent to Japan to play the game. Turns out, 30 years later, I wasn’t alone. ⚾️

• Steven Levy dives into Tony Faddell’s attempt to make the “iPod of crypto” — a digital, secure wallet — in France. 🪪

• When Julian Robertson, the founder of Tiger Management, passed away in August, there were a number of great obits written. Here are two filled with fun backstories on his life. One such tidbit: the name of his hedge fund sprung out of his habit of calling people “Tiger” if he couldn’t remember their name. “I didn’t want my obituary to be, ‘He died getting a quote on the yen,’” Robertson said in 2013… Indeed. 🐅

• One likely casualty of the move to electric cars? AM radio. And interestingly, largely for technical interference issues. Though they may need to be worked around as some 47 million Americans still listen… 📻

• If anyone needs me on February 17, I’ll be at Universal Studios Hollywood — the first US outpost of Super Nintendo World opens that day. It won’t be as cool as the Japanese variety — it will have one ride to start, Mario Kart — but they got it up and running pretty quickly. 🍄

• Speaking of nerd fantasies, apparently there was a tiny window in which you could book a hobbit hole to spend the night in Hobbiton — it was yesterday, as a promotion through Airbnb, and it undoubtedly sold out immediately. It would have if the stay was $6,500 a night, but it was $6.50 a night. That’s not a joke. The good news is that I’ll be there in a few weeks regardless on a trip to New Zealand. 💍

• Do we think The Green Dragon serves SipCity 2000 beer…. 🍺

Has Generative AI Already Peaked?

I mean, this will be hard to top…

My Stuff

🦾 Facebook Used to be a Big Tech Giant

The fall from $1 trillion…

💸 Your Model Is My Opportunity

Monetizing consumer apps in 2022 and beyond…

4️⃣1️⃣ Fourward

Some thoughts on turning 41…

📺 HBO, Outsource it to Netflix

The utter frustration of trying to use HBO Max in Airplane Mode

🐣 Why I’ll Really Miss Twitter

Because I like to quickly point out when I was right about something and never mention when I was wong…

🎮 An Apple TV ‘Ultra’?

Apple is closer than ever to a gaming console in the living room…

I mean, just look at this beauty…

[images via Untapped]

Welcome to 2023. Just back from vacation chasing a small child around Australia and New Zealand for a few weeks. Not too much downtime but I was able to get quite a bit of reading done in the small slivers of time that would open during naps and bed. And actually, some writing too.

Mainly, I was reminded just how fantastic it truly is not to check email all the time. I’ll pay for it over the next week or so, but it’s something that eases my anxiety to a point that it probably shouldn’t. Clearly, I’m doing something wrong. But I’ve been complaining about this topic on the internet going on 20 years now and still, here we are.

New years are nothing if not good markers in time from which to reassess the way you operate. So it was hardly surprising to see a flurry of news around companies trying to re-imagine or trying to entirely get rid of meetings in the workplace as we all try to adapt to the way of things post-COVID. Even and maybe especially Facebook/Meta is having such challenges of how best to operate now, as Alex Heath notes in his new Command Line newsletter (subscription only). And the whole “quiet quitting” thing, which may not be all that novel, actually, as Cal Newport points out:

This is why so many older people are confused by quiet quitting: it’s not meant for us. It’s instead the first step of a younger generation taking their turn in developing a more nuanced understanding of the role of work in their lives. Before we heap disdain on their travails, we should remember that we were all once in this same position.

I’m trying a slightly different format below with images and excerpts for the top reads. Thoughts, as always, are most welcome. (I’m already seeing alerts that this email may be too long, so I’m cutting out at least one segment.)

Drinking: a Fort Point No Skips Double IPA 🍻

The Good Stuff

The Real Mission Impossible: Saying “No” to Tom Cruise

This detailed report on the trials and tribulations of making the latest Mission: Impossible installments is from last March, but worth surfacing again as we near the release of the first of these films (see: below) — Dead Reckoning Part One. Say what you will about Tom Cruise, but his commitment to filmmaking (again, see: below) and the theatrical element of it in particular is impressive. He’s the last true, true movie star in that he won’t be seen on a streaming service (at least not before his films run in theaters for an extended time) and he’s probably the only person left to demand such things. And this was written before the success of Top Gun: Maverick. Now Cruise can truly do whatever he wants here.

Sure enough, Cruise was having none of it. Seeing himself rightly as Paramount’s most important, not to mention longest-term, partner, he was said to be furious. He had no intention that any of his movies would play for a day less than his standard three-month run. “For him, 45 days is like going day-and-date,” says a Paramount source. He also felt that setting a date when the movie could be seen on the service would discourage people from going to the theater. Cruise is one of the last dollar-one gross players in the business, so box office receipts are key to his compensation. (He makes much more from the films than the studio does.) A source says Gianopulos had relied on the advice of Paramount Pictures COO Andrew Gumpert that the studio had the power to shrink M:I 7‘s theatrical window. (Paramount declined to comment.) But language in Cruise’s contract said the movie had to be handled in a manner consistent with the previous film. Cruise called his lawyers.

Also, just wild how many times M:I production had to be shut down during COVID restrictions. It matches the number in sequence of this next Mission: Impossible film. (The Hollywood Reporter)

Donald Trump’s Final Campaign

Just incredible reporting by Olivia Nuzzi, matched by equally great writing about the absolute insanity that continues to surround Trump, the candidate. She’s great at the keep-a-sentence-going-until-you-twist-it-into-a-punchline. My favorite part:

What he means when he says “Miami” is that his SUV rolls down the driveway, past the pristine lawn set for croquet and through the Secret Service checkpoint at the gate, for the two-hour trip to another piece of Trump real estate, the Trump National in Doral, about eight miles from the airport in Miami-Dade County. There, he meets regularly with an impressive, ideologically diverse range of policy wonks, diplomats, and political theorists for conversations about the global economy and military conflicts and constitutional law and I’m kidding. He goes there to play golf.

Fine, one more:

On the day he announced his candidacy this past November, the air was heavy with oleander and snipped greenery and sea mist colliding with mold and wood polish and hotel soap and the metallic vapor of Diet Coke and the alcoholic ferment of generations of cougars in Chanel No. 5. The floor was staged for something between a rally and a cocktail party.

It’s wild that Trump agreed to participate in this. But then again, of course he did. He’s Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. (New York Magazine)

The Race to Reinvent the Car Industry

The entire time I’m reading this Economist report on the struggle for car manufacturers to adapt in a world where software is increasingly the focal point I’m thinking one thing: Apple. Yes, the company has infamously struggled with their still never formally announced car project, with several trips back to the drawing board. But the reason why they’d seem to be going after the space — beyond the obvious massive revenue potential — is that they can do what they did for personal computers and smartphones: meld hardware and software into on cohesive product. All of the other projects right now are clearly more piecemeal, save perhaps Tesla.

Moreover, making the mechanical engineers who still dominate the car industry work with software engineers, who will increasingly take a lead, will not be easy. One side is trained to achieve the perfect Spaltmaß, a German word for the gap between a car’s body panels. The other has no problem putting out half-baked “beta” products and collecting feedback from users.

As Tesla has proven, and Apple’s stumbles behind-the-scenes seem to make clear: it’s incredibly hard to produce a car. When you add in the self-driving elements, it’s seemingly next-to-impossible. Especially if you believe in Spaltmaß — something which Apple clearly will as well, but Tesla has seemingly been more okay with doing things on-the-fly, in beta.

Still, Apple has to enter this market eventually. And probably not just with software or some half-baked solution. They can unify the problems here. Even if it takes years. (The Economist)

The Four Horsemen of the TV Apocalypse

A good post by Doug Shapiro on the current state of television (and film) production and where it’s likely headed

One notable thing about all this angst: it has been caused primarily by disruption of the way TV and films are distributed and, to a lesser extent, changes in how they are consumed. The way they are created, however, has not changed much.

In fact, while the Internet caused the costs to distribute content to plummet over the last decade or so, the cost to produce TV series and films has risen dramatically. It’s expensive and risky and consequently is still dominated by only a handful of big companies.

But, he asserts, AI may be on the verge of changing this, while at the same time, consumer quality expectations are changing/morphing thanks to Netflix, but also YouTube and TikTok.

For that matter, will is be possible to train an AI on the footage of every Angelina Jolie movie ever, including her voice and facial expressions, license her likeness, and then create a new film starring a 28-year Angelina Jolie, starring opposite a 32-year old Paul Newman, all in the Unreal Engine? The way things are headed, it probably will.

Yes, it will — I wrote this six years ago (wild). Such technology for this will probably be ready sooner than we imagine, but the societal and ethical questions around this will slow things down. But newsflash: in the end, money will win. (Medium)

What Did Bob Chapek In? The Consultants.

I’ve clearly been fascinated by the “Battle of the Bobs” at Disney for quite some time now. And now we would seem to have a pretty full picture of what went down to end Bob Chapek’s reign and restore Bob Iger’s. And, ultimately, it may have been a decision by Chapek to bring in “The Bobs” — the Office Space variety. You know, consultants.

Throughout his career, Mr. Chapek has used and praised a management framework that emphasizes accountability and a structure for corporate responsibility. The method, called ARCI, is often taught in business schools. Under the philosophy, there should be no ambiguity about who is responsible for the success or failure of an effort. Under the ARCI framework, each time a company makes a big change, it must identify personnel who are accountable for the decision, responsible for its success or failure, consulted for feedback and informed of its impact. “Who’s got the ‘A’ on this project?” Mr. Chapek would often ask in meetings, according to people familiar with the matter—meaning, who is accountable for it? Some executives found the approach irritating because they felt it invited other managers to get involved with decisions that ordinarily would be made by a single segment head, people familiar with the matter said.

You can imagine how inspiring this all must have been for one of the all-time creative companies. We all get why companies bring in consultants, at least in theory — outside perspective, fresh ideas, etc. But does it ever actually work?

You just can’t force such frameworks on a company whose lifeblood has been creativity since its inception. Obviously. Which is why the most shocking element of all of this is that Iger thought Chapek was the right person for the job. I’m still not sure we have a great answer on that and why Iger left so quickly the last time around. Seeing the pandemic writing on the wall? Something else? (WSJ)

The Quick Stuff

• You probably heard that there was no beer for sale during the World Cup in Qatar, but did you know that Budweiser had already shipped all the beer to the country when the last-minute decision was made to ban it? Ouch. (NYT) 🍺

• In a more sober, somber, and serious note, read the post from Céline Gounder, the wife of Grant Wahl, the famed journalist who tragically died while covering the World Cup from an aneurysm. (Substack) 😢

• For something more uplifting, please read Isaac Chotiner absolutely eviscerating Alan Dershowitz in interview form. (New Yorker) 🤭

• Of all the scores he’s worked on over the decades, Hans Zimmer thinks Interstellar is his best (so far). Hard to disagree. (The Playlist) 🎼

• Why did Harrison Ford agree to do 1923, the Yellowstone prequel — again, a true movie star jumping to television? Because he views the current prestige television projects as films. Just really long ones. Again, hard to disagree (for the best of them). (NYT) 📺

• Short, but interesting interview with Sam Altman as to what he’s learned from OpenAI launching DALL-E 2 into the world. (MIT Tech Review) 🤖

• Here’s a list of predictions about 2023 made in 1923. (Twitter) 📆

• Matter, a GV portfolio company in the reading space — basically how I read all of these links shared — is going to start charging customers later this month for premium features — something which many users have actually been asking for, fearful the service may go away otherwise. Here’s some of their thoughts on the topic. (Matter) 📚

• Several countries in Europe are going to start using the heat from data centers to help provide warmth in the winter. Clever. Wild. (WSJ) 🔥

• Now that it’s finally out of your head, feel free to read this backstory about Wham!’s seminal “Last Christmas” — George Michael played every instrument himself, despite not really knowing how to. (The Guardian) 🎄

This Man is 60 Years Old

My Stuff

📽️ Netflix’s ‘Glass Onion’ Slays in Limited Release

A big, limited opening weekend…

 🍞 Twitter’s Butter, Facebook’s Bread

Can Facebook clone Twitter after failing to do so a dozen times?

📺 Warner Bros. Discovery Is Taking It To The ‘Max’

Warner Bros. Discovery plans to merge its HBO Max and Discovery+ streaming services…

📸 G3nerative

Some thoughts on the “Generative AI” hype

📲 The Fall of the App Store Wall

Imagining how Apple will allow third-party iPhone app stores…

My first video game console was a Nintendo Entertainment System. My most-used video game console was probably the Super Nintendo. But the actual game I played the most in my childhood was on neither of these. It was on the Nintendo 64. GoldenEye 007. And it’s back.

(Re)launching today on both the Xbox and Nintendo Switch, it’s a port of the classic. The Xbox version brings visual upgrades while the Switch version brings online multiplayer. The amount of hours lost this weekend for a certain cohort of children born in the 1980s and 1990s will be endless.

It’s a funny thing. Most adaptations of movies into games were bad (and vice versa used to be the case too, though both have changed in recent years). And while GoldenEye is a decent enough James Bond movie, I believe Pierce Brosnan’s best, it’s not one of the most iconic ones. And the game came out nearly two years after the film. Hell, it was released just a few months before the next Bond film, Tomorrow Never Dies.

But the game was just in the right place, right time to work, with the right team making it. Rare, a British firm (later acquired by Microsoft), had had huge success with Donkey Kong Country on Super Nintendo, and was able to take advantage of the 3D graphics and crucially, four controller ports, on the Nintendo 64 to make GoldenEye 007 a phenomenon. The third highest-selling game on the console behind just Super Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64.

My friend Brad who lived up the street from me had what was at the time, a truly massive 60”+ TV in his basement. And four controllers. The amount of hours lost playing that game in that basement now baffles the mind.

The Good Stuff

🛟 The Inner Ring

This essay is not new. It is from 1944. It wasn’t even an essay at first, but a speech, given by C.S. Lewis at his Memorial Lecture at King’s College in London. But it’s fantastic. It rings just as true today, on so many levels. Scoundrels abound.

💆‍♀️ On Self-Respect

On the topics of great essays of yesteryear, here’s Joan Didion writing on the notion of self-respect in 1961. It’s just outstanding writing. And she wrote it at the last-minute after another author failed to file their own essay on the topic. And she wrote it to an exact character count.

✍️ Putting Ideas into Words

Staying on the topic of essays, but switching to something more contemporary, here’s Paul Graham on the power of writing to clarify your own thoughts. This is more or less how I live my life and have for decades now. And this doesn’t just mean publishing your words. Sadly, a lot of this practice for me in recent years has been in the form of emails.

💲 ‘Economists Can’t Predict the Effects of New Technologies’

A good interview with economist Tyler Cowen. You’ll note that he credits blogging for his success and, per above, that while reading (and conversation) are great for gathering information, it’s only through writing that you’re forced to decide what you actually think about something. He also wants an AI chatbot to come along that will help him effectively live forever.

💩 The Shit Show

Switching things up, Craig Hockenberry gives his raw, painful assessment of the current state of Twitter — and more specifically, the Twitter ecosystem. His Iconfactory birthed not just Twitterrific, but also the notion of a Twitter bird and the word “tweet”. They also, of course, make several other apps. I personally love Tot (a simple note-taking app — on my homescreen!) and Wallaroo (a wallpaper app). RIP Twitterrific.

The Quick Stuff

• Attention: after years of saying they wouldn’t do it, In-N-Out is headed east. Eat your heart out, Shake Shack. 🍔

• Hugh Jackman would like you to know that he didn’t take steroids to get into form as Wolverine — and also that he didn’t know that the wolverine was an animal and not a wolf man hybrid. Go Blue? 🐺

• Speaking of, Jason Gay makes the case for why Jim Harbaugh should stay in Ann Arbor (which, it seems like he is — for now…) 〽️

• Did you know that Rolls-Royce sells well over half of the world’s cars priced over €250k? Ferrari sells one-third of such cars. and Lamborghini sells basically all the rest. Where’s that Apple Car? 🏎️

• There’s apparently science behind why kids love those huge planet/stars comparison videos on YouTube. And presumably why I like them too. 🪐

• Elise Stefanik sure seems to be a new, more viral variant of opportunistic political climber. Or, as we less politely call them: phonies. 🗳️

• Still, could be worse. You could be Kevin McCarthy. His embarrassment led to a truly great headline: Leopards Eat Kevin McCarthy’s Face 🐆

• The parallels of cricket and baseball go way back. And they may be about to collide in the U.S. And baseball could probably learn a thing or two. 🏏

• Not sure I would have imagined that one of George W. Bush’s daughters — now Jenna Bush Hager — would control arguably the most powerful book club since Oprah, but here we are. 📚

• In other Nepo Baby news, King Charles III will be on the pound in ‘24. 💷

Speaking of Nintendo…

I have never felt so old…

My Stuff

🌅 A Sunrise That I Know I’ll Never See

A few quick thoughts on ‘Andor’…

🦣 Mastodon Brought a Protocol to a Product Fight

Mastodon vs. Twitter? Come on…

📖 Daunt is Righting the Barnes & Noble Ship

James Daunt does it again…

🏈 The Cute and the Curious

Michigan’s playcallers fucked around, found out…

⌚️ Minimum Viable Technology

A time, perhaps, for Apple Watch owners to lay down their iPhones…

This will take some getting used to…

Hello from 35k feet. The last time I was in the sky, just over a week ago, SVB was in the midst of collapsing. It feels like two months ago. What a surreal time to be alive. Which I suppose every generation says because it truly is all relative. Which just makes me worry about what our children will have to deal with... But at least maybe they won’t have to put up with Twitter in times like these? Anyway. At least the WiFi is working!

The Good Stuff

✈️ The 747 Retirement

Since I’m flying… here’s a nice farewell to Boeing’s 747 aircraft and a look into what’s next by Adam Clark Estes. Not the far-flung or pie-in-the-sky stuff. But just where the aviation industry is likely headed in the next several years. Increments, but hopefully they add up. The 747 will be in the skies for a while still, of course. They’re just not making new ones. Goodnight, sweet prince.

🍄 Maximizing the Joy at Super Nintendo World

With the opening of Super Nintendo World in LA, Andrew Webster sits down with Mario, Zelda, etc creator Shigeru Miyamoto on translating his digital creations in to the real world. Pretty much all feelings of wonder I can recall having these days tie directly back to the stuff I loved as a child. This, I suspect will qualify. I mean, you enter the park through a goddamn warp pipe. See Webster’s follow-up on the park as well.

🫖 “…And They Make Tea”

A fantastic pre-eulogy of Twitter by Paul Ford. Several LOL parts. But I also like (and increasingly believe myself) his high-level notion that look, maybe we weren’t meant to be connected to everyone on the planet. It’s one of those ideas that sounds perfect on paper and is rancid in reality. We were promised flying cars, and what we got was basically all seven sins at scale in real time, all the time.

👩‍🎨 The UI Race in AI

I like the way Casey Newton frames his thoughts on who might win in the AI arms race. Basically everyone agrees that yes, AI is awesome and fascinating and the future in many ways. But no one yet knows what exactly that looks like — quite literally. What’s the UI that makes all of this really sing? Is it really a text box? Something tacked on to a search engine? That seems unlikely. So there’s a race on the product side to nail this. Also, don’t sleep on voice coming back around again with this far better technology?

🍿 A Hollywood Ending

Nothing too outlandish in what Jason Kilar lays out as to what he imagines Hollywood looks like in the near future. But it all feels right — and, selfishly, is in line with a lot of what I’ve written dating back years. Kilar, of course, has seemingly been one-step-ahead of much of this (and, sadly, perhaps one click too early for his own good) so his is a good perspective as we exit the all-out arms race of streaming and enter a more nuanced era of consolidation and, hopefully, a focus on quality and presentation.

The Quick Stuff

• Apparently, the only growth demographic for wine is those over 60, which is sad. And teetotaling trends aside, seems to also be a massive branding/perception issue. Where are the wine ads? 🍷

• The flip side is soft drink makers going “hard” — both in spirit(s) and advertising to court the youths. With truly awful-sounding drinks. But it’s rather fascinating how they’re doing it, getting around rules from 100 years ago… 🥤

• You know what can beat a machine at Go? A human aided by another machine to exploit a weakness in said machine. It doesn’t have to be us versus them, folks! ♟️

• You know Toblerone chocolate? Maybe not, but I’m sure you’ve seen the packaging. But it’s about to change because it turns out you can’t use images of the Swiss Alps if you’re not fully made in Switzerland. 🗻

• AI + Radio? It’s being tested where I grew up. (And am coincidentally flying over right now!) Hello Cleveland! 📻

• How much thought when into the game Oregon Trail? A lot. 🐂

• I didn’t always agreed with NYT film critic A.O. Scott, but I always read his thoughts on films. And as he steps away after doing the job for 24 (!) years, it’s hard not to appreciate his accomplishment. 📽️

• If we’re ever to do any truly long space travel, we’re likely going to need to figure out how to put our bodies into a state of hibernation for long periods of time. It’s being studied. 😴

• Maybe folks from Medieval times can help? (Probably not.) 🥱

• Jony Ive designed the new red nose for Britain’s Red Nose Day. And, of course, it’s great. Clever design — in how it works. 🔴

• But it’s not quite as good as his emblem design for the upcoming coronation of King Charles — similar to his Terra Carta work with the then-Prince. Just fantastic. 👑

Humbling…

My Stuff

👧 The Toddler Arcade

Nickel and diming kids within mobile games is bullshit.

🕵️ Here’s Another Clue for You All

A few thoughts on ‘Glass Onion’

🍎 The One That Says “iPad Pro”

A few *very* brief thoughts on the M2 iPad Pro

📲 Looking Back at My 2022 Homescreen

The biggest changes are undercover…

😎 Apple’s New Reality

Some thoughts on the clearly forthcoming ‘Reality Pro’ headset

🐦 A Tale of Two Twitters

‘For You’ is good. Breaking other clients is bad.

💻 Apple’s Inevitable Touchscreen Macs

Obviously…

🐋 The Way of Watering Down Records

About those ‘Avatar 2’ box office headlines…

Elegant

I sent my first newsletter almost exactly seven years ago. The world, and my life, were very different then. It was August of 2016. Barack Obama was still President, nearing the end of his second term as we all barreled towards the 2016 election. We all remember what happened next... I was just wrapping up a vacation in Europe with my wife. Over two years away from our first child being born. Now I’m here living in Europe, waiting on our second.

Anyway, I was thinking about this first newsletter today as our youngest just watched Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (after my wife read her Roald Dahl’s book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory — power swap by Hollywood there, ampersand and all). That first newsletter — which, sadly, no longer resides online because The Artist Formerly Known as Twitter killed off the Revue newsletter platform on which it was sent, so it now just resides in my inbox vault — was entitled “In a World of Pure Imagination”, because Gene Wilder, the star of said movie, had just passed away.

In the quiet moments before the wonderful chaos, I’m finding myself thinking, as I often do, about content. And I think I have a plan. A giant, unified plan. Finally. But it will take some time as I take some time. Stay tuned, in a few months. ✍️🍻

🕵️‍♂️ My Impossible Mission to Find Tom Cruise

Caity Weaver humorously tries to track down where Cruise actually lives — likely somewhere in England — as he’s become something of an enigma in modern life. Unlike seemingly every other actor on social media, Cruise only seems to exist in the real world when he’s promoting his movies (which he does relentlessly). I appreciate this reclusiveness, it is a bit odd for a celebrity in our modern world, but it also adds to his mystique as the last “true” movie star. One where we don’t know (and track) his every Starbucks order.

⚓️ How Sapporo Sank Anchor Brewing

If, like me, you were shocked by the news that Anchor Brewing, the 152-year-old iconic San Francisco brewery, was going out of business, this backstory as to why will probably just make you angry. Let’s hope someone —the employees?! — steps in to save them.

🌁 What If San Francisco Never Pulls Out of its “Doom Loop”?

Speaking of SF, the title and certainly the images (!) are a bit much here, but overall, this feels like a fair look at the city — where I lived and watched degrade over the past 15 years — by Tabby Kinder and George Hammond. Still, there’s some hope…

📱 The iPhone 15 Pro is a Step Toward Apple’s Dream

Mark Gurman, as always, seemingly has all the key details about the iPhone 15 ahead of its launch. The key upgrade this year will clearly be the first chip built with the 3nm process — which should both lead to a nice speed jump and, more importantly, better battery life. But the real hardware upgrade (beyond the switch to USB-C) will likely be the mute toggle becoming an “Action” button, just like the Apple Watch Ultra has. Say goodbye to the constant swiping left to open the camera app. (Also, StandBy is great.)

🛢️ The Mother of All Pivots

Scott Galloway on the Gulf States attempt to pivot from oil. The “Neom” project is the most forward-facing effort, but there are hundreds of other elements to the pivot, both large (tech investing, buying sports teams) and small (marketing luxury and trying to lure the world’s wealthiest people).

👻 Social Media is Doomed to Die

This post by Ellis Hamburger, who previously worked at Snap, from April still very much resonates. Even if they growing to a massive scale, all social media services eventually die by their own hands due to cheap engagement tactics to ramp monetization. From Facebook on down, it’s inevitable.

The Quick Stuff

• It’s morbid, but if you really want to know what happens to the human body when a submarine implodes while heading down to the Titanic, this is the piece for you. 🚢

• What will happen to Christopher Nolan’s 11 miles of IMAX film for Oppenheimer once it’s out of theaters? 🎞️

• While he’s back to chess, this is a fun read about Magnus Carlsen’s detour into poker while he was seemingly bored with the game he has dominated for so long. ♟️

• Maybe don’t just blindly believe (and cite) that Sensor Tower data… 🙅‍♂️

• AI was used to create the “perfect” James Bond — and it looks a lot like a young Clive Owen? (Though yes, a bit like Aaron Taylor-Johnson too. My dark horse money is still on Richard Madden.) 0️⃣0️⃣7️⃣

• There’s apparently a replica of San Francisco at a theme park in Japan. 🌉

• Ever wonder why some directors get their name in the movie title marquee (it’s not always just the obvious marketing element)? 📽️

• Quite the backstory for David Gilmour, the man who created Fiji Water, who died recently at 91. 💧

• Another founder with an interesting backstory, Bill Oesterle, Co-Founder of Angie’s List, who died way too young at 57. 📝

• Before the Hollywood strikes likely pushed everything back, Heat 2 was seemingly progressing nicely as Michael Mann’s next film… 🤞

• Hints of Quentin Tarantino’s next (and supposedly last) film… 🎥

• To discover a new type of gravitational wave, scientists had to “hack the galaxy” to use it as a detector. 🔭

• As we approach 100 years post-Hindenburg might (new types of) airships make a comeback? 🌬️

• Salt Life, the random, generic slogan that became a massive brand. 🧂

• Allbirds, the massive brand that became a random, generic one. 🐦

• Keita Takahashi created Katamari Damacy 20 years ago and now gets nothing from its continued success. He did have an (indirect) hand in helping to create Slack though! 🕹️

• In terms of cities being constructed as grids on a 0 to 1 scale, Chicago gets a 0.89 while London gets a 0.015. 🏙️

• The creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, bought and revitalized this wacky and tacky restaurant in Colorado. 🌴

• There are likely many ripple effects from the deal to bring Lionel Messi to the MLS. And my god it seems to be working out for everyone. The latest brilliant maneuver by Apple. ⚽️

• I still cannot believe Michael Lewis was shadowing Sam Bankman-Fried when FTX collapsed. Here’s a fun quick interview ahead of the book. 🪙

• Did Tim & Eric nail the AI revolution 13 years ago? Sure seems like it. 🏄‍♂️

• Did the T. Rex have lips 65 million years ago? Sure seems like it. 🦖

• Are French people just lazy? Now we’re just full-on asking questions. 🇫🇷

Oh yes, Tweets no longer render here, of course, so here’s a screenshot…

My Stuff

🏀 Gradually, then Suddenly, Obviously

ESPN set to let traditional cable television bleed out…

🎤 All Bangers, All the Time

Some thoughts as Succession ends…

🔪 The Shiv

A few quick thoughts on Succession’s finale…

😎 Apple’s Vision Pro & Meta’s Vision Oh No

Some initial thoughts on Apple’s position versus Meta’s…

🙄 These Used to be Serious People

Zuckerberg vs. Musk. Literally. Who gives a shit?

💸 How Apple Should Have Framed the ‘Vision Pro’ Price Point

A little bit of the old Steve Jobs plain talkin’ distortion…

🥽 Apple’s Vision Ramp

How will Vision Pro scale?

🪡 Meta Threads a Needle

Some quick, initial thoughts on Meta’s Threads service

🐛 Once Bitten

A no-joke very bad centipede bite…

The Name’s Bond, A.I. Bond

Hi there, this is just a post to let you know this newsletter is currently in hibernation mode. You can instead find me writing at: Spyglass.