July 18, 2023

empowering you with insights and information from the edge of today’s headlines

Business

Summer of Labor: The strikes continue. The Screen Actors Guild joined the Writers in their strike mostly over streaming residuals and AI. We were shocked to learn that apparently the Hollywood studios wanted to be able to scan an actor’s likeness and own it perpetuity, so they’d never have to pay an actor to be in a crowd (or film) again. Disney’s CEO Bob Iger didn’t turn the heat down any lower either, after renewing his contract for close to $40M. The United Auto Workers is also prepared to strike against the big 3 auto companies if negotiations don’t pan out. UPS workers also have a July 31 deadline before they go on strike (at least they agreed to install air conditioning in the trucks before talks broke down). We’ve seen picket line crossers in the form of cartoon characters at the Disney premiere of the Haunted House movie, and potentially non-union UPS drivers, and rumors of Studios trimming trees to remove any shade above the picket lines.

OTC Pill: The FDA has approved the first over-the-counter birth control pill in the United States. The pill should be available in 2024, but no word on its price or access, although the manufacturer has set a goal of being “accessible and affordable.” “The over-the-counter pill will be identical to the prescription version, which is 93 percent effective at preventing pregnancy with typical use.”

Dotted Lines: You may have heard that the Barbie movie is coming out this weekend. As the world becomes smaller, Hollywood has had to contend with global tastes, and sometimes studios bow to pressure and edit their films for different audiences. Barbie, unfortunately, came under scrutiny in Asia for a dotted line drawn in its map of Barbieland. Both the Philippines and Vietnam objected to the map’s dotted line, saying that it depicted the South China Sea with a controversial “nine-dash line.” The Philippines has revised their ruling, and will not ban the film, while the Vietnamese will sadly be without “Just Ken.” This is the map in question vs the real map, and Warner Bros says it was not attempting to make a political statement with its crayon drawing, while others say it was a subtle attempt to appease the Chinese censors. Alas, can’t we just wear pink and enjoy Just Ken?

Barbenheimer: This Friday both Barbie and Oppenheimer will be released in theaters, and many are planning a double feature. According to AMC, 40k of its loyalty members have already purchased same-day advanced tickets. We’d probably vote to see Oppenheimer first, and Barbie for the final lift. So if you see zombies dressed in hot pink this weekend, don’t be alarmed.

Office Space: Commercial real estate is entering a doom cycle, at least in NYC, and according to NY Magazine. But what is a landlord to do with all that vacant real estate? Start a vertical farm, of course! According to the AgTech founders, “office buildings already provide an ideal environment for growing food, since they are already air conditioned, heated and well ventilated.” No more worrying about the seasons or the pests.

Technology

Crypto ruling: A judge this week ruled that sometimes a cryptocurrency is a security and sometimes it is not, handing a major win to Ripple, a major loss to the SEC, and major confusion to the rest of us. The judge effectively ruled that when institutional investors purchase the crypto token and the company offers disclosure, the token is a security. When the token is sold to retail investors without information, it is a token and not a security, which kind of defeats the purpose of securities regulations (to protect the little guy). Lately, the SEC has been choosing to regulate through enforcement and litigation rather than through issuing regulations, so this judge has chosen to add some more chaos to the crytpo mix.

Going to the Moon: This year will be one of the busiest for our planetary satellite. Five landing attempts are expected to hit the lunar surface in the second half of 2023, including 2 private missions from US companies in the Fall. While these flights will all be robotic, Canoo has just delivered the first rounds of the new electric vehicles that may one day drive on the moon (or deliver your Amazon products). The US Artemis mission is not expected to have a crewed lunar landing until 2025, while the Chinese Space Agency recently announced plans to land its citizens by 2030.

Cybertruck: Tesla’s first Cybertruck finally rolled off the factory floor in Texas. The Cybertruck was first announced in 2019, and millions of buyers put down $100 in pre-orders in anticipation of the alien-looking, not-so-bullet-proof electric truck. Don’t expect to see the truck on the road until 2024, however.

Major League Cricket: Many tech bigwigs are owners of sports franchises (Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer and the LA Clippers, Mark Cuban and the Dallas Mavericks, Paul Allen and the Seattle Seahawks, just to name a few). But one major league may have gone unnoticed: this week several tech companies and tech CEOs joined to launch American Major League Cricket. (Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s current CEO, is an investor in the league and one of the teams.) This year’s season only lasts a few weeks, so get your tickets fast.

Culture

Women’s World Cup: The Women’s World Cup is set to start soon, and the French team sponsor Orange, used a visual trick to demonstrate the pure athleticism of the women’s players. If you watch the promotional video, you think you are watching highlights from the men’s team, but in fact, it is the women’s players just with the men’s bodies transposed atop them using visual effects. Potentially challenging our assumptions of power, strength and agility.

Death of an Icon: Jane Birkin, the actress, singer and French icon, died this weekend at the age of 76. We aren’t familiar with her work, but we are familiar with her namesake: the Hermès Birkin bag. Birkin tells the story of flying on a plane, when the bag containing all of her personal items spilled to the floor, and as luck would have it, she was sitting next to none other than the CEO of Hermès. Birkin was also known for keeping the luxury handbag company in check with their treatment of animals. She reportedly has an arrangement with the company that a portion of the proceeds of the sales of the wildly expensive bag will be donated to charity, even after her death.

Spare no Expense: Would you pay $27k for jeans that aren’t even jeans? Balenciaga Couture revealed its exorbitantly priced pair of jeans during Paris Couture Week. The jeans aren’t even actually made of denim but are cotton and linen and painstakingly painted by hand to look perfectly worn in.

What do you call a Male Cougar? According to TikTok, that would be “of Beekeeping Age.” The phrase, however, was actually coined from Rick and Morty, and has replaced the term silver fox and zaddy in the youngins lexicon. So next time you see an attractive older man…

Non-Player Characters: We don’t play video games, so we don’t quite understand the appeal of acting like a background character. But the new trend of getting paid to act like an NPC on a loop is just bizarre. TikTok streamers are reacting to stickers and filters (purchased by viewers) with robotic behaviors reminiscent of odd characters in video games. All power to the fetish, and to each his own.

Playing with your food: Sony PlayStation will be collaborating with British online supermarket Ocado to create PlayStation pasta. Now you really will have a great excuse to pull your kids away from their screens.

Ice Cream Road Trip: One more word and cultural ritual we can learn from Iceland. ísbíltúr - roughly translates as an ice cream road trip, and with this heat, count us in.

— Lauren Eve Cantor

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