Hello and welcome back to as seen on :)
For the first time in a while, I have a pretty strong TV roster going. In order of commitment: Rooster (HBO), The Testaments (Hulu), Imperfect Women (Apple TV+), and now Euphoria. Still trying to get into the new season of Virgin River, and Criminal Minds always. What am I missing?
In today’s issue: Satoshi Nakamoto unmasked; another win for R.J. Cipriani; Bob Iger vs. the Bob Iger Book; everyone and their Republican dad is getting a publishing imprint; Netflix podcast charts; Lauren Sanchez is the happiest girl of them all; Sporty & Rich is raising money; Fara Homidi wants to be the Phoebe Philo of beauty; the Jo Malone trademark case; Marc Jacobs Beauty flop; beauty category predictions; Michael Bloomberg is New York’s most important bookfluencer, and a bunch of of other stuff…
Also mentioned: Alex Cooper, Alix Earle, Jerry Lorenzo, Bastien Daguzan, Thai Randolph, BuzzFeed, Tubi, Anjali Sud, Kleo Mack, Ace Hotel, Eric Ripert, José Andrés, CNN, Bob Chapek, R.J. Cipriani, Russell Brand, Milo Yiannopoulos, Jeff Bezos, Lil Luv Dog, Kendall Jenner, and more.
Ace Hotel’s new Substack has one of the best newsletter names I’ve seen in a while. It’s also written by my good friend and one-time as seen on consultant Shama Rahman. I asked Shama what she’s hoping to build with it and what some of her inspirations are:
When I decided to strike out on my own, I knew I wanted a writing project to be part of SR Studio’s first year. I’m a naturally curious person who has learned to be a better listener with time, and I wanted to write something rooted in the broad world of visual culture that encourages slowing down. Two of the magazines I love that help me do that are Ursula and Tools. What excited me about helping Ace Hotel launch on the platform and writing my own column comes from my specific mix of inputs: my background in Art History, deep appreciation for artists of all kinds, experience launching editorial projects for brands like New York Magazine and The Cut, and an obsession with generous hospitality (both the physical ways it shows up in hotels and the emotional ways it shows up in people). Ace Hotel has always cared deeply about supporting local artists wherever they are located, so it felt like a natural fit. It’s an experiment for us both.
K18, the biotechnology hair care brand, has appointed Kleo Mack as its chief marketing officer, which only interests me because, in the last couple of years, she’s been senior VP and CMO at Shark Beauty, and before that, VP of brand and CMO at Glossier. The lives of power beauty CMOs fascinate me.
It’s a big year for famous unmaskings. First Banksy, and now, apparently, Satoshi Nakamoto. John Carreyrou—best known for taking down Theranos—spent the past year combing through decades-old Cypherpunk mailing lists, running computational stylometry, and ultimately confronting Adam Back in El Salvador to make the case that the British cryptographer is Bitcoin’s creator. Back, for his part, denies it. “Over the next two hours, I presented my evidence piece by piece. In his soft British lilt, Mr. Back insisted he wasn’t Satoshi and chalked it all up to a series of coincidences. But at times, his body language told a different story. His face reddened and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat when confronted with things that were harder to explain away. For instance, Mr. Back didn’t have a good answer for why he disappeared from the Cryptography list during the period Satoshi was active, other than to say he was busy with work. Nor did he have a good answer for why he claimed on the ‘Let’s Talk Bitcoin’ podcast that he had participated in the late 2008 list discussion sparked by Satoshi’s white paper, when he clearly hadn’t. When I pushed Mr. Back on both points, he turned defensive.” If he is Satoshi, that would mean he holds 1.1 million Bitcoin worth approximately $118 billion, making him one of the wealthiest people on earth. According to Dylan Freedman, a Times editor for A.I. projects who spent months helping Carreyrou with this project, here are three analyses we performed to find someone who didn’t want to be found:
