if you bought that gap shirt dress
be ready to play who wore it better at brunch this summer
QUICK HITS
Health and Biotech startups now get the majority of US Series A funding
Eyewitnesses describe horrific scenes after Israeli strike on Rafah camp
Oh no, rich people are being weird again! Ohio billionaire Larry Connor plans to take a $20M deep-sea submersible to the Titanic site to prove the industry is safe now, after the disastrous OceanGate implosion. He’s going with another rich dude, Triton Submarines co-founder Patrick Lahey. “I want to show people worldwide that while the ocean is extremely powerful, it can be wonderful and enjoyable and really kind of life-changing if you go about it the right way,” Connor told the Wall Street Journal. My parents say I should be kinder in this newsletter, so let’s just move on.
Look at me, being kind to old rich dudes, and some of you are out here bullying little children! Of course North West only got the Lion King role because she’s a nepo baby. She’s also like 9, so please chill. Very PTA mom of Kim to tap Eli Russell Linnetz to create a custom Simba costume for North, though. Linnetz was the creative director behind Lady Gaga’s Vegas residency and was also a child voice actor in The Emperor’s New Groove. Outfit is sick. Big Bird but elevated.
Of course the Anne Hathaway Gap poplin shirt dress sold out in less than 24 hours. If Gap is smart, and I know they are, they’ve already worked out at least a few takedown styles for those of us who weren't quick enough or who don't want to spend all summer playing who wore it better at brunch. My friend who works in merchandising pointed out that Gap’s red carpet moments won't mean much if they can't translate all that buzz to t-shirts and jeans sales. But I think Gap knows this, and I think they will.
I listened to this Glossy Podcast interview with Depop CEO, Kruti Patel Goyal, and noticed that she always referred to Depop users as a “community.” And it’s not just her- I’ve noticed a lot of founders and CEOs using the term community in place of users a lot recently. What are the rules here? At what point does a platform's users become a community? Or is this just a thing we’re saying? Love Depop, though. Great interview. Smart lady.
The Queen of the beach read wants to be a literary It Girl. Elin Hilderbrand doesn't think she has any more good Nantucket novels in her, and who can blame her after 30 such novels?! As you guys will learn (as I’m doing book recs now!) I’m a lit fic girl through and through. But I will concede that I thoroughly enjoyed The Hotel Nantucket, a sickly sweet summer read which I read in the dead of winter.
Google and Meta are offering millions to partner with Hollywood studios on AI. Both companies are developing technology that can create realistic scenes from a text prompt and, along with rival OpenAI, have approached studios to explore partnership options. Hollywood studios, of course, are always looking for ways to cut costs and are open to conversation. Especially considering that just this week, OpenAI struck a content licensing deal worth $250 million with the Wall Street Journal’s parent company, and as of this morning, with Vox. For now, Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. is onboard (broke as they are), and Disney and Netflix are not (flush as they are).
The guy that led OpenAI’s superalignment team is now the guy that’s leading Anthropic’s superalignment team. Lol what happened to non-competes?
Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s xAI just raised $6 billion in funding from investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, and Saudi Arabia's Kingdom Holding. With a pre-money valuation of $18 billion, Elon is positioning xAI as an alternative to OpenAI, whose board he left in 2018 after co-founding it with Altman. Here’s why you should care: according to the xAI pitch deck obtained by Axios, xAI's close relationship with X is key to its potential success. "The fuel for AI is data," notes one slide. "X represents the world's most timely dataset of real-time human conversations, interests, and trends for xAI to form its intelligence. X's dataset will also become valuable as it progresses on its 'everything app' vision." Looking forward to seeing all your bad behavior reflected in those AI models.
D’you remember, d’you remember when you lost your miiiiinnnnd?! The girls of TikTok do, and honestly, this is the kind of content I need because it reminds me that I was not alone in the foolishness of my youth. In the name of love, so much dignity has been lost!
What could possibly put Jay-Z, Nas, the owner of the Mets, The Hudson Yards, an ex-police commissioner, a former governor, and the guy who owns Donald Trump’s old golf course in competition with each other? Say it with me, people: M-O-N-E-Y! Specifically, the right to build a casino in the middle of New York. The players are huge, well-funded, and are willing to fork over a few billion to secure the prize of your favorite vice. The way the leading bidders look at it, the only thing between them and a perpetual river of cash is the right PR and some lobbying effort. Boldfaced public endorsements, backroom arm-twisting... all very Yellowstone season 2. May the best (worst) man win.
Remember when Christie’s website was hacked just days before its marquee sales which were expected to bring in around $840 million? No? Well, I’m telling you it happened. But as they say, the show must go on—and the show did go on, pulling in a disappointing $115 million in sales. But now, RansomHub, the group responsible for the hacks, is threatening to leak data on the British auction house’s clients. In response, Christie’s released a statement confirming the breach, adding that “there is no evidence that any financial or transactional records were compromised.” The Times seems to think Christie’s is underplaying the threat—and so do the hackers. “It is clear that if this information is posted, they will incur heavy fines from GDPR as well as ruining their reputation with their clients,” they said in a dark web post. Whatever the case, this is a really bad look for Christie’s. And in this economy?!
Are Bored Apes still a thing in 2024? Gosh, I’d hope not.
Vanity Fair published a Cannes portrait of Guy Pearce with his pro-Palestine pin edited out. When will these publications learn to fear the internet?!
L’Oréal and Estée Lauder use child labour to make their perfumes. A BBC Eye investigation found that children as young as five are paid on average $1 a day to hand-pick perfume ingredients like Egyptian jasmine, which can cost as much as $300. Insiders told the BBC that perfume companies like L’Oréal and Estée Lauder hold ultimate power, dictating budgets to fragrance houses that source the cheapest jasmine oil, leading to underpaid pickers despite claims of ethical sourcing. In response, both companies said a bunch of nothing; by tomorrow, all will be forgiven.
What’s Goodwill going to do with all that merch? I’m only asking because you and I know it’s time to let go, and Samuel Hine just confirmed it. “It’s hard to avoid the feeling that all of the merch we’ve collected doesn’t add up to much more than a fuzzy bicoastal identity. When everything became merch, what did any of it mean? When you see other people wearing these specific but ubiquitous signifiers, if anything, you’re thinking, Ugh, I thought I was so smug and special, and here's this other idiot who also thinks they're so smug and special.” Merch once made us feel unique. Then it made us realize that we’re not so unique after all.” That being said,
made some great points about everything now being merch.You guys might know Romy Mars as the daughter of Sofia Coppola and Thomas Mars, but I know Romy as that girl who made a TikTok about how she got grounded for using her dad’s credit card to charter a helicopter to visit a friend for dinner in Maryland, and was struggling to make pasta for dinner because she didn’t know the difference between onions and garlic. Anyway, I listened to Romy Mars’ debut singles, and I liked them. With her Cannes red carpet debut, the two singles, and this W interview… I think it’s safe to say this nepo baby is officially out in society.
Netflix’s (co) CEO doesn’t think AI will take your jobs, but he thinks the person who uses AI really well might. He also thinks Irish Wish was a great movie and that social media (and YouTube) is Netflix’s greatest competition. I usually don’t love founder/CEO interviews because they usually all say the same things, or nothing at all—but this was actually an insightful read. The most interesting thing Sarandos said (imo), was that Oppenheimer and Barbie would have definitely enjoyed just as big an audience on Netflix. First of all, of course he would say that, but if this year’s dismal Memorial Day Weekend box office numbers (the lowest in almost 30 years) showed us anything, it’s things might just be going his way. It’s now clear that Barbie and Oppenheimer literally carried last year’s summer box office season on their backs. You guys say you love Anya Taylor-Joy, but that can't be true because it seems everyone celebrated Memorial Day weekend by not watching Furiosa. Regardless, I think we’re going to see fewer high-budget, low-margin sequels and spin-offs get greenlit for theatrical releases in the future. As is clearly Ted Sarandos’ wish, a lot of movies will be going direct to streaming because if studios can’t be sure they’ll make back their money at the box office, they can always count on the likes of Netflix and Amazon.
Love what Zara is doing in beauty and fragrance.
I know Western Media acts like it can only handle one African celebrity at a time, but let me take you back to summer 2020—the quiet before the storm that was my senior year. I still lived in Portland, and it was the first college summer where I couldn't abscond to Edinburgh. We were all wearing masks, walking in parks, not shaking hands, and on the off chance we got to dine out, Essence was the song you couldn’t miss. It was also the first time I realized that most non-Nigerians couldn't actually understand the lyrics to Afrobeats songs. Nothing was the same there after. Anyway, Tems’ new album drops in about a week. You’re welcome.
Is wellness culture fueling a health anxiety crisis? Lol yes. “Wellness encourages prioritizing our health – which sounds good in theory. But as the industry continues to boom, it’s becoming ever clearer that this obsession with being ‘well’ could actually be making us worried sick. We’re encouraged to constantly self-surveil, with new technologies enabling us to track how many steps we take, how many calories we burn, how many hours we sleep, and how fast our hearts beat. At the same time, the definition of ‘good health’ is shifting. Today, good health no longer merely constitutes ‘not being ill’: instead, largely thanks to the spread of wellness, health is now commonly regarded as an ongoing project to be continually worked on.” Last year, the Wall Street Journal published this great piece on the booming business of American Anxiety. I suggest you give it a read.
According to this McKinsey Health Institute Survey, American Gen Zers are worse off socially, mentally, spiritually, and physically than other generations. Actually, I think we have slightly better physical health than Gen X, but that’s it. I really hope McKinsey had the good sense to correct for Gen Z overidentifying with their struggles; otherwise, I can’t trust this.
Nearly 70% of Gen Zers are freelancing or plan to? I know the job market is tough and the economy is even tougher, but with all that poor health? I’m sorry CNBC, but this is a lie. Next!
ExxonMobil wants to sue its shareholders in peace. Should we let them? CEO Darren Woods is suing some of his company’s own shareholders because they asked it to take a stronger stance on climate change, and is upset that some people don’t like that. Those people include CalPERS, California’s state pension fund, who he called out in a recent piece for the Financial Times for opposing the lawsuit. “Calpers also knows these activists have no interest in earning a return on ExxonMobil shares,” he wrote. “They want to financially hurt the company and compromise the investments of millions who rely on the dividend as part of their retirement portfolio.” My best friend works in Big Oil and she’s always telling me I need to tell my readers about all the drama. ‘It’s not every day Rhode beauty and Graza’, she says. Fair. So Friday I’ll tell you guys about the Exxon Chevron drama that’s currently unfolding.
the books I was supposed to recommend staring at me. it’ll happen I promise, but look how sunny it is. i need to get off this computer!
my theory is, they think if we say “we’re a community” how could they ever be capitalist ? and sell your data ? we’re all a happy little village teehee
Well I don’t want to gatekeep hot tips on submarine companies in the event you should find yourself on the receiving end of an invitation aboard, so I will just say, Triton is the company to go with! 😂 I used to do PR for them, have done a dive with and worked with Patrick, and they were super safety first, and get hired for a lot of academic research and documentary filmmaking (David Attenborough, etc). So maybe this Ohio guy is just using good Midwest billionaire pragmatism in deciding to go with them. I can’t comment on why they’re going to the Titanic tho 🙃