Friday gave us the first disclosure drop — the Pentagon releasing classified materials on “unidentified anomalous phenomena.” I’m excited, Tom DeLonge is excited, pastors nationwide were warned to prepare for imminent UFO disclosure. Amazing coincidence that Spielberg’s Disclosure Day drops next month.

Seriously though, I’m a huge space nerd who’s been reading about Project Blue Book for a decade and leans to the mathematical probability that we are not alone. Like the Epstein files, there are a lot of documents and redactions to sift through, but the beauty of an AI-empowered internet hive mind is people will start making all sorts of connections.

The first round was somewhat underwhelming, mostly witness accounts rather than bona fide technology, but we did get Apollo 11 & 17 transcripts, classified for nearly 60 years (Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins all independently described the same object). Buzz killers will blame cosmic ray interactions, but having those transcripts out is a welcome change of tone.

This is supposed to be a ‘drop in the bucket’, with more substantial material released over the coming weeks, just in time for independence day :)

What we absolutely got, for the designers out there, a treasure trove of texture files and assets for some badass merch and collages.

THIS WEEK:

Jafa and Prince share a stage at Venice Biennale for the first time. A new fair opens in Gowanus for the Global Majority, with 800 people through the door in the first hour, at a fraction of what every other fair charges. A24 goes to Provincetown, 1975, the summer Bourdain became a cook. Chanel leads the Lyst index, Gucci climbs four spots while Kering reports a 14% sales decline, and Coach is quietly about to flip Kering on market cap. Millennial dads have done four times the childcare their grandfathers did.

Ryan Cohen made a $56 billion bid for eBay, went on CNBC and said nothing, then listed his socks to help fund it. Gen Z was never that sober, and TikTok just opened for alcohol brands.

Two books:

One on America’s most clandestine aerospace program, one on how Pixar built a business where honest feedback could actually happen.

HELTER SKELTER: ARTHUR JAFA AND RICHARD PRINCE

Two of my favorite artists, both known for “lawless” appropriation, are collaborating for the first time with “Helter Skelter,” opening now at Ca’ Corner della Regina and running through November 23, curated by Nancy Spector during the Venice Biennale. More than fifty works across film, photography, painting, and a new collaboratively conceived zine built from images the two artists swapped during the making of the show.

The show title, especially now, is provocative, referencing Charles Manson’s most notorious misreading of pop culture in the late 60s.

Both Jafa and Prince are masters of cited and remixed material, a form riding alongside a current debate in the age of AI and generative image-making that has brought image-theft to the forefront. As Fondazione Prada frames them, they “share an ethos of lawlessness when it comes to the appropriation and manipulation of images,” source material pulled from movies, pulp novels, comic books, YouTube videos, sci-fi stories, album covers, record sleeves, rock ‘n’ roll posters, news reels, celebrity memorabilia, and social-media posts. That last category is where Prince ran into trouble.

Beyond fine art, Jafa has collaborated on music videos for Kanye West, Jay-Z, and Solange, most notably directing Wash Us in the Blood (2020). His 2016 Love is the Message, The Message is Death is essentially a music video, synced to Kanye’s “Ultralight Beam” and held in MoMA, MOCA, and major collections worldwide.

This Lawlessness has had two very different resolutions. In January 2024, Prince was ordered to pay $900K in the New Portraits Instagram screenshots case: $200,000 to Donald Graham, $450,000 to Eric McNatt, $250,000 in costs, plus a permanent injunction barring future reproduction. In parallel, Jafa won the Golden Lion in 2019 for a film made almost entirely of appropriated material, and has never been sued. Jenny Wu, writing on the show in ArtReview, gets at what the curatorial framing avoids saying out loud: “More than permission, power licenses the act of appropriation.”

Putting both artists in the same room falls to Fondazione Prada, which is now among the most significant privately funded contemporary art programs operating. Founded in 1993 by Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli, with its Milan venue designed by Rem Koolhaas and OMA in 2015, the foundation has run Ca’ Corner della Regina as its Venetian stage since 2011. Spector, former artistic director of the Guggenheim, has a track record of staging the show no other institution will touch: her curatorial note cites Jafa and Prince as “quintessentially American.”

The zine the most accessible artifact, Prince and Jafa built it from images they exchanged during the making of the show, a back-and-forth of source material that is legally and philosophically distinct from what each does alone.

A (FRIEZE) PARTY & OPEN STUDIO NEXT FRIDAY

Into art week, we’ll be bringing back our ‘A PARTY’ series, with a night at BoomBoom with Moodyman & WHITEWALL to celebrate Frieze. Click here to RSVP for this one.

Earlier the same evening I’m going to have my first open studio, adjacent to 'TRIBECA GALERY NIGHT.’

Email me if you’d like to come see what I’ve been working on for 4 years.

DADS SHOWING UP

Derek Thompson’s recent piece on fatherhood and time sent me down a rabbit hole this week. Millennial dads do roughly four times the childcare their grandfathers did. Fathers in their 30s now spend 80+ minutes a day on direct childcare, more than double the 1965 baseline of 30 minutes a day for married fathers and nearly four times what Silent Generation dads put in. Being really in this, as a father of two, I can’t fathom 30 minutes a day.

The shift accelerated during the pandemic and stuck. Jessica Grose’s NYT Opinion piece, drawing on Misty Heggeness’s Care Board dashboard, brings the data: millennial dads ages 25-44 added 2.5 hours per week of childcare comparing pre-Covid to 2021-2023. Stay-at-home dads have nearly doubled, from 11% of all stay-at-home parents in 1989 to 18% in 2021, per Pew Research. And 23% of those SAHDs now cite home and family care as the reason, not unemployment, compared to 4% three decades ago.

Fatherhood is hands down the single most transformative change in my life. It has reframed how I use every ounce of free time. I fight to get home by 6, and I’m aware that’s a privilege of owning my business, because it’s genuinely difficult to pull off. I’ve changed how I approach business travel: before kids I was happy to be on the road, treating every trip as an opportunity to extend and explore. Now if it’s not a critical meeting or job, I’m either not going or flying home that night.

Time with my kids, especially on weekends, consumes the rarest resource. I’m constantly trading studio time or writing time for the park or the museum. A conscious decision, as I’m acutely aware of how little time I have with them being young and wanting to be with me.

Thompson’s reframe: what previous generations treated as a chore is now a leisure activity. “According to the American Time Use Survey well-being questionnaire, fathers say that little brings them more joy than being with their kids, other than hanging out with friends.”

The ability to give your kids that time is, increasingly, a luxury good. The trend is concentrated among college-educated men. Among the least-educated fathers, time spent with children is actually falling.

Those hours come with a workplace cost. The Resume Genius Workplace Realities Report 2026, covered in Forbes, finds present fathers hiding caregiving at the office and reporting concrete career penalties for openly performing it: promotions delayed, or being perceived as “less committed.”

An honest note, it’s important to set this straight that women still own the lion’s share of raising children. I’m aware of the tonality of this segment landing on mothers day, that the bar was really low if we’re making generational comparisons.

Mothers still do roughly twice the solo childcare and carry 71% of household mental load. There is also data showing dads take a larger proportion of the ‘less stressful’ aspects of parenting. So yes, our generation of fathers is stepping up, but we still have a ways to go mathematically to get to equal weight, but we’re moving in the right direction.

CONDUCTOR OPENS STRONG

Billed as the first New York fair “for the Global Majority”, Conductor opened at Powerhouse Arts in Gowanus to great attendance. 800+ guests through the doors in the first hours of the VIP preview, as ARTnews put it, a “crowd size expected from a biennial preview, rather than a typical fair opening.”

Adriana Farietta (formerly deputy director of the Armory Show) directed the fair in collaboration with Powerhouse Arts President Eric Shiner, who anchored the curatorial pitch on artists and galleries from Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, South and Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Oceania, and Indigenous nations. Timing was strategic. Farietta scheduled Conductor before New York Art Week so participants wouldn’t “compete with a small pool of collectors who are on the traditional ‘fair circuit.’” The week after Conductor closed, Frieze opened on Randalls Island.

The pricing model is refreshing, something that has become a real issue as booths at the major fairs start at $42,000 and run well past $100,000. You could get booths for $2,500 nonprofit / $3,500 artist-run collective / up to $12,500 for the largest booth. All extremely reasonable.

I also like the encouragement of self-representing artists, who could participate at no cost with a contingency: 30% of any sales went to Powerhouse Arts.

Powerhouse Arts is a beautiful facility, 170,000sq ft of fabrication-and-arts running as a nonprofit, inside the restored Brooklyn Rapid Transit Power Station, a 1904 building designed by Thomas Edward Murray. It sat derelict for decades, known as “the Batcave,” before Herzog & de Meuron and PBDW Architects reopened it in 2023. Less than three weeks before Conductor, the Brooklyn Fine Art Print Fair drew record crowds in the same space.

Standout work: House of Silence by Turkish artist Vuslat and Tunisia-born architect Sana Frini, a chocolate-brown yurt absorbed in felt designed to absorb sound. You entered through a dark corridor and emerged into a circular meditation room lit by a single opening at the top.

Across the special projects, Grammy-nominated Lido Pimienta played a four-song a cappella set; her tapestry installation funded a school and residency with the Wayuu Indigenous community in La Guajira, Colombia.

Margarita Vincenty showed plastic-driftwood assemblages built from Puerto Rican beach garbage. “I used to pick up more driftwood at first, but now I work more with plastic because I can play with the duality of it,” she told Hyperallergic, “with the happiness of it and the ugly part that no one wants to admit, that these plastics are probably here forever.”

It’s great to see a reasonably priced fair showcasing a wide aperture of artists succeed this strongly out of the gate.

LOBSTER CLUB SPRING GROUP SHOW NYC

Lobster club’s caught my eye for the past few years for the way they are bringing their group and solo shows. The event’s have these really interesting culinary as art component, its created a communal experience and a real point of difference for an ‘opening’

The curation is great, if your looking for rising talent, they have built a really cool roster across their residencies and shows.

This May’s return to NYC brings together: ​ariana goitia, boramie sao, ​danielle kosann, holly osborne, ​jay miriam, ​john reagan, ​kristen diederich, ​kristen giorgi, ​maja dlugolecki, ​megan koons, and ​thai mainhard.

TONY

What a way to land on Tony Bourdain. The late part of his life is so deeply covered, we have the docs, we got to witness the Parts Unknown era in real time as he set the stage for what a global travel show could look like. Kitchen Confidential is the closest thing we have to the early stage of his life. The film puts that gap on screen.

It’s in good hands. A24 distributing, Matt Johnson directing after BlackBerry. Johnson is a small-rooms-and-real-faces director rather than a myth-maker, which is the right disposition.

It is NOT a cradle-to-grave story. The Bourdain estate said so on the same day as the trailer drop: “one transformative summer in 1975 in Provincetown, Massachusetts.” This is rich, the line-cook crucible that became the spine of Kitchen Confidential’s opening chapters. The summer Bourdain himself is credited as the moment he became a chef.

Dominic Sessa‘s casting feels correct, big shoes to fill as he’s in EVERY shot. Johnson, in EW: “[Sessa and Bourdain are] both from Jersey, both sent to private school, but didn’t fit in, both restless and searching. He is in every shot of the movie, and carries the entire story on his hunched shoulders.”

LYST INDEX Q1 ‘26

Lyst’s quarterly index, pulling from 160 million annual shoppers, is a good snapshot of which brands are succeeding and driving conversation culturally. Essentially brand heat. This quarter, 20% of the Top 20 are new entries.

Chanel is the hottest brand on the list, debuting at #1. Matthieu Blazy has come out of the gate with a strong re-positioning of the house, modernizing its universe without alienating. He’s put bags and shoes back at the top: Chanel pumps land as the #2 hottest product, the Maxi Flap at #6. That bag dropped to lines around blocks, and Blazy used the launch to recalibrate the pricing question that had been hanging over the maison.

Gucci climbed four places to #5. Demna is driving the attention, with a 12% day-on-day demand lift following his debut show and the highest demand share among designers who showed in Milan in February.

But demand and revenue are not the same thing, Kering is still struggling with their broader turnaround. In its Q1 earnings, the group reported Gucci revenues down 14% to €1.35 billion (8% on an organic basis).

What’s wild is that Tapestry (Coach, Stuart Weitzman) is closing the gap with Kering on market cap and could flip them, something that would have been unheard of ten years ago. Gucci may be trending conversationally, but Coach is capturing the wallets of Gen Z.

Continue reading: How 90s minimalism is driving Zara’s best quarter, and why two trend cycles are converging right now.

TikTok just opened for spirits brands after two years of waiting, and the category is late to the party. Gamestops Ryan Cohen made an unsolicited $56 billion bid for eBay, went on CNBC and said nothing, then listed his socks to help fund it. The AI dictation system I built in a weekend, and why the transcription app is the cheapest part of the stack. As well as Two books, one I’m reading and one I want too.

If you’d like a free subscription, feel free to reach out on why, I’ll most likely be happy to oblige.

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Running underneath is a parallel observation: the categories of luxury still growing are the ones built on physical access, in-person craft, and experiences. Black Tomato is sending founders into the polar circle for $30k, DIAFA is paying £1.4B for Annabel’s at a fifteen-times multiple, Sotheby’s opening Marcel under the Breuer are all examples of the luxury as hospitality play.

My other theme this week is vindication at speed.

Intel up 315% in seven months after a near collapse. The Sphere is proving doubters wrong, up 370% from its 2025 low and finally profitable. Leopold Aschenbrenner, twenty-three years old, turning $225M into $5.5B in twelve months on a bet about electricity after getting fired from OpenAI.

So a pattern, high-touch where it can’t be sped up, hyper-speed everywhere else.

SALONE ROUND UP

Milan has, in my mind, taken the crown from Miami art week when it comes to luxury brand activations. Over the last three years, Salone del Mobile and the broader Fuorisalone have quietly become one of, if not the most important luxury activation moments in the world. That tracks with the rise of design objects as a luxury category. Interiors offer the big houses something art doesn’t: high margins and cultural resonance in a space they can fully author. With art, brands stand alongside. With design, they can produce the objects.

In sync with that, Salone del Mobile launched a three-year partnership with Art Basel Miami Beach and Art Basel Hong Kong in December.

The fashion descent on Design Week is no longer subtle. In 2026, more than 40 fashion houses staged Fuorisalone events: Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Hermès, Prada, Miu Miu, Bottega Veneta, Loro Piana, with Jil Sander debuting. The level of creativity and craftsmanship on the ground was inspiring.

We could also be approaching peak, the moment it spirals into a brand-dominated frenzy that suffocates the thing itself.

When McDonald’s shows up, even creatively, that might be the marker.

What stood out:

Access to rarely seen spaces. Dimorestudio’s Interni Venosta installation inside a 1936 apartment Osvaldo Borsani designed for the family that still owns it. Byredo with Jean-Guillaume Mathiaut inside Chiostro Cappuccio, a 15th-century cloister at the former monastery of Santa Maria Maddalena.

DotDotDot’s first IRL extension. My friend Christopher built out his strategy and culture practice as a physical installation, the ongoing Project Anatomy partnership with Stone Island. Big sound systems in a drained swimming pool, hosting conversations and product investigation.

OMA x SolidNature. The standout for me. Il Sonno Supermarket, a grocery store where every object was carved from a different stone. Eggs, bananas, cuts of meat, sandwiches. Flawless execution of a simple idea that put the emphasis on tonal range.

Gucci Memoria. Demna came correct in his first Fuorisalone for the house: 12 monumental tapestries that look 100 years old, and Jet Black vending machines with the green-red stripe and a subtle coat of arms. Sub Global again stopped the feed.

Samsung Design Open Lab. Transparent MLED displays were the headline. We’ve been playing with proto boxes for three or four years. Some of these really solve for the ugly black screen. We’ve had “the screen” for decades. Ripe for disruption.

Jil Sander x Apartamento. A reference library designed by studioutte, 60 creatives’ selections across disciplines. Chic in its simplicity and beautifully analog.

Hermès showed minimalist home collections. Aesop moved into lighting design with the Aposē lamp. Sant Ambroeus quietly turned 90, which surprised me.

Notably absent: The Row, YSL, and Loewe sat 2026 out.

Salone itself drew 316,342 visitors from 167 countries, up 4.5% YoY, across 1,900+ exhibitors. Art Basel Miami Beach 2025, by comparison, drew more than 80,000.

For a fuller round-up, the AD editors’ favorites list is the place to start.

YOUNG LEAN & GENER8ION - NEW ROMAIN GAVRAS

Just give yourself 3:00. Romain did it again.

The film itself is relatively simple heavily referencing the 2001 Japanese cult film “Blue Spring (Aoi haru),” so effective as a beautiful yet haunting reflection on boarding schools and youth violence.

French choreographer Damien Jalet’s choreography is mind blowing.

EMILY KRAUS AT LUHRING AUGUSTINE

I’ve been tracking Emilie’s paintings for about two years now.

Her process of mark making, leveraging printing mechanics to play with both repetition and anomaly create fascinating and unique pieces. These new works have SCALE and need to be seen in person.

‘In Relation’ - Her solo show will run through June 13th.

MICHAEL’S OPENING NUMBERS

“Michael” doing $97M domestic and $217M globally on opening weekend is the cleanest case study yet of cancel culture’s outer limit. Or as Dan Reed, director of the 2019 documentary Leaving Neverland, put it: “people just don’t care.”

The $97M domestic number unseats Straight Outta Compton ($60.2M, 2015) as the biggest music-biopic opening in history. The $217M global figure is the biggest music-biopic opening, full stop.

Antoine Fuqua’s film ballooned to a ~$200M production budget after reshoots, so it’s on a fast path to profit. Jaafar Jackson, Jermaine’s son and Michael’s nephew, plays the lead. Multiple Jackson family members hold producer credits alongside estate co-executors John Branca and John McClain.

The split is sharp. Critics are tanking it: 40% on Rotten Tomatoes, 38 on Metacritic. Audiences are loving it at 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. People want to tune out the darkness and enjoy the hits.

The film cuts off in 1988, before any of the allegations. The original cut went deeper, with Jordan Chandler a central character. Fuqua and producer Graham King paid an extra $25M of their own money for reshoots after discovering a clause in the 1994 Chandler family settlement (~$23M) that bars dramatization of the accusers. The story you’re allowed to tell ends in 1988.

Sanitized biopics are part of the genre. Bohemian Rhapsody had two-plus minutes of LGBTQ content cut for the Chinese release, including Mercury’s coming-out scene and the AIDS revelation. Estates have a heavy hand in these films.

Meanwhile, Leaving Neverland was pulled from Max in October 2024 as part of an estate settlement. Rights revert to Reed in 2029.

SCIENTOLOGY RUNS

Leave it to Gen Z to topple one of the most secretive institutions in the most ludicrous ways. By brute-forcing the headquarters via viral “runs,” groups of kids sprinting past guards into the clandestine bowels of “Big Blue,” Scientology’s Pacific Area Command Base in Hollywood. The memes are great. (Tom Cruise running fits perfectly.)

The initial TikTok by 18-year-old @swhileyy, posted March 31, racked up 90 million views and catalyzed a string of copycats who have gotten successively deeper into the building. By late April, LAPD had detained multiple participants and assigned Major Crimes detectives.

A Clearwater incident produced a felony arrest. Scientology has pulled the door handles off three of its Hollywood properties. Swhileyy himself has now called for it to stop.

The unexpected second-order effect: viewers are stitching the run footage into a crowdsourced floor plan of the building Scientology has spent decades hiding.

It’s a larger connection to how much harder secrecy is in the viral social age. The same dynamic is playing out with Mar-a-Lago tours, North Korea TikToks from Russian tourists, Anduril facility B-roll, and, most interestingly, the way Hermès and luxury houses are voluntarily opening their workshops because they’ve already lost the secrecy game and are trying to monetize transparency instead.

BLACK TOMATO GET LOST

Black Tomato is who you call if you need to bring 600 celebrities and VIPs to Cuba for a cruise show in a country that doesn’t take credit cards, and that, at the time, didn’t allow Americans to travel there easily. I’ve known about them for years because they’ve run adjacent to some of our productions, fixers for brands attempting ambitious shoots in difficult places. That work has always fascinated me.

The industry-direct business is paired with a bespoke consumer arm focused on once-in-a-lifetime trips for high net worth individuals and families. Founded in 2005 by Tom Marchant, James Merrett, and Matt Smith, three university friends, Black Tomato built its reputation on tailor-made itineraries before luxury travel discovered “transformation” as a marketing word.

Their most distinctive offering is Get Lost, launched in 2017. Structurally, it’s luxury Outward Bound. For somewhere in the $10,000 to $30,000 range, you commit to not knowing where you’re going, train with a former Royal Marine Commando, get dropped into a polar, mountain, jungle, desert, or coastal environment, and walk yourself out over several days while a satellite tracker watches from a distance. The product they’re selling is who you are when you come back.

Ed Caesar wrote about his own Get Lost trip in The New Yorker, describing it as “like a very pleasant kidnapping, with coffee breaks.”

The survival-training market is projected to hit $6.52B by 2030, up from $2.74B in 2021, per Verified Market Research. The people writing the biggest checks at the top of that market are not preppers. They’re founders.

I worked with a concierge client years ago who walked me through one of their most consistent customer profiles: people with recent major liquidity events who then traveled for an entire year, with their families or alone. The idea was to take a year to really live, because the act of getting to liquidity had removed the capacity to feel alive.

Bespoke travel like this is real business. Over twenty years, Marchant, Merrett, and Smith have built Black Tomato into a nine-figure company without taking outside funding.

I’ve written extensively about the rise of experience as a luxury product. Black Tomato pre-dates the trend and quietly embodies it. It belongs in the same column as Salone’s analog supremacy and Annabel’s velvet-rope arithmetic, the categories of luxury still growing because they can’t be accelerated.

KING OF MAYFAIR SELLS MAJORITY STAKE

The upper end of hospitality just saw another monster exit. Richard Caring sold the bulk of his empire to DIAFA, an Abu Dhabi luxury-hospitality vehicle controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, deputy ruler of Abu Dhabi and brother of the UAE president. It’s DIAFA’s third luxury-F&B acquisition in seven months: a 9-figure majority of h.wood Group (Delilah, The Nice Guy, Bird Streets Club) in September 2025, and 49.99% of Azumi (Zuma, ROKA) in October.

Caring’s portfolio: The Ivy Collection (~30 restaurants), Caprice Holdings (Scott’s, Sexy Fish, J Sheekey, Noema), and Birley Clubs (Annabel’s, Harry’s Bar, George, Mark’s Club). Bill’s, his mass-market chain, was carved out. DIAFA wanted only the velvet-rope half.

The playbook is rolling up culturally-defining venues, run them as brands rather than restaurants, sell membership and access as the product, then export it. Annabel’s New York is already announced. An Ivy Brasseries US rollout is teed up.

What’s below the paywall:

The £1.4B Mayfair multiple and the Annabel’s math. Marcel below the Breuer. Intel’s 315% and the most profitable industrial-policy trade since 2008. The Sphere’s first profit and what comes next. Leopold Aschenbrenner turning $225M into $5.5B in twelve months on a bet about electricity. A Mill Valley house listed in Anthropic shares. Joby’s seven-minute flight from JFK. The AI overlay that just made fencing watchable. Plus this week’s Books.

This is issue 53. If you’ve been reading weekly and getting value from this, a paid subscription is the best way to support the work. Many readers expense INTAKE as a professional resource, [here’s a template for that].

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The festival has grown to over 120,000 daily attendees from around 80k a day when I was last there in 2015. The increase in scale is something you feel; the artist area is packed, 20-minute lines for golf carts, things just felt busier.

It’s also a testament to the turnaround from the fatigue that started around 2024, when for the first time in over a decade, tickets failed to sell out quickly, and demand dropped…Not the case this year.

I’m gonna skip the JB performance analysis, as there has been so much analytical coverage of his moves. He did break just about every record: highest-paid artist in history, highest ticket demand, most-viewed / Googled performance, and most expensive directs ever sold. @damizza has a strong breakdown of the chess moves if you’re interested.

My top performances,

Turnstile, pure energy. Proper mosh pit that beautifully ended with a clean break of peace…people went all in, and their set rocked.

XX headline night one. Their first time playing together in 9 years, they brought a great show with all the hits.

Blood Orange gave an incredible set in the round with a full band.

NIN stole the show for me. Hands down the best live performance I’ve seen in a minute, let alone Coachella. The massive visuals, the dancers that looked like statues until they activated 10 minutes into the set. This was just a full set of absolute badass hard noise. Seeing it closer, with that kind of visuals was absolutely insane. 10/10 - watch the film. My friend Maxime Quoilin did the visuals, he was stresssssed out leading into it but I understand now. Bravo, Maxie, that was epic.

This issue's thread is the tension between what's real and what's manufactured — across live music, film, marketing, and markets.

I'm looking at the collapse of Hollywood's production economy and what Bad Robot's downsizing signals about LA's future, A24's playbook tension between staying lean and justifying a $3.5B valuation, the Chaotic Good exposé that blew the lid off manufactured virality in music, Ackman's $64 billion financial engineering play for Universal Music, and the Artemis II images that reminded us what humans can actually do.

Plus Calder at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Prada Mode at the Chelsea Hotel, new studio work, and two books.

BAD ROBOT: DOWNSIZING, RELOCATING TO NYC

Bad Robot's downsizing is two stories in one. The first is specific: J.J. Abrams' production company burned through a $250M Warner Bros. deal with remarkably little to show for it. Failed DC projects, scrapped HBO shows, $50M in satellite deals that yielded nothing. The studio’s last theatrical film was Rise of Skywalker in 2019, seven years ago. After an extended rough patch, the company sold its Santa Monica headquarters for $31M, downsized, and moved to New York.

The second story is structural, and it’s the one I’ve been writing about over the past year (here) and (here). Abrams is the latest significant force in Hollywood to depart LA, but he’s not alone. Disney vacated the Fox Studio Lot entirely, consolidating back to Burbank. Marvel moved primary production to the UK. None of the 10 Best Picture nominees at this year’s Oscars were produced on a Hollywood soundstage. Not one.

Coinciding with the Bad Robot news, the WSJ published a deep dive on the collapse of shoot days and production in what used to be the mecca of film. The numbers are stark. LA shoot days have collapsed 46% since 2022, from 36,792 to 19,694, the lowest outside the pandemic year. Feature film shooting declined 16.8% year-over-year; commercial shoots dropped 23.2% in Q4 alone. Hollywood employment is down 30% as productions leave California, with 42,000 entertainment workers leaving the industry between 2022 and 2024. IATSE members worked 36% fewer hours in 2025 than 2022, many falling below the minimums needed to keep their health insurance.

Noah Wyle, testifying at Senator Schiff’s hearing in Burbank, called it “a near cratering of our once thriving industry.”

This is not an AI disruption story. This is a story about LA becoming an inhospitable place to shoot or operate productions. The city with the densest concentration of talent (for now) is one of the least favorable environments for actually producing anything. Stringent permitting, high costs, and a lack of competitive tax incentives have pushed production elsewhere. California raised its credit cap from $330M to $750M last year, but it was late, and it still trails New York.

LA’s decline is driving other markets to the forefront. Atlanta had its run, capturing Marvel productions at Pinewood. Now, New York and New Jersey are building at scale. New York’s film tax credit sits at $800M per year through 2036, offering a 30% refundable credit that’s driving massive infrastructure investment. Wildflower Studios, Robert De Niro’s 765,000 square-foot complex in Astoria, designed by Bjarke Ingels, is now operational. Netflix is building a $1B complex at Fort Monmouth in New Jersey. Lionsgate broke ground on a $125M studio in Newark. New Jersey, a film hub 100 years ago before the industry moved west, is returning after a century-long hiatus.

Michael Lynton, the former Sony Pictures CEO, described Hollywood’s trajectory as “the sunny version of Detroit,” a place where headquarters may still exist but very little manufacturing happens.

If the talent migrates, it will be hard to pull back.

The counterpoint to the decline of Bad robots is that great product has never been more alive, and there are WINNERS in a tough market. Project Hail Mary just crossed $510M at the global box office, an original IP with a $200M production budget, practical effects, and no franchise behind it. Ryan Coogler’s Sinners hit $368M as an R-rated original with a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes and won the Golden Globe for cinematic achievement. A24’s track record is explored in this issue. Domestic box office through April is up 23.5% over 2025, the best start since pre-COVID.

A younger audience is also coming back to theatres. A Fandango survey found Gen Z is now the most active cinema-going demographic, averaging seven theater visits per year. They see it as social, not escapist, the appeal of leaving the home and sitting in a room with other people.

The risk isn’t demand, it’s that a $200M film now needs roughly $400M just to break even once you factor P&A, and the international markets that used to provide a safety net, China and Russia, have both evaporated. Math favors the A24 model: acquire smart, market culturally, let word-of-mouth do the heavy lifting.

CALDER. FONDATION LUIS VUITTON

I’ll be in Paris in July and definitely going to check out the Alexander Calder retrospective at Fondation Louis Vuitton. Spanning 50 years and nearly 300 works, the exhibit brings Calder’s stabiles and mobiles (his terminology for static and mobile) with some of the artist’s large public art sculptures from the 1960s and 1970s.

The Fondation is always a worthwhile day trip, the building itself is magnificent, as is the park it’s situated in.

If you have kids it’s even better, adjacent to the Fondation is Jardin d’Acclimatation, a theme park at a medium scale that has all these traditional rides. It’s not overwhelming, while still a big enough scale that the rides are legit.

Exhibition : From 15.04.2026 to 16.08.2026.

STUDIO PRACTICE

Two new pieces for spring. I’ve been working on glaze’s over thick black underpainting compositions.

Along with a new ‘Spring Dream,’ my favorite color pallet - muted pastels. More of my work and process on my studio website.

THE DRAMA BREAKS EVEN ON OPENING WEEKEND. A24’S TRACK RECORD.

A24’s latest, The Drama, starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, opened to $28M globally on a $28M budget. Breaking even on opening weekend, everything from here is profit. It’s A24’s third-biggest opening ever, behind Civil War ($25.7M) and Marty Supreme ($17.5M).

A24’s whole model is acquiring IP in the $15 to $20M range and marketing it with cultural spectacle instead of ad spend. Word-of-mouth does the heavy lifting. Timothée’s run on Marty Supreme captured the internet for three months and delivered $147M globally. The studio has built a brand around disruptive marketing.

For The Drama, the fuel is controversy. A wedding-focused campaign primed audiences for a romcom; what they got was a plot twist they weren’t ready for. The conversation itself became the marketing, sparking a larger debate over whether difficult themes belong in films. (Schindler’s List would argue they very much do.)

The thing that makes A24 valuable may be the thing it can’t keep doing. Last year’s $3.5B valuation, set against ~$313M in annual revenue, builds in pressure to grow aggressively. Even at a generous 25% margin, the math implies a fair value closer to $450M. The gap is the bet.

The growth story (TV via Euphoria and Beef, merchandise, subscriptions, experiences, a record label) only goes so far. To justify the number, A24 has to chase blockbusters at a different scale. That’s where they’ve stumbled. The Smashing Machine ($50M budget, $21M gross) is where this playbook may not work with larger budgets, these niche angles start to get harder when you need larger gross at the box office.

If they pull it off, future growth may come from a 360 expansion, meaning whole worlds from merch to experiences and music. The music angle is interesting; it feels random, but maybe not. Warner Music built one of the big three labels in part on catalog and sync, and A24 has a structural advantage Warner never had: the ability to place its own music in its own TV and films.

A24 excels at incredible marketing for bite-sized acquisitions.

A $3.5B valuation demands it get big.

NEW MUSIC

Some legendary drops this week for new music.

THE STROKES REALITY AWAITS

Arrives this summer. Their first single is out, previewed to fans via cassette’s, the analog play continues. (I wrote about this a few weeks back, listing some cool new cassette players as well).

NINE INCH NAILS

Coming out of rave reviews for perhaps one of the best Coachella performances ever. The collaboration between NIN & Boyz Noize drops this week.

April 17th

HULU LANDS 50 CENT DOCUMENTARY

Hulu won a contested bidding war for an official three-part doc on Curtis Jackson, beating out Starz, Netflix, and Apple for the rights. The reported price is $75 million, with Mandon Lovett (Paramount+, Hulu music docs) directing.

Younger audiences may not know the trajectory: South Jamaica, Queens, shot nine times in 2000, blowing up off mixtapes, then Get Rich or Die Tryin’ in 2003. Very rich lore when I was in college. I’m looking forward to the later part of this story, Fifty is fascinating to me as a businessman, the post-music arc, the evolution into investor, developer, and producer.

He laid the foundation for the modern “celebrity as business owner,” one of the first to clock nine figures on an equity play instead of a typical endorsement. When Coca-Cola bought Glacéau for $4.1 billion in 2007, his Vitaminwater stake reportedly netted him around $100 million. That blueprint parlayed into G-Unit Film & Television, the 985,000-square-foot Shreveport studio that opened in 2024, and the entire Power universe (Ghost, Raising Kanan, Force, plus the upcoming Origins). Fifty now produce or is in development of over 40 shows.

His friendship and presence on Andrew Schulz’s Flagrant over the past few years has been unexpected and funny as hell. If you want a laugh-out-loud episode, the Tony Yayo one is one of the funniest I’ve ever listened to: prison stories, being wanted while on tour, the Yayo vs. Alex meltdown over whether you’d take Jay’s career over 50’s (”you’re fucking on drugs”).

An episode full of heaters.

EVERYTHING ON THE INTERNET IS FAKE. CHAOTIC GOOD.

How a song goes viral in 2026 looks nothing like how 50 Cent broke. The mixtape circuit, hand-to-hand sales, DJ co-signs, and club nights were replaced by something more efficient and a lot less romantic.

A Billboard On The Record taping at SXSW with Chaotic Good Projects co-founders Jesse Coren and Andrew Spelman blew the doors off music’s worst-kept secret: virality is manufactured. The agency, founded in February 2025 by two ex-managers from Mutual Friends, described running hundreds of fake accounts, “simulating trends,” and flooding comment sections for a roster that runs from Dua Lipa, Travis Scott, and Coldplay all the way down to Mk.gee, Wet Leg, Mitski, Laufey, Geese, and Cameron Winter.

Eliza McLamb’s “Fake Fans” essay turned the interview into a real piece of reporting and went viral inside a day. Within 24 hours of her post, Chaotic Good scrubbed its website, pulling client names and deleting the “Narrative Campaign” page entirely.

What’s below the paywall:

Chaotic Good & How virality is manufactured in 2026 cont’d, fake accounts, and modern payola. Plus Hulu’s $75M 50 Cent doc and Fifty’s business arc, Ackman’s $64 billion financial engineering play for Universal Music, the McKinsey trade map and what happens when one-third of global trade growth depends on a single sector, NYC’s family apartment crisis in one heat map, and the Artemis II imagery that stopped the internet.

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“The goal is not flags and footprints but to stay on the Moon.”

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman

That line came from NASA, announcing $20 billion toward a permanent lunar base abandoning the orbital station. Today we start that journey with the Artemis II launch, the first crewed mission to lunar orbit in over 50 years.

There’s a difference between showing up and staying, a theme on what lasts and what doesn’t permeates this week.

Jay-Z resurfaces after nine years of near-silence with three sold-out nights at Yankee Stadium. Rising names in art and photography. Travis Scott brings Matthew Williams into the Oakley orbit. Netflix bets the Kennedys are America’s answer to The Crown. OpenAI shutters Sora and blows up a billion-dollar Disney deal in the same week.

A jury orders Meta and Google to pay damages in the first child addiction case to reach trial.

My favorite piece to cover this week is humanity’s space advancements, so much in a month, its a great time to be a space nerd.

JAY-Z’s RETURN

“It’s been a minute.”

Nine years since a solo album. Nine years since a solo tour. And then, in the span of a few weeks, a sequence so deliberate it could only be one person. Jay does things in a very calculated way, controlling every touch point. There is a lack of access, and for half a decade a lack of sonic presence which has preserved his aura. He’s avoided fatigue.

On the 30th anniversary of Reasonable Doubt, Jay returns like a comet with a GQ cover story, his first major interview in nearly a decade, 3 sold-out nights at Yankee Stadium, a new website (JAYZ30.com), and rumors of new music. The megastar is back from the executive desk and into the arena.

1.6 million fans flooded ticket queues for three nights at Yankee Stadium (July 10-12), with Reasonable Doubt’s 30th on night one and The Blueprint’s 25th on night two. A third night, “Extra Innings,” was added to handle the demand. This will be the artist’s first solo show at Yankee Stadium; his prior concerts were co-headlines with Eminem and Justin Timberlake. Jay now holds the record for most sold-out performances at the venue: 7 total. A 56-year-old who hasn’t released a solo album in 9 years commanding higher demand than artists in their commercial prime. Bleacher resale seats hit $12,193.

Prior to headlining The House That Ruth Built, Jay will headline Roots Picnic on May 30 in Philadelphia, a reunion with The Roots for the first time in over 10 years. Go watch Jay’s MTV Unplugged from 2001, their first pairing and one of the most iconic live sets of the aughts.

Jay’s cover interview, conducted by Frazier Tharpe for the magazine’s inaugural “global issue” under new editor Adam Baidawi, is coded with symbolism in the imagery. Shot not by a photographer but by fine artist Rashid Johnson, referencing James Van Der Zee and Francis Bacon.

Jay-Z has collected Johnson’s work for a decade. This is the patron-artist relationship, not the celebrity-photographer transaction. Johnson described the framing through Harold Cruse, W.E.B. Du Bois, Michael Eric Dyson, placing a rapper’s magazine cover in the lineage of Black intellectual history.

Fine art sits in a through line that runs across a lot of Jay’s later career. Six-plus Basquiat song references. “Picasso Baby” as a six-hour performance at Pace Gallery. The Tiffany campaign alongside Equals Pi. Renting the entire Louvre for “APESHIT” in 2018. Jay-Z doesn’t just reference art. He uses it as a credentialing mechanism for a level of cultural seriousness that hip-hop alone doesn’t confer. The GQ cover is the latest entry in that project.

The interview is a mix of introspection from the Reasonable Doubt era and, in part, a rehabilitation exercise, addressing the civil lawsuit: sexual assault allegations tied to the broader Diddy case, dismissed in February 2025 after the plaintiff voluntarily withdrew. His defamation counter-suit against the accuser and attorney Tony Buzbee remains ongoing.

Whether that offense includes new music or just the most expensive nostalgia tour in hip-hop history is the open question. Jay reveals he made an album during the lawsuit period but shelved it because it would have been “a very angry offering.” Signals on Jay’s studio return predating the interview came from Memphis Bleek’s two-part Drink Champs appearance, corroborated by Alchemist’s separate comments on another episode, none of which have been denied by Jay, meaning there could be active studio work.

Jay reflects on the pushback of capitalism, this arc of the American Dream and how when you make it, people lose the allure of the struggling artist. He takes jabs at sitting on the sidelines speaking about a “world you want to see” vs realizing there is a system and playing that system.

This wouldn’t be his first exit and return. The Black Album (2003) was announced as his “final album.” He had a retirement party at MSG, came back three years later with Kingdom Come. During the “retirement,” he became president of Def Jam and signed Rihanna, Rick Ross, and Young Jeezy.

Step away, build an empire, return on your own terms. The difference this time is the gap is three times longer, its exciting to see Jay back after nine years of silence.

THE DREAMWORKS OF POPPY JONES

At first I couldn’t tell if they were paintings or photographs, not in a hyper-realistic way, in that they feel like photographs through a dream.

British artist Poppy Jones photographs domestic objects, mono-prints those images onto found silk, suede, and leather via lithographic transfer, then selectively overpaints with oil or watercolor, resulting in imagery that feels like a distant memory.

Poppy is on the “Zero to Hero” list in Artnet’s 2026 Intelligence Report, being one of the most searched artists on the platform. She’s gone from instagram discovery in 2021 to Herald St, Mai 36 Galerie, and Overduin & Co representation.

KENNEDY’S - AMERICA’S VERSION OF THE CROWN.

Netflix just dropped the first look at Michael Fassbender as Joe Kennedy Sr. in Kennedy, an eight-episode drama series based on Fredrik Logevall’s Pulitzer-adjacent biography JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917–1956.

The series is being positioned, by Netflix and the press, as America’s answer to The Crown: a multigenerational, prestige dynasty drama with the ambition to span multiple seasons.

The timing is sharp, off the back of FX’s Love Story (the JFK Jr./Carolyn Bessette series from Ryan Murphy) which became the most-streamed limited series in FX history, proving the appetite for Kennedy content is at a peak.

While the Kennedy dynasty has been much covered, exploring the patriarch, the bootlegger, the ambassador, the man who orchestrated a dynasty is genuinely new territory for prestige TV.

DEOLU OSIBODU’S PHOTOGRAPHY

It’s still early to get on the work of Nigerian-born, London-based photographer Adeolu Osibodu. His story is a great example of what Jay said: “things don’t happen to you, they happen for you”. Osibodu found photography after a skateboarding accident broke his femur in two places and put him out for eight months. He didn’t own a camera before the crash and bought his first within two months of recovery.

Now 28, with shows from ARTCO Gallery Berlin to a Bill Shapiro-curated group show at MoMo Santa Fe. Part of a wave of Nigerian photographers (Charles Egbengwu, Lakin Ogunbanwo, Neec Nonso) redefining how the continent is seen through contemporary photography.

Osibodu’s images look REAL. The surrealism is his way of processing time slipping through your hands.

RAUSCHENBERG BMW ART CARS (HONG KONG BASEL)

Robert Rauschenberg’s 1986 BMW 635 CSi made its first-ever Asian appearance at Art Basel Hong Kong last week. The sixth BMW Art Car, timed to the Rauschenberg centennial and a concurrent M+ retrospective running through April.

The program started in 1975 when French auctioneer and racing driver Hervé Poulain commissioned Alexander Calder to paint his BMW 3.0 CSL for Le Mans. Poulain had seen Calder paint an entire Braniff International DC-8 jet two years prior and figured: why not a race car?

Calder used only primary colors, ignored the car’s body lines entirely, and the public loved it. Fifty years and 20 cars later, from Warhol to Julie Mehretu, the program is still running.

Rauschenberg’s contribution stands out. His was the first Art Car to use photographic transfers, silkscreening images from the Met’s permanent collection directly onto the body. Bronzino’s Portrait of a Young Man on one side, Ingres’ Odalisque in Grisaille on the other, his own Captiva Island photographs on the hubcaps. He called it “the fulfilment of my dream” of a mobile museum.

51 years, 20 cars, zero sold.

BMW has never parted with a single one. Artists get complete creative freedom, selection by an independent jury of museum directors, not BMW marketing. The current 50th anniversary world tour has hit 50+ stops across 30+ countries. Arguably the most successful corporate art patronage initiative ever run.

The Warhol M1 is informally valued upward of $250 million, though BMW won’t confirm and no credible appraisal exists, because no market does. The closest precedent: an unofficial Frank Stella-painted BMW M1 Procar sold at Bonhams in 2011 for $854K, and that wasn’t even one of the official 20.

HARRISON ADAIR

A director duo out of London, Tommy Harrison & Jamie Adair. I came across their work on James’ Blakes latest album. It’s a bit cryptic what else they’ve been behind, but the work for Blake got my attention.

Filmmaking, photography and art direction as core services.

OAKLEYS’ MOVES

Travis Scott, who became Oakley’s first-ever Chief Visionary Officer last summer, just brought on Matthew Williams as Creative Director of Apparel, Footwear, and Accessories.

These two have been in each other’s creative ecosystem for over 14 years, both molded through Kanye West’s creative machine. Williams was designing the LED jacket for Ye’s 2007 Grammy performance with Daft Punk. Scott was producing on Yeezus. They shared the Been Trill orbit with Virgil Abloh before any of them had their own houses. When Oakley asked Scott about Williams, his response was simple:

Williams brings post-Givenchy credibility, a California upbringing (Pismo Beach, played soccer in Irvine, where Oakley HQ sits), and an industrial-utilitarian design language that maps cleanly onto the heritage DNA.

This is a play to transform a performance eyewear company into a full lifestyle platform: apparel, footwear, accessories, using two people with genuine cultural authority.

Oakley is a mythical brand to me. So unique, so extreme, it just moves different. I can’t place another brand in its world. It’s grounded in futurism, fashion and performance simultaneously. Makes sense on an olympian and in a Travis Scott music video. Blades have a special place in my heart. I worked at a ski shop and used to covet the cases with the insane multicolored interchangeable lenses. Nothing was like them at the time.

Their headquarters in Foothill Ranch looks like a bomb shelter that houses aliens. It will be interesting to see “Yeezy taught me” applied to Oakley’s mothership.

LAKE COMO EDITION OPENS

The Lake Como EDITION opened March 10 in Cadenabbia, a restored 19th-century palazzo on the western shore directly facing Bellagio. The brand’s roughly 20th property, targeting 30+ by 2027.

EDITION is like the older sister of Public, both conceived by Ian Schrager, both merging design sensibility with a vibe that makes these properties feel like active parts of their neighborhoods. But Schrager stepped away from EDITION in 2022 to focus fully on Public, calling it “the most important idea I ever had.” As the brand scales rapidly without him, can it preserve his philosophy of luxury as feeling, not price?

Lake Como and Hawaii mark a deliberate push into leisure markets for a brand built on urban cultural energy: NYC, London, Tokyo. The London property has been one of my favorites, though the new Rosewood may be taking that spot. EDITION Como looks beautiful, especially the floating pool.

Como itself is going from a sleepy 500-year heritage wealth bastion to a proper hospitality destination.

OPEN AI FUMBLES

Anthropic kicked the shit out of OpenAI this quarter.

Sam Altman’s quip during the Super Bowl ad feud that “More Texans use ChatGPT for free than total people use Claude in the US” hasn’t aged well.

Ramp’s March AI Index shows Claude capturing 73% of first-time enterprise AI spending. Companies doing real work, willing to pay for a platform. Ten weeks ago that was split 50/50. OpenAI’s enterprise share has fallen from 50% in ’23 to 27%. First to market doesn’t mean you win the race, ask Netscape.

Continue Reading:

How OpenAI is responding to the enterprise shift. Plus a Los Angeles jury hands down what could be social media’s big tobacco moment, and the plaintiff’s attorney burns his suits after every trial.

Artemis II launches tonight, NASA commits $20 billion to a permanent moon base, and Musk announces electromagnetic mass drivers. Plus Jay-Z’s reading list, and an Italian graphic design archive worth hours of your time.

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Everything interesting this week has a longer timeline than the headline suggests.

Pokémon Go players discovered they’ve been training delivery robots with 30 billion images across nearly a decade of catching Pikachu on sidewalks. Live Nation employees have been joking about “robbing fans blind” in Slack for years, it just hit the press this week. Travis Kalanick spent five years in exile after the most public founder takedown of his generation. He’s back, doing the podcast rounds, talking about not going hard enough.

The art market is edging back after two years of decline, but the real signal is in the small galleries, not the auction houses.

MSCHF, the Brooklyn art collective that sold shares in a living cow and let the internet decide his fate, finally got their answer after 782 days. Angus lives.

This is issue 50. A year of showing up every week, which in the context of these stories feels modest. But the pattern holds whether it’s 50 issues or 30 billion images: things compound when you keep at it.

Its all about The long game.

ART BASEL UBS REPORT

After two years of decline, the Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report shows the global art market edging back to $59.6 billion, up 4% year over year. The coverage is cautiously optimistic, a welcome shift from two straight years of contraction.

A lot of the recovery ink is about auctions. Marlene Dumas is now the highest-priced living female artist at $13.6 million, Frida Kahlo broke the women’s auction record at $54.7 million. It’s good to see living artists appreciated at scale. Female artists now make up 50% of primary market gallery rosters, parity achieved for the first time. But auctions are late-stage liquidity for art investors, an extremely niche slice of the market. Sarah Thornton documented the auction spectacle in Seven Days in the Art World. That hasn’t changed. Auctions are entertainment and liquidation events, not the only bellwether for market health.

What I find most positive isn’t at the top. It’s at the bottom. Smaller galleries with annual sales under $500K reported the strongest percentage growth of any tier. 66% of collectors bought from an artist new to them. 49% of dealer buyers were first-time buyers. Millennials and Gen Z now comprise over 50% of the buyer base, and half are buying via Instagram.

Dealers are selling more but to fewer unique buyers ( 57 per dealer, the lowest since 2021). The money is concentrating..

Despite the drumbeat of closure headlines last year, gallery openings (42%) outpaced closures (25%). It now feels more like legacy players bowing out, opening space for a new generation.

The challenge is infrastructure. Operating costs rose 5%, outpacing sales growth, and 38% of dealers reported lower profitability despite the recovery. Fairs now account for 35% of dealer revenue, an all-time high that reflects dependency more than opportunity. Galleries participate in an average of five fairs a year, not out of choice but necessity, paying $20,000+ per booth before shipping, dinners, and travel. Surveys show they fail to turn a profit at up to half the fairs they attend. The hamster wheel is expensive.

Alternative models are emerging. 7 Rue Froissart in Paris charged under $5,000 per exhibitor with free entry. Co-operative booths, revenue-share structures. The fair circuit is being quietly reimagined from the bottom up.

The art market is the epitome of the long game. Its cycles run adjacent to broader economic sentiment but never in lockstep

The most encouraging signal in this report isn’t the $59.6 billion headline. It’s that artist development is working. New galleries are opening, new collectors are discovering, and new models are replacing old ones.

‘HOME–HOME’ EXHIBITION IN JAPAN

An example of Niche counterweights to the big fairs, I love independent showcases like this. A genuine positive of our internet-driven era is that a small moment in a remote space outside Tokyo can still gain international exposure.

Home-Home, a 4-day exhibition curated by Brussels-based design studio Akasaki & Vanhuyse, placed work by 16 designers and artists inside a 1974 modernist house designed by Ren Suzuki, the last Japanese architect to work with Le Corbusier, in Chiba, Japan.

Everyday design objects in a rarely-opened private home, organized independently by designers rather than institutions. A refreshing counter-rhythm to the mega-fairs.

A calm, digestible design setting as we roll into the bigger activations like Salone del Mobile in Milan next month. For a comprehensive round up of notable fails see Wallpaper’s design fairs shaping 2026.

THE CINEMATIC QUALITY OF DUNE

Dune’s new trailer dropped, next year is going to be epic for cinephile, with Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey and Denis Villeneuve going head to head with opus films.

Dune 3 had super-fans concerned with Greig Fraser departing as DP, he lead the aesthetics on the first two films which in my opinion are some most powerful scenes in modern cinema (the opening of the second film is a 10/10).

From the shots in the trailer, Linus Sandgren stepped up to the plate, portraying Incomprehensible scale with jaw dropping visuals.

Take a moment to appreciate just the compositions of some of these shots.

MSCHF COW !!! LIVES

Angus lives.

Two years ago, Brooklyn art collective MSCHF bought a black calf, pre-sold him as 1,200 hamburgers and 4 leather handbags, and built a “Remorse Portal,” a mechanism for buyers to forfeit their purchase and save the cow’s life. If 50% of the voting interest cancelled, Angus would be spared. After 782 days and a dead heat that went down to the final 10 hours, 50.7% chose cancellation. Angus will live at a sanctuary.

The critical reception is split. ArtReview called it a “cash cow,” with only 15 website updates across 104 weeks and 2 Instagram posts about Angus versus 48 about other products. Art Newspaper said the project “failed to spark substantive dialogue,” with discourse devolving into rage-bait. Fair critiques of the execution. But they’re grading the communications strategy, not the concept.

The concept is airtight. You eat beef. Here’s a specific cow. Here’s his name. Here are his eyes. Now choose.

MSCHF has built a name for themselves with spot on commentary stunts, an ATM at Art Basel Miami that displayed your bank balance on a public leaderboard ($9.5 million topped the board). They cut up a $30,000 Damien Hirst spot painting and resold 88 individual spots at $480 each.

MSCHF’s model is the abstraction between consumer and consequence, products and moments tuned for virality. It’s led to a $200 million valuation and a creative agency arm called “Applied MSCHF” that former fans see as a sellout. The tension between cultural commentary and commercial viability is the actual MSCHF story. That story is reportedly expanding to film, with rumors of outside capital to fund a production slate and applying an A24-style model using marketing chops to push film IP into the cultural zeitgeist.

Angus will live while 899,999 other cows died the same day he was saved.

The only difference is they didn’t have a name.

NEW MUSIC: J-COLE & JAMES BLAKE

Two new albums getting heavy rotation from me right now

First, Trying Times from James Blake.

Blake’s albums pull you in, their haunting, melodic, sad, beautiful and then out of nowhere there’s a banger.

Trying times plays as beautiful background music, with ‘doesn’t just happen’ delivering on the more hype he can take it too. We’ve worked with Blake for years, initially via bookings like one of my favorite events we did with Macallan at the bass museum for Basel Miami where Blake performed with a full ballet group and we custom projection mapped the facade of the museum. Our relationship evolved into a multi year run of CMYK, an IP we co-produced bringing club nights to cities around the world adjacent to his tour, getting him back into the booth with a whole slew of cameos. Our night in London is a high note.

Second: J-cole’s “The Fall-Off”

This has been on repeat in my studio all weekend. I’ve been giving it full playthroughs’ which is rare in a single driven playlist world. It’s really growing on me. A lot of homages to classic 90’s hiphop storytelling, production slaps too.

LUXURY DESIGN - VIOLAINE ET JEREMY

While researching Belmond last week I was reintroduced to the work of Violaine et Jeremy, a Parisian design atelier I have long considered one of the best for luxury aesthetics. The work is rich, deeply leveraging hand illustration, materiality and custom typography. They now have a foundry with an extensive library of licensable fonts as well.

Their recent work for Belmond on Orient express lines is impeccable, the hand painted plates are worth stealing.

The world building for VNV pastry and chocolate shop in Taiwan is decadent

V&J’s body of work consists of the deeply crafted methodical expensive feeling projects that designers dream of.

STUDIO PRACTICE

Travel disrupts a critical part of my routine which is time in studio. After a month on the road, it was refreshing to get 3 days of painting in last week. I’m working on several pieces simultaneously right now, all heavily influenced by the inbound spring.

More of my process and painting practice on my studio site.

Spring Dream, #6.

Acrylic on wood.

18×24’

DRINKING DECLINE HITTING RESTAURANT REVENUE

I had dinner with a friend last week who told me it was the first time he’d had drinks outside his wife’s birthday in three months. I’m in about the same boat, I still drink but I’ve considerably reduced how frequently, primarily because I can’t justify the hangover and its effect over the next 2-3 days. 40’s a bitch. I have a lot of friends who prefer mushroom chocolates or gummies, equally social, equally fun, no hangover.

This isn’t fringe either: only 54% of Americans now drink, the lowest rate in 90 years of Gallup polling, down from 62% just two years ago. Those who do drink average 2.8 per week, down from 4.0.

Americans are drinking less and it’s hitting the restaurant industry where it hurts most. 31% of operators reported severe alcohol sales declines in 2025. Chang called it “the real existential threat,” his restaurants are down 18% on beverage sales.

Alcohol is the financial engine of hospitality: roughly 80% margins versus 60-70% on food. A restaurant typically sees 20-25% of its total revenue from alcohol, and a disproportionate share of profit. It doesn’t spoil, it’s easier to prepare, and it’s often half the bill. Many operators build business plans around a 60/40 alcohol-to-food split, when that slides to 30/70, the math breaks (NYT).

There’s only a 25% chance Gen Z orders a drink at a restaurant versus 50% for millennials. The drivers are stacking: a generational pivot from hard partying to hard optimization. GLP-1 medications reduce alcohol cravings. Cannabis is legal for 79% of the country, the alcohol industry knew it would reduce consumption which is why they lobbied so hard against it for so long.

Hospitality has to either find ways to get people to drink again, or adapt the whole model which was based on the assumption that people want to drink. A growing number of them just... don’t.

A bold and questionable statement from someone who funds hundreds of founders.

72% of entrepreneurs report mental health conditions. 30% experience depression. Sam Altman wrote about founder depression 12 years ago, the pressure to always say “we’re crushing it” when everything is falling apart. Brad Feld, co-founder of Techstars, blogged openly about a six-month depressive episode in 2013. Hundreds of entrepreneurs reached out to him privately. Many names you’d recognize. I remember reading it at the time and finding it helpful and refreshing to see someone speaking so openly about how lonely it can be.

There’s also the historical inaccuracy. Marcus Aurelius wrote the Meditations as a daily practice of self-examination. That’s not moaning. It’s considered one of the greatest works of philosophical thought, still read by millions.

Andreessen is confusing introspection with rumination. Rumination is getting stuck. Introspection is seeing clearly enough to move forward. To push a narrative of zero self-awareness from a position of enormous influence over young founders, I genuinely don’t understand what that accomplishes.

A GOOGLE UPDATE

I’ve been covering Anthropic so much over the past two months as it became such a dominant force in product launches and media attention. Then Google comes with a monster week and reminds everyone who the big dog is.

In the span of ten days: the largest acquisition in company history ($32B cash for cybersecurity firm Wiz), the biggest update to Google Maps in a decade (Ask Maps, powered by Gemini, with immersive 3D navigation), a free AI design platform called Stitch that dropped Figma’s stock 11%, and 30-second unskippable ads rolling out globally on YouTube connected TVs. All at once.

The Stitch play is the one worth sitting with.

Google coined a term for it: “vibe design,” super original. You describe what you want in plain language, it generates production-quality UI, has voice editing, interactive prototypes and Exports to Figma . It’s free.

They can afford to give it away just to onboard people. It’s how the whole Google ecosystem works. When you’re planning to spend $175 to $185 billion on infrastructure this year (nearly double last year’s $91B), a design tool is customer acquisition. Figma drops 11% on the release, not because Stitch is better, but because investors understand Google doesn’t need it to be profitable.

Then, YouTube goes the other direction. Their cash cow, with $40.4B in annual ad revenue, is replacing its two 15-second ad format with single 30-second unskippable spots on your TV. Testing 60-second spots in some markets. Give with one hand, take with the other.

The Wiz numbers are staggering on their own. Four co-founders in their early 40s, each walking away with roughly $3B. A $6.4M seed investment returning $1.3B (200x). 1,800 employees splitting $4.5B in equity and retention bonuses. The largest VC-backed exit in history.

When Nancy Pelosi is exercising Google call options and selling Apple, it’s usually worth paying attention to…

But don’t sleep on Apple. They’re playing a different game entirely, more like a landlord than a builder.

Google commits $185B this year, Meta plans $115 to $135B, OpenAI has $600B in compute commitments through 2032. Apple? Only $14B. Because Apple doesn’t need to build AI, it just needs to own the device(s) that delivers it.

GenAI apps paid Apple nearly $900 million in App Store fees last year, on pace to clear $1B this year. Three-quarters of that comes from ChatGPT. The 30% App Store tax means OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and xAI are all paying rent to Apple just to reach consumers. Add the $20B+ Google pays annually to be the default search engine in Safari, and Apple is generating more AI revenue from other people’s infrastructure than most companies generate from their own.

THE PENTAGON IS HIRING COVERAGE BANKERS.

Semafor reported that the DOD is building a 30-person “Economic Defense Unit” to deploy $200 billion over three years, recruiting directly from Goldman, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley.

The salary is a joke: $126K-$225K government pay vs. the $500K-$5M these bankers currently earn. But there are other draws. First, as Liz Hoffman put it on Prof G Markets, “This is a jaw-dropping amount of money and could be a very fun playground for Wall Street bankers.”

Then there’s the tax play. Under IRC Section 1043, government appointees can sell concentrated stock positions tax-free through a “certificate of divestiture,” deferring millions in capital gains. A two-year government stint doubles as a tax-efficient liquidity event.

Yahoo Finance has the headline: “The White House is Now a Hedge Fund.“ That tracks with this administration’s “art of the deal” approach, and could be the early stages of the sovereign wealth fund Trump planned with an executive order in February 2025.

Last year the government took a 9.9% stake in Intel for $8.9 billion. In January, a $1 billion direct equity stake in L3Harris, and the TikTok deal sent $10 billion to the U.S. Treasury. There is basket is a being built.

Whether governments can effectively pick winners and losers is contested. Obama’s DOE loaned $34 billion to clean-energy startups and the headlines were brutal: Solyndra ($535 million), Fisker ($529 million), and A123 Systems ($249 million) all went bankrupt and became political shorthand for government overreach. But the full portfolio turned a $30 million profit despite those losses. Tesla repaid its $465 million DOE loan nine years early.

Private money is running parallel. A16z launched a $1.2 billion American Dynamism fund backing Anduril (now raising at $60 billion), Hadrian (AI-driven precision manufacturing), and Base Power (distributed energy grid). It’s not all defense, it’s American infrastructure broadly.

Semafor’s Hoffman noted the government “probably has stakes in 12 or 15 private companies right now.” Between the $200 billion defense unit, direct equity stakes in American companies, and an inbound $10 billion brokerage fee, the sovereign wealth fund isn’t a question of if, but more what you call it.

TRAVIS KALANICK’S RETURN

Travis Kalanick went from off the grid to everywhere in the span of a week.

After eight years in stealth, building inside a company deliberately named “City Storage Systems” (the startup equivalent of putting a fake title on a blockbuster during production to avoid attention), Kalanick unveiled Atoms, a $15B robotics company spanning food automation, mining, and autonomous transport. It’s well capitalized, with $1.1 billion raised from Saudi PIF anchoring at $400 million and Kalanick injecting $150M of his own money. Employees were forbidden from listing the company on LinkedIn.

The reveal was orchestrated: TBPN, All-In Podcast alongside Michael Dell, Fortune, CNBC, and a 1,600-word manifesto. All in the same week.

Travis isn’t shying away from his trademark aggressive energy. His interview on TBPN has some strong points:

“If you’re doing something and it’s easy, it’s not valuable.”

Kalanick pulls no punches: “World class marathoner on mile 21. Is that dude smiling? No. If he is smiling, he’s about to get his ass whooped. Because somebody else who’s down for the pain will go harder and further and pass him.”

Kalanick’s return puts the founder takedown era back under the microscope. TBPN’s Jordi Hays made the point that Silicon Valley has felt the void after Travis’ departure and the subsequent era of founder takedowns. An Uber investor said publicly that Uber’s new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi “lacks the ruthlessness” of Kalanick. Has Silicon Valley gotten soft as a narrative formed that aggressive founders were the problem?

Travis was the poster child for founder takedowns. Back-to-back TV series skewering him and Adam Neumann dropped the same year (WeCrashed and Super Pumped, both 2022). But it wasn’t just him: Steph Korey at Away, Ty Haney at Outdoor Voices, Audrey Gelman at The Wing. Take Outdoor Voices: Haney was forced out in 2020, the brand’s valuation collapsed from $110 million to $40 million, they closed every store by 2024, and were headed for bankruptcy before a PE firm acquired it and brought Haney back to resurrect what she built.

Coincidentally, Adam Neumann went on Rick Rubin’s Tetragrammaton last week and is bringing Workflow, his new co-working company, to market.

The founder takedown era was supposed to be corrective. Did it produce better companies, or just safer ones?

LIVE NATION SETTLEMENT BACKLASH

That’s a Live Nation regional director named Ben Baker, in a Slack message about concert fans. Live Nation called him “one junior staffer,” but he’s now Head of Ticketing for Venue Nation overseeing 150+ venues. His colleague wrote: “These people are so stupid. I almost feel bad taking advantage of them.”

The messages were unsealed in court the same week Live Nation settled its antitrust case with the DOJ for $280 million, about 1.1% of the company’s $25.2 billion in 2025 revenue. The stock went up 6%. The settlement killed a trial that 40 state attorneys general had been building toward. 26+ of them are refusing to sign, and Baker was called as the states’ first witness this week.

What’s below the paywall:

What Live Nation’s settlement actually means for the concert experience. Plus Pokémon Go’s 30 billion images are now training delivery robots, a16z’s Top 100 AI consumer apps, Disney’s new CEO mic drop, and NASA’s go for launch.

This is issue 50. If you’ve been reading every week and getting value from this, a paid subscription is the best way to support the work. Many readers expense INTAKE as a professional resource, here’s a template for that.

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"At Belmond, your time is invested, not spent."

— Dan Ruff, CEO, Belmond

I’ve been thinking about what separates the businesses that compound from the ones that just grow.

The defining competitive move right now isn’t growth for growth’s sake, it’s entrenchment. The players with staying power aren’t the ones with the most options, they’re the ones holding positions that can’t be replicated at any price. Infrastructure nobody else could afford to build. Presence on frozen continents twenty years before the ice melts and the resources become worth fighting over.

Growth is a number. A moat is a position. Something that gets harder to dislodge the longer you hold it. Heritage. Infrastructure. Territory.

The most instructive story this week isn’t about who built the biggest moat. It’s about who built one and then walked away from it.

Every big story this week is some version of that play:

Belmond’s CEO has stripped growth targets entirely, running 47 properties on excellence metrics instead of expansion. SpaceX files for the largest IPO in history at $1.75 trillion, built on 20 years of launch infrastructure controlling 80-90% of global capacity. China announces its sixth Antarctic research station, staking territorial claims on a frozen continent before the treaty governing it comes up for review in 2048. Anthropic built the government AI moat first, then vacated it on principle, handing OpenAI the position. Zuckerberg drops $170M on Billionaire Bunker Island. Ben Affleck sold Netflix a filmmaking AI company he’d been building in stealth since 2022. New York moves to ban LLMs from legal advice. Robinhood launches a platinum card and discovers why AmEx has a 97.5% retention rate.

DESIRABILITY OVER GROWTH

That’s Dan Ruff, CEO of Belmond, running what might be the most enviable playbook in hospitality.

Since LVMH took Belmond private for $3.2 billion in 2019, the world’s largest luxury conglomerate has effectively told its hotel arm to slow down. The result is a strategy built around excellence metrics instead of expansion. Possible only because LVMH doesn’t need Belmond to be profitable at scale, and because Belmond owns nearly all of its 47 properties across 28 countries outright. Both matter: the ownership model means no franchisee pressure to cut corners, and the conglomerate model means Dior spas and Louis Vuitton cafes at Belmond properties generate value as showrooms across LVMH’s portfolio. Things independent hotels simply can’t replicate.

“Slow luxury” is a long game, as Ruff defines it, “is not about speed, and it’s not about the length of time. It’s about the quality of time.”

In practice, that means renovating the Hotel Cipriani (Peter Marino redesign, with a Dior Spa opening this spring) over multiple off-seasons, so the property never closes on guests who’ve been returning for decades. It’s considerably more expensive but the relationship preservation is crucial.

The business case backs the philosophy. The Bain-Altagamma 2025 study shows hospitality accounting for ALL net market growth in luxury since 2023, while personal goods are forecast to contract 2–5% this year. About 50 million aspirational consumers have exited the market over the past two years, the tier that was propping up the goods business. The people still spending are spending on time, not things.

McKinsey projects global luxury accommodation growing from $240 billion in 2023 to $390 billion by 2028. Belmond is structurally built for exactly this world.

That world is timeless and in many cases one-of-one. The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express runs carriages built in the 1920s and 30s. The Copacabana feels as storied today as when it opened in over 100 years ago and The Mount Nelson in Cape Town has been pink since 1918 (it has its own Pantone shade). You can’t build that, you can only inherit it.

“At Belmond, your time is invested, not spent.”

MATTER & SHAPE

Matter and Shape returns to the Jardin des Tuileries for a third year, smartly overlapping with paris fashion week.

Dan Thawley and founder Matthieu Pinet oversee curation of the design salon which is a more bespoke experience than larger fairs. Two tightly curated pavilions mixing emerging studios with established contemporary design houses.

Standouts this year: Byredo scent vessels and overarching partnership, A program of talks curated by Monocle, This Agreement, a group exhibition by @espaceaygo , @nicolas.zanoni , and @isbn.billy.

MATTE’S CREATIVE SHARE-BACKS

Bi-weekly, our entire creative team meets for the sole purpose of sharing cool shit we’re seeing. From talent we want to be working with, to campaigns we respect, openings, albums and interesting things across the creative spectrum. The team keeps me fresh, it’s my favorite meeting of the week.

Two standouts from this week;

MATTHIAS LEIDINGER.

Austrian photographer working between Berlin, Paris and Vienna.

ELEVATOR MUSIC

They run a party outside this studio set, then bring different people in for the live stream portion of it. Lot Radio, Colors, Boiler Room vibes, with a cool angle. Getting good talent as well.

MAXWELL GRAHAM | HANS HAACKE AND LOUISE LAWLER

Louise Lawler | Before/During/After (Green), 2024/2025

A Timely recontextualization of Jacques-Louis David’s masterpiece The Death of Marat (1793), painted during the French Revolution. A take on political martyrdom in artwork on display at Maxwell Graham’s latest exhibition of works by the artist alongside Hans Haacke.

Exhibit runs March 5 - Apr 18, 2026

Maxwell Graham | 55 Hester Street New York, NY 10002

PACE PUBLISHING

Often overlooked, but a great point of access to art in the form of books, Pace publishing is one of the longest standing gallery imprints. A great source for art books, with constant releases. A small taste;

Agnes Martin - On Beauty. A collection writings by the artist centered around the theme of beauty. Martin’s work highly influences my own, primarily her exploration of color and design, and their relationship with painting.

Calder - Un effet du japonais. Japanese posters, covers, and publications always just LOOK better. Focused on Calder’s first exhibition in Tokyo in nearly 35 years.

Adam Pendleton: An Abstraction. The Artists first solo show at Pace’s New York gallery in ten years.

EDITO TYPE

One of our Art directors just put me on to Edito Type, an independent Paris-based foundry.

Circa stands out, as does Moca. The foundry currently has 3 fonts online, but do commissions and custom type work as well as merchandise.

STUDIO PRACTICE

Recent works, studies in blue.

More of my process and painting practice on my studio site.

THE STANZA’S EVOLUTION

Nadine Choe’s The Stanza was one of my favorite additions to my media diet last year. She covers hospitality from an investor’s lens drawing from a decade of experience in real estate private equity. Choe pulls guests you won’t find on a standard travel podcast. For an entry point, start with her conversation with Ian Schrager.

Choe isn’t reviewing hotels; last year she analyzed why Soho House’s membership model works (or doesn’t), what makes the Standard’s brand positioning distinct, why Flyfish Club’s blockchain play matters. As someone working tertiary to hospitality I find her podcasts uniquely focused on the business and I was equally impressed with the caliber of her guests.

Her new season, focused on the business side of hospitality, is teasing right as Substack officially launches its TV app on Apple TV and Google TV. The timing is either perfect or coincidental. Substack is making a major push into Video with 82% of Substack’s top 250 creators now using audio and video, up from 50% a year prior.

Choe may be well positioned here, she already has 91.5K TikTok followers and podcasts, so she’s not starting from zero on video.

At the same time I hope she continues to focus on long form writing and podcasts.

This andreessen comment on his current media diet is spot on. Showing the evolving role of AI in daily workflows, the role podcasts play in todays information flow and the premium on high-value information sources.

BEN AFFLECKS AI ACQUISITION

A week after walking away from Paramount, Netflix announced a very different acquisition, on March 5, the acquisition of InterPositive, Ben Affleck’s AI filmmaking company, along with its entire 16-person team. Deal terms were undisclosed. The same week, Artists Equity (his production company with Matt Damon) signed a multi-year first-look streaming deal with Netflix.

Affleck had been building in stealth since 2022. Before ChatGPT launched publicly. Before the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. He didn’t mention the company publicly until the morning of the sale, when he released a video and joint statement with Netflix.

In the video Ben speaks of being exposed to early precursors of AI and its profound effects on VFX which scared him, leading to him wanting to shape this technology rather than ‘letting it happen to him’.

InterPositive is not generative AI. It works with footage you’ve already shot, wire removal, relighting, reframing, continuity fixes, trained on proprietary datasets from controlled production environments.

While his ownership of an AI company was a complete surprise, if you were paying attention Ben has shown prolific understanding of the tech. His public statements over the past two years now read like a thesis defense for what he was building.

At the 2024 DealBook summit:

On Joe Rogan in January he demonstrates deep technical understanding explaining AI better than people expected: “If you try to get ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini to write you something, it’s really sh***y, because by its nature it goes to the mean, to the average.” He was narrating the problem he was already solving.

The acquisition gives Netflix proprietary production tools no other streamer can offer its creative partners. For context on scale: post-production accounts for 20-40% of film budgets. Netflix spends $20 billion annually on content. Even a modest efficiency gain across that spend is substantial.

The broader Hollywood response is landing on very different sides.

In the same week, Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity, Edge of Tomorrow, Mr. & Mrs. Smith) announced he is shooting Killing Satoshi starring Pete Davidson and Casey Affleck with zero physical locations, all AI-generated environments. Casting notice disclosed producers reserve the right to “change, add to, take from, translate, reformat or reprocess” performances using generative AI, including adjustments to lip, facial, and body movements. These new contract terms mean actors and crew who refuse AI terms may not get hired.

James Cameron has been threading this needle publicly, calling AI essential for “cutting VFX costs in half” while insisting this means “doubling speed, not laying off half the staff.” His position shifted harder in November: “They can make up an actor... that’s the opposite of what we’re doing.”

Avatar 3: Fire and Ash will open with a title card stating no generative AI was used in its making.

SAG-AFTRA’s theatrical contract expires June 30. AI is the central negotiating point. IATSE formally declined to comment to NPR on the InterPositive deal, their members, colorists, VFX artists, editors, are the most directly exposed. Industry projections put over 118,500 entertainment jobs at potential AI displacement risk.

Affleck’s status in the industry carries extra weight, he’s trying his best to advocate for the responsible use of AI as an enhancer not replacer, his tools build on filmmakers proprietary materials.

The question his audience in Hollywood is now sitting with: was he the one shaping it, or did he just shape the narrative around selling it?

SPACEX IPO NEXT MONTH

SpaceX filed confidential IPO paperwork with the SEC, targeting a $1.75 trillion valuation, the largest IPO in history. The filing comes one month after SpaceX completed the largest private acquisition ever, absorbing xAI for $250 billion in an all-stock deal that valued the combined entity at $1.25 trillion. SpaceX was at $800 billion on the secondary market in December 2025. That’s a 119% valuation increase in 90 days.

Musk has reportedly timed it to coincide with the alignment of the stars.

SpaceX and OpenAI IPO’s are going to be wild valuations next year.

This is a case study in narrative-driven valuation. At $1.75 trillion, SpaceX carries a 62-97x revenue multiple, an extraordinary number for a hardware company that blows up rockets, merged with an AI business that incinerated $9.5 billion in nine months on $250 million in revenue.

For context, Legacy aerospace trades at 1.5-3x sales. We’ve entered a new era where valuation is a narrative exercise detached from financial gravity, but it’s also an unprecedented frontier. SpaceX has a considerable moat in the complex business of space. 80 or 90% of launch capability now is controlled by one company, and Starlink, the primary driver of value with 10 million subscribers as of February 2026, controls nearly two-thirds of all active satellites in orbit.

Investors anticipate that a public SpaceX would provide a capital safety net to supercharge xAI’s growth in a market where it trails OpenAI & Google.

This IPO is the beginning of consolidation of Musk’s empire into a single tradable instrument (if tesla roll up rumors come to fruition), and a level of vertical integration not seen since Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. Bloomberg reported in January that Musk weighed merging SpaceX with Tesla before choosing xAI instead, but the door isn’t closed. Tesla put $2 billion into xAI and signed a collaboration agreement that lets Musk move capital and technology between his companies without triggering the regulatory scrutiny that a formal merger would. Wedbush’s Dan Ives gives it 12-18 months before Tesla gets folded in.

Musk controls 42% of SpaceX but only 18% of Tesla, which means any merger between his own companies will favor the one where he has more skin in the game.

Bloomberg estimates the IPO would push Musk’s net worth to $950 billion. Kalshi gives 64% odds he becomes a trillionaire by 2027.

The part most financial coverage is skipping.

The valuation assumes SpaceX’s dominance is permanent. But we’re in the early stages of a three-way moon race between SpaceX, Blue Origin, and China and the one dimension where Bezos can actually catch Musk is the one that matters most right now. Starship can’t refuel in orbit yet, and getting to the moon requires at least 12 tanker flights in rapid succession, a maneuver never attempted at this scale. Blue Origin’s lander doesn’t need orbital refueling at all. It flies straight to the moon on a single launch.

Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp told Bloomberg the company will “move heaven and Earth” to beat SpaceX to the lunar surface, then paused space tourism, redeployed engineers, and bought SpaceX’s old Starship prototype factory in Cocoa, Florida for $11.5 million.

Bezos responded to Musk’s flurry of “pivot to the moon” posts with a black-and-white photo of a tortoise, a reference to Blue Origin’s motto, Gradatim Ferociter:

Step by step, ferociously.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman restructured the entire Artemis program on February 27, pushing crewed moon landings to 2028 at the earliest, and made the competition explicit:

“I don’t think it was lost on either one of those organizations that the first company that is capable of delivering a lander to take American astronauts to the lunar surface and back is the one that this nation is going to go with.”

Then there’s China. Beijing has been executing a single lunar program (Project 921) since 1992, while NASA restarts every time a new president takes office. China’s crewed landing target is 2030, Artemis is now 2028 at the earliest, but the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel said the timeline lacks “proper margin of safety.” Experts told the Senate that America is in real danger of losing this race.

At $1.75 trillion, you’re not buying SpaceX’s revenue, you’re buying its position. The question is whether the position holds. The moon race is the first real test of that in a decade.

A public SpaceX with quarterly earnings calls runs a different kind of organization than the one that built the moat.

Continue reading: Zuckerberg's $170M move to Billionaire Bunker Island, and why the sellers are the more interesting story. New York's move to ban AI legal advice, and the class issue hiding underneath it. Robinhood's first move into the premium card market and what it reveals about what a real moat looks like. The full Anthropic-Pentagon timeline, how Claude went from a $200M classified contract to a national security blacklist in eight months, and what Anthropic's two conditions actually were. And why China's newest Antarctic research station is also, something else entirely.

If you’d like a free subscription, feel free to reach out on why, I’ll most likely be happy to oblige. Many readers expense INTAKE as a professional resource. Here's a template if that's helpful.

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“Silver shines just as bright”

- Team Canada

The Subtraction Economy

Everything this week is about removal.

I showed up to the Wang Foundation opening at 6:30 on the dot, and for two hours I thought it was a social experiment. A bunch of people wearing all black milling around a landmarked bank in Chinatown, waiting for something that wasn’t coming. Then there was a children’s choir, hauntingly beautiful, and then thousands of paper planes fell from the ceiling.

Something about that sequence stayed with me all week. The restraint before the release. Because everything I kept coming back to this week had the same shape:

Soho House dropping members to remember what it was. Bon Iver curating an archive down to “this is really us at our best.” Netflix walking from a deal because the math stopped working. Dorsey cutting 40% of Block and the stock jumping 24%. Michael Heizer spending fifty years on one piece. In an era where AI can generate a hundred podcast episodes in two weeks, embrace the opposite instinct of knowing what to cut, what to keep, and when to stop adding.

WANG FOUNDATION

Last Thursday, thousands of paper planes fell from the ceiling of a landmarked bank in Chinatown for the opening ceremony of the new Wang Contemporary. I made the mistake of showing up to the opening party at 6:30 on the dot, and for the first two hours I thought it was a social experiment because nothing happened beyond a bunch of people wearing all black milling around a room.

This would have been a very MSCHF thing to do. Then there was a children’s choir, singing hauntingly beautiful renditions of ‘Forever young’ ‘Nevermind’ and K-pop demon hunters as a prelude. Alexander Wang and his mother gave brief remarks, the room sang her happy birthday, and then finally we got the planes.

The inaugural commission by MSCHF, titled 20,000 Variations On A Paper Plane In Flight, ran on the hour for three days following the opening.

The Wangs’ bought the building last summer for $9.5 million in cash, which honestly is an amazing deal for a bank the size of a block in New York City.

As the founders put it, a “home for Asian creativity, one that belongs to the community”

Renowned branding studio Pentagram developed Identity and font systems for the foundation.

Located at 58 Bowery in New York City’s Chinatown.

SOHO FARMHOUSE RHINEBECK

This is one long build. Roughly ten years after initial rumors, Soho Farmhouse New York cleared its final planning hurdle on February 17, when the Town of Rhinebeck signed off on the Grasmere Estate project, clearing the way for building permits and construction.

What Soho house does exceptionally well, is build. Say what you will about overcrowding, membership quality, and service, the group excels at incredible design and construction quality. Oxfordshire Farmhouse is stunning, Babington House redefined what a countryside members’ club could be.

The Rhinebeck project, restoring a 19th-century estate on 250 acres, will certainly be beautiful, with plans to restore and rehabilitate three historic buildings on the property: a manor house, the main barn, and a carriage house.

This project will significantly help with the brand’s redemption arc globally but specifically in New York. Coinciding with a new flatiron property and overhaul of the original meatpacking location.

Soho House doesn’t have a design problem. It has a discipline problem.

The brand ballooned from roughly 156,000 to 260,000 total members between late 2021 and late 2023 in a post-COVID surge that stretched the meaning of "members' club." The fix has been aggressive subtraction: a $2.7 billion privatization that closed in January, a membership freeze in London, New York, and LA, and now quietly trimming membership rolls, dropping hundreds of members at marquee U.S. locations who no longer fit the creative profile. This has precedent. In 2010, Nick Jones culled hundreds of "corporate types" from the Manhattan house, telling the Post he was "trying to get the club back to its creative roots."

The farm gives people a reason to rethink their relationship with the house. So will the Flatiron property, set to become the brand’s largest NYC House when construction begins in 2027, alongside a full bedroom refurbishment and new social wellness space at the original Meatpacking location this year.

Those who bought upstate on rumors, or who were early to Rhinebeck, will welcome the boost in property value and incoming hospitality options. But not everyone is pleased. Rhinebeck is becoming ground zero for a broader Hudson Valley debate about luxury resort development. A $200M Six Senses project on 236 acres in neighboring Clinton and Hyde Park has triggered lawsuits between towns, with 400+ petition signatures opposing.

LOEWE 2026 CRAFT PRIZE FINALISTS

National Gallery Singapore will showcase the works by this years finalists of the Loewe Craft Prize. 30 artisans have been selected for one-off works of modern craft from over 5,000 global submissions with a €50,000 prize on the line.

Loewe also just low key dropped a nicely executed new monogram logo.

Often legacy brands fumble a re-brand, this ones simple, subtle, chic.

BON IVER VOLUMES

Sadly on extended hiatus from live performance or new music, the best we have from Justin Vernon will be in the form of archive curation. Bon Iver digs into the crates, pulling forth some of their more experimental music, covers and what Justin considers some of their more pinnacle performances.

Volume 1 - April 3rd

Tracklist:

INTRO – The Forum, Los Angeles, CA. Sep 15 2019

MAN LIKE U – The Forum, Los Angeles, CA. Sep 15 2019

WE (feat. Bizhiki) – Xcel Energy Center, St Paul, MN. Oct 03 2019

JELMORE – Tennis Indoor Senayan, Jakarta, ID. Jan 19 2020

666 – The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory, Irving, TX. Apr 03 2022

HEAVENLY FATHER – Mediolanum, Milan, IT. Nov 05 2022

P.D.L.I.F. – Red Hill Auditorium, Perth, AU. Feb 26 2023

HEY, MA – Pitchfork Music Festival, Chicago, IL. July 23 2023

A SATISFIED MIND – State Theatre, Portland, ME. Dec 08 2017

33 “GOD” – WOMADelaide Festival, Adelaide, AU. Mar 10 2023

Sh’DIAH (boardmix) – Scotiabank Arena, Toronto, CA. Oct 06 2019

MICHAEL HEIZER’S NEW SHOW

My favorite structural artist, a figure of the ‘land art movement’ has a new show, Negative Sculpture at Gagosian.

Famous for “City,” which he spent half-century building. Heizer, like Christo, or Terrell, takes on wildly ambitious land art projects massive in scale.

For City, it required buying over 2,000 acres of land in Garden Valley, Nevada which took decades and cost an estimated $40 million. The reclusive artist recently gave a rare interview to T magazine.

What Adidas popped up in the New Mexico desert last year, Heizer coded.

What Kanye was building in Cody, heavily influenced by Heizer. I’d watch bulldozers endlessly building mounds, excavating queries in this similar reconstruction of rubble.

Negative Sculpture

February 10–March 28, 2026

West 21st Street, New York

GORILLAZ ARE BACK

Just dropped The Mountain, the band’s ninth studio album.

A completely hand-drawn film “The Mountain, The Moon Cave and The Sad God” produced by The Line premiered alongside . For decades the world build has been critical to the Gorillaz experience, with animation being a central component.

ADIDAS’S STACKED NEW CAMPAIGN

A week after teasing the spring superstar campaign with a second act from Samuel L Jackson, Adidas just dropped the full cast and its STACKED.

Blackpink’s Jennie, Kendall Jenner, Baby Keem, James Harden, skateboarder Tyshawn Jones, Olivia Dean and Lamine Yamal all star in ‘Hotel Superstar’.

Thibaut Grevet returns to direct, he’s on a generational run now fresh off his @NYCballet exhibition at Lincoln Center.

DEMNA’S FIRST GUCCI SET

Following his opening act last season supplementing a traditional show with a short film, Demna’s first set and true presentation in Milan came out with a strong mix of heritage and brutalist modernity (Wallpaper).

Inspired from a recent sojourn to the Uffizi galleries in Florence, the birthplace of Gucci, Demna is pulling historical references into an extremely clean, modern, sharp aesthetic.

A spartan, marble-clad room, replica sculptures from the Uffizi, and incredible lighting design in this gray blue to amber tonality, take me to Bladerunner 2025 and dune.

The models embraced a satirical take on spun out 90’s afterparty chic, style sheets titled ‘SUPER SEXY PARTY GIRL’.

Kate Moss’s single solo long walk close out, 30 years after her last Gucci show was badass.

MARC BY SOFIA TRAILER

The Marc by Sofia trailer dropped, this is a fun one personally as a lot of our runway and backstage footage was used in the film. Excited to see the final product.

RELEASE DATE: March 27
DIRECTOR: Sofia Coppola

MY STUDIO PRACTICE

Overture

36x48 | Oil, Gesso & Acrylic on wood.

2026

More of my process and painting practice on my studio site.

BLOCK RIF

Jack Dorsey announced that Block is cutting more than 4,000 employees, roughly 40% of its 10,205-person workforce, in what's being positioned as the first major AI-driven restructuring in corporate America. The stock jumped 24% in after-hours trading. Dorsey accompanied the move with a shareholder letter pegging the cuts squarely to AI transformation:

“We’re not making this decision because we’re in trouble. Our business is strong. Gross profit continues to grow… But something has changed. We’re already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company…

Within the next year, I believe the majority of companies will reach the same conclusion and make similar structural changes. I don’t think we’re early to this realization. I think most companies are late.”

— Jack Dorsey

On X, he distilled it further: “100 people + AI = 1,000 people.”

Some are calling it a canary in the coal mine. Others are calling it AI washing, calling BS, pegging this more to mismanagement.

Five months ago, Block threw a three-day company event in Oakland called “Block by Block,” flying in 8,000 employees with performances from Jay-Z, Anderson .Paak, T-Pain, and Soulja Boy. The cost? According to their earnings report: “General and administrative expenses increased by $68.1 million… primarily driven by an in-person company event held in Q3 2025.” Sixty-eight million dollars on a party, then half the guest list gets cut.

Continue reading: why “AI restructuring” is the most convenient wrapper in corporate America, and what happens when every underperforming CEO sees a 24% stock bounce for cutting half the company. Plus: Netflix pockets a $2.8 billion breakup fee while the Ellison family consolidates CNN, CBS, and HBO under one roof. Why Figma — down 80% from its post-IPO high — might be the most interesting counter-bet in the SaaS wreckage. A vibe-coded podcast hit 1 million downloads with zero journalism experience. The dumb devices movement. Ring’s Super Bowl ad accidentally revealed a nationwide surveillance network. And why data centers should look at Copenhagen before building another concrete box.

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Last week an essay penned by Matt Schumer (an AI ‘OG’) on the incoming tidal wave of knowledge disruption got 70 million views in 48 hours. By midweek, mainstream business podcasts were dedicating whole segments to its contents. The essay draws a comparison to the early weeks of Covid: we’re in the “this seems overblown” phase, and the gap between public perception and current reality is enormous.

As research, analysis, and complex tasks become automated or augmented by technology, a different kind of value emerges. Call it “Intel.” Sources of information NOT easily accessible, whether that’s a company’s proprietary materials, on-the-ground access, or simply the ability to verify what’s real versus what’s generated.

This week’s dispatch runs from Jony Ive’s tactile Ferrari interiors to the white-collar job squeeze hiding behind positive headlines, from Olympic photography pushing cinematic boundaries to Anthropic’s $380 billion valuation, subsequent Pentagon fallout, and Clawdbot fumble that handed OpenAI a gift. SpaceX pivoting to the Moon. Prediction markets 10x’d Vegas during the Super Bowl, but the insider trading is rampant.

Margiela just opened its development archives to the public, flipping the script on an industry that typically hides and controls processes.

Bill Gurley’s advice to founders comes down to one thing: learn a field to an exhaustive level, because surface knowledge is about to be free.

Matt Shumer’s essay on AI disruption hit 80 million views this week. The comparison he’s drawing to the early days of Covid is uncomfortable, and the two cohorts — those using these tools daily and those who tried them a year ago and moved on — are diverging fast.

We have accelerated news cycles that are often found false, the proliferation of AI-generated images and realistic video, this next phase will include a lot of difficult-to-discern truth.

What can you learn that’s not readily accessible? What is REAL?

MARGIELA ARCHIVES

Taking a play from the Virgil exhibit at centre Pompidou last year “The codes”

Titled “Maison Margiela Folders,” the house has opened an archive, surrounding the work tied to the upcoming Fall Winter 2026 show in Shanghai. Planning decks. Development materials, bts, sketches, everything.

Most houses guard the ‘process’ and are incredibly protective of work like this, this is radical transparency and will result in a ton of earned media.

ABRI MARS / 2 WATERS

A thirty-year survey of ink paintings by Eric Wolf.

I love the aesthetic of Sumi ink, the way it interacts with water, the constraint of a single medium.

Eric Wolf (b 1960) paints between Chatham, New York, and Rangeley, Maine. I grew up going to Rangeley lakes region every summer, its raw, northern, moose country, hundreds of lakes dotted with islands.

Opening Reception → 20 Feb 2026, 6pm–8pm

ABRI MARS | 53a Stanton Street New York

FERRARI EV

Ferrari’s first all-electric car has a name, Luce, Italian for “light.”

The most significant design collaboration in the automotive industry in years. Jony Ive and Marc Newson’s LoveFrom spent five years on the car’s design, what they’ve produced is predictably polarizing. It is cool to see some of Ive’s first product impacts post apple coming to market.

What works: the commitment to tactile controls. The past several years of EV interior design have pushed us toward fully digital interfaces, giant touchscreens that killed muscle memory and buried something as basic as volume. A CNC-machined aluminum steering wheel with mechanical dials, physical toggles for climate, over 40 pieces of Glass instead of the industry’s plastic-heavy material palette.

There is the e-ink key gimmick, slide it into a magnetized dock and its yellow glow visually “drains” into the shifter. An evolution of push-to-start.

Where it gets complicated: the internet hasn’t physically sat in this car, and the photos alone have ignited a real debate. Ferrari cabins used to feel slightly unhinged. This one feels like it was designed in Cupertino, which, functionally, it was. People in the design community are calling it “soulless” and “utterly inappropriate for a Ferrari.”

My main beef is Ive just keeps copping Dieter Rams, he can’t move off the Braun interface!

Evo’s review made an interesting counterpoint: designs that provoke immediate backlash often age better than ones that are unanimously accepted.

At €500,000+, the Luce isn’t competing with Model S or Taycan. It’s competing with the idea that an electric Ferrari can still feel like a Ferrari.

SERVICES GÉNÉRAUX | “SISYPHE”

This roll out is really fresh. A hardbound book, a short film.

The book tells the story as SG put it:

Sisyphus (SG) bringing the boulder (the film) up the hill (existence).

I admire any agency’s truly artistic output like this, first hand I know how hard it is to prioritize non commercial work against revenue driving clients. Things like this are self funded, and HARD to fit in.

FEB 17th | 7pm

PUBLIC RECORDS

233 Butler Street

Brooklyn NYC

OLYMPIC AESTHETIC

This year’s aesthetic output around the games is hitting a high mark.

Lots of talk about drones, revolutionizing high speed coverage, bringing us closer to action than ever before. I’m also looking at some of the photographers putting out the most artistic, stylized, editorial content.

Stand outs:

Win Tam’s editorial of team China’s uniforms for Vogue China

Florence Pernet’s coverage feels like art.

Isami Kiyooka, at 21, is one of the youngest photographers to officially cover the Olympics. I worked with him in Aspen for Moncler, he was leaving for Cortina the next day. His images are cinematic, seeing him in action he’s capturing at speed, from distance, is hard and impressive. The way he’s editing, finding these incredibly artful compositions then his grades elevate to a whole new level.

This is not to say the Olympics has not seen cinematic mastery in the past.

For a masterclass, look to Kon Ichikawa’s Tokyo Olympiad 1965 (Criterion collection).

Perhaps one of the greatest sports films ever made. I was exposed to this the first time I met Kanye, he had it looping on a massive wall in his barn in Cody, with Led Zeppelin playing over it.

PREDICTION MARKETS 10x’d VEGAS

$1.34 billion in a single day. That’s what prediction markets processed on Super Bowl Sunday. Kalshi at $871 million, Polymarket at $312 million across 7.5 million transactions. To put that in perspective, the entire prediction market industry did $2 billion for the full month of August 2025.

The topic now shifts to insider trading, it is the wild west and the line between sharp trading and outright cheating is getting blurry fast. These markets move too fast for typical regulation.

A day-old anonymous Polymarket account correctly predicted 17 out of 20 bets for $17k profit on Bad Bunny’s halftime show, including that Lady Gaga, Cardi B, and Ricky Martin would perform, and that Drake, Travis Scott, and Post Malone would not. This led to a WSJ piece on insider trading concerns. Polymarket didn’t respond to comment.

“Outsider trading” This year, a TikToker named Cadeon Booth flew to San Francisco, camped outside Levi’s Stadium with a listening device and a stopwatch, timed Charlie Puth’s national anthem rehearsal at 1:44, and bet the under on Polymarket. He won. His defense: he wasn’t part of the production and stood where any civilian could have.

“A Super Bowl halftime show insider has been confirmed, and he still lost money.” Rapper Preme, a longtime Drake associate, created a Polymarket account the day before the Super Bowl and bet $185,000 that neither Cardi B nor Drake would perform. He won the Drake bet (pocketing ~$200). But Cardi B showed up on the halftime stage and danced without singing and Polymarket ruled dancing counts as performing. Preme lost $178K on a technicality. He posted an angry complaint on X, then deleted it.

Then there’s the real thing. Israeli authorities indicted an IDF reservist and a civilian for using classified military intelligence to place bets on Polymarket, specifically around the timing of Israeli strikes on Iran during last June’s twelve-day war. One account, operating under the handle ricosuave666, made seven eerily accurate predictions and walked away with over $150,000. The IDF called it a “severe ethical failure.” That’s putting it mildly when you’re monetizing airstrike intelligence on a crypto betting platform.

And this isn’t isolated. In January, an anonymous Polymarket account turned $32,000 into over $400,000 betting on the capture of Nicolás Maduro, hours before the U.S. raid became public. The account was a week old. Its only activity was Venezuela-related.

The CFTC? Still figuring out its jurisdiction.

BILL GURLY ON TETRA

Rick Rubin’s Tetragrammaton continues to be one of the best long-form interview pods out there, and this week’s episode with Bill Gurley is essential listening for anyone thinking about career, venture, or chasing the thing you actually want to do with your life.

Gurley is a legendary general partner at Benchmark (backed Uber, Zillow, Grubhub, OpenTable). Writes one of the best blogs in tech, Above the Crowd. His 2023 All-In Summit talk, 2,851 Miles, is a 25-minute breakdown of how regulatory capture kills innovation across healthcare, telecom, and housing. It got a standing ovation.

What makes this Rubin conversation stand out is how much of it isn’t about venture at all. Rubin asks innocent questions that keep things relevant to a wider audience.

Gurley came from Wall Street, a sell-side analyst trained in the conservatism of Buffett and Howard Marks. He’s more uncomfortable in bubbles than dark days. Dark days, the job is easy. Bubbles, the way you win is by being more careless, which reinforces the whole thing.

Worth sitting with right now.

Missing Google, Spotting Twitter

Gurley brought Larry Page and Sergey Brin into Benchmark when Google was 25 employees. They passed. The search market had collapsed, Yahoo had fallen from 80 to 10, both founders insisted on being CEO. Every mental model he’d built pointed the other way. He’s called it the biggest miss of his career. He was the one who found them, brought them in, and still couldn’t see past his own pattern recognition.

Twitter was the opposite. The viral growth was there and everyone just knew. He doesn’t think they even formally voted. Pattern recognition working in the right way.

Benchmark operates unlike any other major firm: equal partnership, everyone makes the same money, majority vote wins. Healthy peer pressure, if you’re not running full bore, maybe you should opt out. Which is ultimately why Gurley stepped back.

The AI Bubble

Gurley is blunt: there is almost certainly an AI bubble, and it’s like nothing he’s ever seen. When Amazon was losing a billion a year, that was crazy. OpenAI’s burn rate is five times that. Everyone is reading the same shit, investing ahead of the curve, and every interesting AI category might require willingness to lose a billion a year just to compete.

Our current fear of AI is tied to a constant fear of innovation going back to the looms. It’s just happening faster than ever before, and for the first time affecting white-collar jobs, not those in the fields, it’s affecting the people writing the articles.

What he looks for

Gurley once asked Bezos why he was such a good angel investor. Bezos said he only looks for one thing: Is this person going to do this no matter what? Whether anyone gives them money or not. Unbridled determinism.

He says you learn to bet on the person more than the idea. There's a small percentage of the population capable of bending the earth to their will. Even on the wrong idea, they can pivot. The skill set is speed, vision, and salesmanship. He pointed to Adam Neumann's original WeWork pitch. After one meeting, Gurley was nearly certain he wanted to do the deal, in an industry Benchmark had never touched, almost entirely because of how effective Neumann was as a salesman.

A core thread of Gurley's new book, Runnin' Down a Dream: the desire to study a field to an exhaustive level. He was reading biographies of Bobby Knight, Bob Dylan, and Danny Meyer, and realized they all had a remarkably similar strategy despite being in completely different fields. They went after dreams, dreams most people tell you not to pursue.

He gave it as a speech at UT Austin. James Clear found it and tweeted everyone should watch it. Then Brian Koppelman told him point blank: you have to make this a book.

Seinfeld's concept of fascination over passion anchors a key idea. The desire to learn about a field exhaustively, and for that to feel rewarding. If studying the greats in your field sounds boring, you're probably in the wrong one.

He recommends finding four or five peers (maybe competitors, maybe not) and meeting quarterly. Share without concern. Encourage your direct reports to do the same within their peer group.

One more: stay interested in ideas that challenge your worldview. It’s good for society, and it’s good for avoiding your own blind spots.

Research for the book found six in ten adults would choose a different career if they could start over. Gurley’s hope is to disinhibit as many people as possible.

This is a rare VC conversation without the self-mythology.

What’s below the paywall:

The jobs report that isn’t what it seems. 2.1 million positions revised away and why healthcare is masking a white-collar collapse, California’s billionaire exodus as Zuckerberg joins Page, Brin, and Thiel on the way out, Matt Shumer’s 80-million-view essay on why we’re in AI’s “this seems overblown” phase, Anthropic’s $380 billion valuation against a Pentagon contract crisis and the Clawdbot fumble that handed OpenAI a gift, retatrutide as Huberman’s “trillion-dollar drug” and Bryan Johnson selling immortality for $1 million a year while Peter Attia’s name surfaces 1,700 times in the Epstein files, and SpaceX pivoting to the Moon. Plus Bill Gurley’s reading list.

As I mentioned previously, if you’d like a free subscription, feel free to reach out on why, I’ll most likely be happy to oblige.

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From Aspen to CDMX for Zona Maco, one of my favorite weeks of the year. Lago Algo, is this incredible party in a museum overlooking a lake in Chapultepec Park. Our third year partnering with OMR, the party brought over 1,000 extremely chic people from the art world. Each year it gets better, John Talbot’s set had the room at peak right up til 3am and could have easily gone another 2 hours.

I’m appreciative of these incredible life experiences, while at the same time that much travel leaves me missing my family.

This week’s main theme is Jocks vs Nerds. First, the intersection of sport and marketing, from the super bowl and olympics to moncler’s awe inspiring aspen takeover. Then we pivot to the nerds, where sci-fi IP like Brandon Sanders’s Cosmere and Baldur’s Gate get premium adaptations, peptides become the new longevity obsession, and SpaceX’s massive IPO signals orbital AI’s wild future.

We’ll cover the Super Bowl’s emerging trend of competitive tension ads. Plus fashion’s growing presence at the big game with Thom Browne and Abercrombie. The Winter Olympics in Cortina kicked off with Armani’s ceremony tribute, Moncler’s Brazilian-designed team uniforms, and Salomon’s massive sponsorship play to cement sport authenticity. Moncler’s Aspen takeover, Marc Jacobs’ return to the Armory post-ABG, and the best set designs from the season including Valentino’s Kaiserpanorama and Pharrell’s DROPHAUS for Louis Vuitton.

Jasper Johns closes out Gagosian’s original Madison Avenue gallery, Dracula gets another cinematic life from Luc Besson, and peptides are crossing over from LA vanity to mainstream longevity culture. On the macro side: SpaceX’s potential record-breaking IPO after a $1.25 trillion xAI merger, the Electronaissance reshaping global energy demand, AI’s accelerating impact on jobs and SaaS valuations after Claude’s tools wiped $285 billion in a day, and Anduril’s drone Grand Prix where someone showed up with a mouse brain computer.

SUPER BOWL

Heading into Super Bowl weekend, brands are dropping ads earlier than ever. It used to be that the surprise was part of the purpose in watching the game, especially for a whole subset of people who care little about football and watch for the ads and halftime show. Pre-social, this was the ‘water cooler moment.’

Youtube changed everything, in 2011, Volkswagen dropped ‘the force’ (the one with the kid Darth Vader) 4 days before, and racked up 17 million views before the spot officially aired. That move stuck, rather than 30 seconds, brands are opting to release early to justify the spend, which in 2026 is $8 million for 30 seconds of air time, I’ve seen reports as high as $10. Some brands release ‘teasers’ as early as January followed by a full reveal a week ahead of the game. A whole new roll out tactic now exists to extend the value of these spots, from teasing and leaking celebrity deals as early as December.

That allows themes to emerge. This year, COMPETITIVE TENSIONS lead the way. Taking direct, overt shots at your competition used to be taboo. Not anymore.

Door Dash sets it up perfectly with “The Big Beef”, maybe the pettiest super bowl campaign of all time, with 50 cent, ‘they even sell combs’. This is a social campaign running adjacent, an example of spend optionality that exists now as well.

Pepsi took the polar bear, long associated with Coca-Cola and has it do the Pepsi challenge to Queen’s classic song, “I Want to Break Free.” Directed by Taika Waititi, the subtle flex is that Pepsi used a mix of live action and CGI, a shot back at the controversy Coca-Cola saw from their holiday ads, which were done entirely with ‘meh’ AI.

Anthropic came out swinging with 4 spots, each with a theme, “Betrayal,” “Deception,” “Treachery,” and “Violation” as opening titles. Directly challenging OpenAI’s addition of ads to free and low tier memberships. Mother is the agency behind the spots which are beautifully executed in a simultaneously cinematic and eerie way.

When you’re the incumbent, an attack on AI at large is still an obvious reference, AI is synonymous with ChatGPT. Sam Altman fired back, calling the ads “funny but dishonest,” the feud has been one of the most engaged-with topics online this week.

Interestingly, there is no call to action, which may be to limit free user sign ups crashing an already constrained compute. Anthropics’ Sholto Douglas on TBPN stressed the goal of provoking thought and discussion over direct downloads. Anthropic has dominated attention this past month from their advances in product (co-work and now opus 4.6), gain in enterprise use and prioritization of experience over advertising monetization. If they can maintain the enterprise edge, they just may be able to avoid an ad model.

Fashion is also becoming increasingly present at the big game (bof). A combination of factors, from an audience that is younger and more female, to streaming adding new flexible spend options for ads that were previously dominated by beer, auto and tech companies.

On the ground integration into half time shows and events like we saw last year with Willy Chavarria, and this year’s presentation by Abercrombie as the official fashion partner. Thom Browne has built a legitimate connection with athletes who are often seen off field in the brand, this year Browne showed a presentation during the GQ BOWL event on Friday where an ASICS collaboration was revealed.

Tecovas’ will air its first Super Bowl commercial as well.

The halftime show will be a major topic this year. Bad Bunny is having a month, fresh off winning album of the year and going straight into the Super Bowl. The controversy leading into all this is great for the NFL, they want the debate, ultimately despite people claiming to boycott, many more will watch just to see what happens. As Commissioner Roger Goodell points out, there’s been many examples of disputed talent;

Controversy is good for business, until it’s not. The biggest game in America has not been just about the game for a long time, its about commanding attention in an attention economy.

OLYMPICS

Internationally, Cortina’s opening ceremony kicked off another epicenter of sport & marketing. The ceremony has always been tied to fashion with each nation’s team uniforms.

This year’s ceremony was very much a tribute to Armani through the Italian team and performance at large, a beautiful recognition to his legacy (wwd).

Moncler’s collaboration with Brazilian creative Oskar Metsavaht stands out, marking the brand’s first Olympic partnership since 1968 Grenoble.

Mongolia wins in my book for best uniforms, by Goyol Cashmere. Inspired by the Great Mongol Empire’s horseback warriors, the traditional deel silhouette was rendered in premium Mongolian cashmere with silk trim and horn motifs. They went viral before the ceremony even started.

The offsite events will be worth watching, I’m curious who shows up in a big way. So far Solomon seems very committed, the only sports brand signed as a premium sponsor. Which makes sense as they are a product of choice for many qualified athletes.

Salomon outfitted 18,000+ volunteers, staff, and torchbearers with over 400,000 pieces produced. Departing Global Chief Brand Officer Scott Mellin told Reuters the investment was “well north of what most snow-sport companies spend on marketing for a whole year,” targeting a 25% brand awareness increase post-Games.

For a brand that’s shifted to 85% sneakers and apparel, the Olympics are a play to “cement authenticity in sport… as we’ve aggressively moved into fashion.”

I’ve been immensely impressed by their marketing over the past year, the content they’ve been putting out is badass and has been a major reference point for me (i’m constantly DM’ing it to our creatives).

Experientially, they kicked off the night before the opening with a We Are Ona dinner alongside chef Michele De Liguoro.

The Games are accelerating a permanent shift: performance wear is no longer just functional, it’s a primary vehicle for cultural storytelling and brand authentication on the world’s largest stage.

MONCLER’S ASPEN AWE

Sport as an offshoot can be a powerfully owned brand moment. Moncler has proved this year’s running with their seasonal alpine shows. Last week, we were fortunate to work with them on the content surrounding their Aspen takeover (Vogue).

This was an intense production we worked on for months leading up. Moncler’s attention to detail, hospitality and storytelling was impressive to participate in.

The scale of this production, building such a structure and set from scratch on a ranch outside town, while providing 3 days of galas, lunches, ski experiences while opening their new Grenoble flagship in town created a massive media footprint. Arrival at the show involved over 100 snowmobiles ushering each guest to the experience.

Filming the ski experience was a career highlight, we got access to the mountain 2 hours early so we could fly drones and have fresh tracks with Saunn White, Richard Permin & Mai Ikuzawa. As someone who’s skied my whole life, this was one of those money can’t buy moments that I’ll never forget.

Some amazing talent on the capture side. Props to cinematographers, Colden Rand, Griffin Glendinning and photographer Isami Kiyooka for absolutely murdering it.

We’ll be putting out a proper case study on this one soon.

MARC JACOBS

Next week we’ll shoot the Marc Jacobs Show as he returns to the Armory.

This will be our fifth year capturing one of the few remaining shows of impact during New York’s Fashion Week capable of ‘appointment viewing’ pull. It will receive special attention this year as it’s Marc’s first show since Authentic Brands Group’s deal fell through, which probably saved the production. LVHM has decided to reinvest in the brand, while ABG’s Jamie Salter would have more likely not funded high production shows.

Puck’s article on a Mature Marc Jacobs and its future post ABG is a good read. The armory being the setting, one of my favorite venues in the city, giving the space and grandeur for Marc to shine, the last time he was there we got the surreal chairs and massive wigs.

Above: Our last video with Marc at the armory.

Sadly, NY Fashion week has lost steam, with few shows that deliver anything close to the scale and attendance we see in Milan and Paris. The energy found a decade ago when the city had MADE fostering the energy of young designers, while big brands were still showing up with spectacle has ‘emaciated’ as puck puts it.

Outside Marc, which north American designers have the potential to create an attention grabbing spectacle with their show?

Khaite? Rocky? I’d love to see our prominence come back.

SET DESIGN ROUND UP

Europe still holds the grandeur. I gravitate to the sets and productions themselves over the clothes, last month saw some stunning executions. It’s all connected of course, the sets are usually tied to a world building thesis for that season.

Domicile trended across three shows in January. Pharrell staged Louis Vuitton’s FW26 menswear around the DROPHAUS, a prefabricated glass-walled home built with Japanese design firm NOT A HOTEL inside the Jardin d’Acclimatation. An actual bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, lounge, closet, and a listening room with floor-to-ceiling vinyl storage that stole the show.

Prada went the opposite direction with OMA, suspending cross-sections of domestic rooms mid-renovation at height. Pastel walls, marble fireplaces, jagged ceiling beams.

Kenzo returned to Takada’s original Paris home, a 1,600 sqm Japanese oasis renovated by Kengo Kuma, for FW26 “homecoming” presentation. Kenzo’s CMO Rémi Le Hong emphasized “home is the new runway”

Valentino’s set by Bureau Betak was my favorite of the season. Alessandro Michele’s Specula Mundi, presented days after Valentino Garavani’s passing, completely reimagined the viewing experience.

Twelve circular wooden structures inspired by the 19th-century Kaiserpanorama (a precursor to film) tied seamlessly to Valentino’s cinematic devotion. Each model appeared individually inside illuminated chambers; guests leaned into narrow openings rather than watching a catwalk

The logistics must have been a nightmare, but it was one of most reposted shows of the season.

JASPER JONES CLOSES OUT GAGOSIAN’S APEX LOCATION.

Gagosian will end the 36 year run of his original gallery atop 980 Madison with 10 years of Jasper Johns’s crosshatch paintings and drawings or ‘maps’, which still feel fresh after 50 years.

I lean to the more monochromatic of the paintings vs the hyper chromatic. “Between the Clock and the Bed,” and “corpse and mirror” being my favorites.

A similarity between Johns and Gagosian is that they both reached fame and success young, an incredibly rare feat in the art world.

January 22–March 14, 2026

980 Madison Avenue, New York

IT’S ABOUT TO GET NERDY

The first time I realized nerd culture was crossing over: a model reading Game of Thrones on the 6 train. Credit to HBO for betting on George R.R. Martin and proving a massive market exists when you bring real production value to complex worlds. Peter Jackson was actually the precursor, proving you could take dense, 800-page trilogies and execute a cinematic masterpiece, paving the way for what Denis Villeneuve is doing with Dune.

Recent developments across sci-fi and fantasy mean it’s going to be a great few years for nerdy IP, and the common thread is creator control.

First, Brandon Sanderson’s massive Apple deal. The prolific author will bring his ‘Cosmere’ universe (spanning Mistborn and the Stormlight Archive) to Apple with feature films and an ongoing series.

Sanderson secured unprecedented creative control: writing, producing, and holding casting approvals. That’s a higher degree of authority than Martin or J.K. Rowling had over their IP, leverage earned from a competitive bidding war Apple had to win against Netflix, Prime, and HBO. Sanderson posted on Youtube explaining why Apple won: “They want to be a true partner with me, and they feel like they really get what I want to do.”

I was turned onto the Stormlight Archive maybe five years ago; I can understand how he got to selling over 50 million books. The guy makes HITS.

A great listen is this conversation with Tim Ferriss, where Sanderson gets into the business empire he’s built around his IP. The operation is no joke, beyond prolific output, the business structure is equally impressive. He’s revolutionized publishing by going direct to fans through Kickstarter, raising nearly $100 million through crowdfunding, including a record-breaking $42 million campaign for four novels, the most successful single campaign in Kickstarter’s history.

Then, Craig Mazin, who broke the curse of terrible video game adaptations with perhaps the best execution to date, The Last of Us, sets his sights on Balder’s Gate with HBO.

This won’t be a retelling; the series picks up immediately after Baldur’s Gate 3. Mazin is the one to do this, being a superfan with serious hours clocked in the game and a 15-year D&D dungeon master who hosts a game weekly.

BG3 won Game of the Year in ‘23 and was another example where something niche, role-playing games, crossed over to mainstream. It was also the last video game I seriously played. The freedom, the cinematic acting, it’s pure entertainment. I’ve just had to assess the true zero sum of time, prioritizing what little of it remains to paint.

There’s a meme that hits:

‘one day you’ll be able to afford any video game you want, without the free time to play any of them.’

Games aren’t niche anymore. At $187 billion in global revenue, gaming now dwarfs film ($34B) and music ($29B) combined, yet Hollywood is still treated as the cultural center of gravity. That’s changing. The best storytellers are fighting for nerdy IP, and the creators who built these worlds are finally getting the leverage to protect them.

The nerds won. They just had to wait for Hollywood to catch up.

DRACULA

For gothic nerds, perhaps one of the most consistently executed stories, with some great outputs is about to get another take. Francis Ford Coppola brought Bram Stoker’s tale to life with a visceral masterpiece that still holds up today. The opening sequence with Gary Oldman’s Vlad the impaler has some of baddest costume designs I’ve ever seen.

Interview with a vampire, another seminal work, as is the original Nosferatu. Robert Eggers made a bestial and terrifying re-work of this classic. Then you have true blood which ran for 7 seasons during HBO’s ‘golden age’ of television with a peak of 13 million weekly views in its prime.

And we’re about to get another, Dracula: A Love Tale by Luc Besson, a master of visual storytelling (when he gets it right). It stars Caleb Landry Jones, Christoph Waltz (one of my favorite actors) and Zoë Bleu. The film was released to select theaters last year in France, but will premier in North America on February 6th.

ZUCKERBERG’S CODING PLAYLIST

Keeping with the nerd theme, Zuckerberg just published a 5 song playlist he listened to on repeat while coding in 2004. Very loud & emo. Personally, I can’t have vocals while trying to focus, but to each their own.

(Steven King listens to hard rock like Metallica and Guns and Roses while writing.)

PEPTIDES

My first conversation in earnest about peptides was last year at the Polo Bar in LA, probably the most quintessential setting to be peptide-pilled. I was having drinks with a man who runs a similar company as mine, set up to meet by a mutual friend. Halfway through our conversation it came up that he was 55. I was shocked, he didn’t look a day over 40.

‘Peptides man, but make sure you get the good ones, there’s a lot of bad shit circulating out there.’

A year later, something that felt very much LA-coded for the extremely vain has transcended into longevity culture at large. It’s becoming normalized in my circles similar to GLP-1s. There’s peptides for skin, energy, mental focus, metabolism, the list goes on. Longevity doctors have multiplied in my circles over the past year. Dr. Amanda Kahn, an NYC longevity doctor known as the “Peptide Princess,” told ELLE she hears “this changed my life” from clients daily.

At a dinner a month ago my friend asked ‘what product do you think has the most opportunity for someone to clean house with good branding?’ Without hesitation I answered peptides. The current market is so un-branded and clinical. The other night I saw my wife scrolling through a grid of glass jars all with numerical sequences. You have to be deeply into this to understand it. Probably not much longer, we live in a time of looksmaxing and peak performance, and the results are simply too noticeable to ignore.

The reddit thread /peptides has almost 140,000 members

New York magazine just ran a feature ‘Life on peptides feels amazing’ (Ezra Marcus)

The niche world of stacking compounds is no longer just for bodybuilders.

Jasmine Sun’s NYT piece ‘Chinese Peptides Are Tech World’s Latest Biohacking Fad’ paints a wilder picture. U.S. customs data shows imports of hormone and peptide compounds from China doubled to $328 million in the first three quarters of 2025. Biohacker meetups in NYC have people injecting together weekly. Flexport co-founder David Petersen told Sun it “looks like a bunch of heroin addicts.” Telegram groups like “Growth Hormone Secretagogues” and “Ageless Dating” are the underground dosing communities. Jasmine’s piece went massively viral, pulling 1.2 million views on X alone.

A few daunting aspects: you inject them, which inherently puts them in a different category. TikTok influencers like Clavicular are selling compounds directly, which feels ripe for disaster. People are turning to factories in China for a wider variety and cheaper products. Grey markets mixed with things you inject into your bloodstream feels very dicey.

Peptide use is becoming widespread in New York private schools, with kids hiding vials in mini fridges in their bedrooms.

What this reminds me of is three years ago when people were much more secretive about using Ozempic, which has been so normalized that nearly 1 in 8 American adults have now taken a GLP-1 medication.

A probably necessary disclaimer: I’m not advocating for any of this, but I am paying attention and fascinated. I met with a longevity doctor recommended by a friend, and am setting up blood tests as a first step. I’ll report back.

This is another example of bifurcating healthcare. Something Hims is taking a direct swing at with their Super Bowl LX ad, “Rich People Live Longer,” narrated by Common. The $16 million spot leads with a stark stat: the top 1% of earners live seven years longer than the bottom 50%. Longevity is becoming a luxury good. Everything from concierge health to early screening services like Prenuvo and access to peptides comes with a high barrier of entry. This isn’t new, long have the best doctors and early development treatments been outside the insurance space.

GLP-1s showed this stuff is no longer snake oil. But the gap between what’s marketed and what’s proven is wide. Most longevity peptides have no robust human randomized controlled trials. For a much deeper read, I suggest the New York Magazine article.

When the fridge becomes the medicine cabinet, and the line between wellness and pharmaceutical blurs entirely, we’re watching a new consumer category form in real time. One where the branding hasn’t caught up to the demand, and the regulation hasn’t caught up to either.

What’s below the paywall:

SpaceX’s $1.25 trillion xAI merger and what could become history’s largest IPO, the Electronaissance and why global power demand is expected to quadruple in a decade, Ed Elson’s stark essay on AI unemployment and why America is the nation least excited about the tech it built, Claude’s tool announcement that wiped $285 billion from SaaS in a single day, and Anduril’s drone Grand Prix where Cortical Labs showed up with a literal mouse brain computer. Plus a stop at Casa Bosques in CDMX.

As I mentioned previously, if you’d like a free subscription, feel free to reach out on why, I’ll most likely be happy to oblige.

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Where global power plays intersect with AI’s growing pains, and luxury’s great divide reshapes how brands chase relevance in a polarized economy.

This week’s dispatch dives into MATTE’s Zona Maco programming in CDMX with parties at Lago Algo and MN Roy, Aaron Stern’s distortion-driven Hard Copy exhibition at ICP, and ‘Fashiontainment’ strategies from Gap’s new entertainment chief Pam Kaufman to Disney’s merch elevation under Bobby Kim.

Davos returned with teeth: Anthropic CEO Amodei compressing AI timelines to 1-2 years with The Adolescence of Technology, ARK Invest’s Big Ideas 2026 on how AI agents and robotics reshape economics, and why Chinese dark factories now outpace U.S. automation by 6x.

We also track aquatic breakthroughs like Ocean Cleanup’s 133% plastic interception growth and Flocean’s subsea desalination revolution, Gemini’s free SAT prep partnership, and book recommendations on sustaining creative practice and Sarah Thornton’s insider dive into how the art world actually works.

Throughout: why luxury abandons aspiration, how technology convergence reshapes the next five years, and why Amodei’s accelerating timeline matters.

HOW NEW YORK HANDLES A STORM

Snowstorms do funny things to people, we hoard, become children, and while some hibernate, New York came alive with a collective energy that made me proud of this city.

Like a full moon drawing werewolves, New Yorkers showed up for this ‘10 year storm’ which, while not the ‘Snowpocalypse’ it was hyped up to be, still delivered 11.4’ inches (measured in central park).

First by ravaging Trader Joe’s, and every grocery store, to apocalyptic levels not seen since the toilet paper hoarding days of early covid. My wife and I were joking “who waits outside trader joes in a 4 block line?.” The disconnect, we(She) cook’s, we had to get a second fridge to store our groceries, I forgot my first 10 years in this city as a single person ordering takeout 5 nights a week. On Friday at dinner with 4 friends of that young single variety, the “shit, I need to get groceries” was universal.

The City brought the antics. I took my daughter to central park, our trek to Pilgrim Hill (Google’s recommended ‘best sledding’) felt like walking through 10 rom coms happening at the same time. The hill itself was chaos, a combination of small children with legit sleds and adults crushing beers and ripping on makeshift’s ranging from storage bins to Citibikes. There were skiers, snowboarders and gold medalist, Shawn white for the win, doing incognito backflips and 360’s until finally revealing himself after jumping Shane Gillis.

Elsewhere, McCarren Park held a snowball fight, people love doing shit in the snow buck naked, and generally a lot of impromptu creative expressions. In the thick of it all, NYC provided a beacon for humanity, by simply having fun, with swag. I’ll just leave this one here:

Credit where due to Mamdani for passing a major test, streets were plowed, I remember the fiasco years ago when De Blasio shorted servicing the upper east side out of spite.

MATTE ZONA MACO

We’re headed to CDMX for Zona Maco, our third year. Specifically, we partner on one of the biggest events of the week, an incredible party at Lago Algo, the museum and restaurant in the heart of Chapultepec Park.

Zona has become my favorite art week, it’s not overexposed like Miami, and still feels genuinely driven by people there for art.

This year we’ll have three days of programming:

TUESDAY (FEB 3): MN ROY

A late night party with our friends at OMR Gallery at Roma Norte’s MN Roy. Music from John Talabot, Parallelle and B+.

WEDNESDAY (FEB 4): Lago Algo Gala

(see above)

THURSDAY (Feb 5): MATTE x Radio Quebrada

Wrapping up the week with a lowkey party at Bar Abierto, co-hosted with Santa Teresa’s Radio Quebrada.

AARON STERN’S HARD COPY

My good friend Aaron Stern’s first museum exhibition at ICP opens this week.

Hard Copy, has been an ongoing series, where Stern both curates and interacts with photographers through photocopying and distorting works that resonate with him.

His process plays with replication and distortion, very Richard Prince in its exploration of reduction. The photocopier being a cost effective way to experiment.

The original Hard Copy premiered at Frieze in 2024 and over the years Stern has collaborated with heavyweights from Ryan McGinley, to Daniel Arnold and Stephen Shore. That comes from decades of relationship building, and as he told W mag in a feature on his upcoming show:

HARD COPY NEW YORK opens this Thursday, January 29.

ADC - YOUNG GUNS WINNERS

This Wednesday (01.28), much of the advertising industry celebrates the next generation of talent at Sony Hall. Young guns, a creative shoot out for those under 30, is the only global, entirely portfolio based awards.

33 winners were announced last week, talent from around the world bringing fresh ideas and landing them. For those looking for talent, this is a good place to start.

DAVOS BACK ON THE MAP

After years of irrelevance, Davos commanded attention this year in ways the conference hadn’t in a decade.

General themes, unease, friction, reality tv level beef, that AI ‘will test us as a species’, aviators and a ‘rupturing’ world order. Some of the lighter topics that helped drive search terms 2x last year and 5x 2022.

Jokes aside, while a lot of people hate the notion of the .01% holding a clandestine meet up in the alps, I’d take forms of discourse and human face to face conversation over alternatives.

It’s when they stop congregating that we should worry.

There were great panels, good speeches, and a lot of bars over the course of the week. The conference revealed a global leadership class grappling with the possibility that the institutions they built and the alliances they’ve relied on for 80 years might no longer hold.

Stand outs:

Larry Fink - When the CEO of BlackRock tells a room full of the world's wealthiest people that wealth inequality is "untenable," it's gotten bad. Fink's message was blunt: the current system is breeding resentment that will eventually create backlash. Not a moral argument. An economic one.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei in conversation with WSJ Editor-in-Chief Emma Tucker, mapping out a world where we simultaneously have very high GDP and very high unemployment. The open acknowledgment of AI’s disruption already in play, was a prelude to his newest essay ‘the Adolescence of technology’ published this week. I cover this essay further in this newsletter as it is such an open and profoundly honest state of the union for technology and its impact on human civilization.

Canada’s PM delivered what became the conference’s defining address. Mark Carney’s special address went viral with many praising his ‘unflinching realness’ with a warning about the waning influence and rupturing of global order. Carney urged middle powers to band together to build a more resilient global system.

The question is how that speech evolves from words to action. On the prof g markets ‘davos dispatch’, Galloway made a frank point that the speech would have been more powerful had EU's 27 member states walked on stage beside him.

Middle powers independently lack great power, the whole point of the speech.

Ray Dalio got his moment. I loved the compound and friends’ description, “he lives for this shit, flying in from the high ropes like the ultimate warrior”

He’s been hammering on debt cycles and the changing world order since before COVID, publishing research on the rise and fall of empires, the mechanics of power transitions. For five years, he’s been saying this moment was coming.

Davos was Dalio validater.

Fun fact, the badges have hierarchy, color coded so people can easily tell if your important. The most coveted being a white badge, worn by top-tier participants including corporate executives, heads of state, government leaders, and thought leaders. There’s always levels, the white badge has an even smaller amount with holograms reserved for presidents and prime ministers.

The consensus at the gathering was almost unanimous: the old order isn’t working.

China’s calculated absence was itself a statement. Beijing is content to let the Western alliance system fragment on its own terms.

Personally, I’m embracing the daily oscillation between the feeling were about to enter the great depression, or enter a period of profound abundance and productivity.

THE GREAT CONSUMER DIVIDE

How brands navigate this polarizing world is a tricky balance as the purchasing power and lived experience changes drastically for the very rich and everyone else. This is especially hard for luxury brands, who need to manage the cohort who’s actually spending, limiting a sense of overexposure, while dealing with backlash over elitism and a changing response to displays of wealth. It may require choosing a customer rather than chasing everyone.

We’re exiting the “quiet luxury” era. Brands are now openly speaking to who they’re targeting. And they can afford to. The top 10% of earners made up 49.2% of all spending nationally in the second quarter of 2025, a record high.

This bifurcation is reshaping hospitality, especially at the top in major cities where the wealthy are spending exorbitant and its shaping a new economy (WSJ). Luxury hotels saw the biggest gains in occupancy, allowing them to continue increasing rates. At Manhattan’s newly refurbished Waldorf Astoria, the martini is $38. At Aretsky’s Patroon, $75 lamb chops, and they sell a lot of them, co-owner Diana Lyne admits, “We no longer truly understand the U.S. economy.” Eugene Remm’s newest concepts, the 86 and Corner Shop, are deliberately tiny: 10 tables, 80 seats. No apologies for scarcity. In a recent Bloomberg interview, Remm was explicit:

Delta crystallizes this. Last week I wrote about the company’s focus on premium seats and the highest income travelers, which has resulted in record profits. What I left out was the push back and backlash the company received in 2023 when they initially started the pivot by changing their rewards program and making it significantly more difficult to earn diamond status. Customers revolted, people were upset at losing status, lounge access, and how high the new bar was set, Delta didn’t back down, the strategy worked anyway.

About two years ago I started hearing from luxury brands that they were shifting away from the aspirational consumer, their simply too stretched. That aspirational customer skews younger, provides a UGC boost to exposure and validates trendiness, but is currently the most affected by unemployment. That’s killing their discretionary spending abilities. PwC’s 2025 Holiday Outlook survey found that Gen Z plans to slash holiday spending by 23% this year, pulling back on travel, dining out and clothes. A sharp reversal from 2024 when their projected budgets surged 37%.

The pullback isn’t across-the-board austerity. Instead, Gen Z is practicing ruthless prioritization, trading down on everyday expenses while protecting experiences. 82% plan to purchase cheaper alternatives (known as “dupes”) and 63% plan to shop for vintage or upcycled products. They’re willing to stretch for concerts and events they want, but the math on traditional luxury goods no longer makes sense.

So if brands are shifting away from aspiration and younger cohorts, what are overlooked areas for luxury? A seismic shift is happening at the opposite end of the spectrum. According to Cerulli Associates’ 2024 Wealth Transfer Report, of the $124 trillion in wealth expected to change hands by 2048, $54 trillion is expected to pass through inter-spousal transfers, of which more than 95% will go to women.

Two recent market reports by Matter focus on Societal Divisions, and “Stuff no longer signaling Status.” The latter ties into a point I’ve been focused on for the past year, the tectonic Shift away from things. Products are no longer scarce or as coveted, the consumer is shifting towards experiences, especially within the luxury space. The product-experience divide is accelerating. Art spending declined 7% last year. The resale premium for Hermès Birkins has collapsed from 2.2x retail (2022) to 1.4x (November 2025), with some styles now reselling at par. Waiting lists are shortening (WSJ). But luxury cruises, private aviation, fine dining, and hospitality are all climbing. The flex has shifted from objects to moments of rare attendance, and exclusive access.

This means hotel merchandise and membership artifacts have become the new status symbol. Four Seasons’ varsity collection (limited robes, leather goods, bedding), the Ritz Paris x Frame collaborations, or more nuanced proof of attendance like keeping SVB stickers on ones phone (which is super cringe).

For luxury brands, the message is clear: stop pretending to scale. Own your customer. The backlash against elitism isn’t killing luxury, it’s forcing honesty about who actually pays.

FASHIONTAINMENT PLAYS

Everything above connects to the need for brands to create more connection and depth than just product. While the luxury space will become hyper focused on capturing the attention of those who have it all, how do mass brands play in this new world?

By creating cohesive worlds and integrating into culture via entertainment. This is not new, but we’re seeing more brands commit to this playbook. Take Gap and Disney, both investing in ‘Fashiontainment’ from different sides of the field.

Gap just followed Nike and Adidas into the cultural arena by hiring Pam Kaufman away from Paramount as their first-ever EVP and chief entertainment officer. Her remit is to build out the license portfolio across music, television, film, sports, gaming, consumer products, and cultural collaborations. A key step is building a LA office to embed within those industries.

Gap got burned by their partnership with YE, costing them billions of dollars, this new strategy is a more comprehensive commitment to entertainment at large rather than a singular personality.

If Gap is working to bring IP into its ecosystem, Disney’s elevation of Bobby Kim to the first Ever Creative Director for Merch (Vogue), is an investment in the massive potential of their IP. Bobby spent decades building “The Hundreds” in the streetwear era of the early aughts with a philosophy that t-shirts and hoodies are the entry points into community.

‘The product is never just the product’ has been his mantra, which he can now apply to a $62 billion behemoth. It’s a smart play by Disney, Bobby will help bridge conversations with the design and creative community for collaborations while having a more acute ear to what’s moving culture. I liked his point about “B characters”, the more obscure and overlooked aspects of a massive IP catalog, which are often overlooked but could have massive resonance with socials ability to find pretty much any niche micro community.

The IP at his disposal has a massive range, and its not just for kids. Disney owns the Simpsons, Alien, and a lot of adult favorites through the ​​20th Century Fox portfolio.

ARC’S BIG IDEAS 2026

The 10th annual ARK Big Ideas 2026 report is one of my favorite reads. Dense, speculative, but grounded in data. I love the intersection of human ingenuity, technology, and its business implications.

What’s below the paywall:

A deep analysis of 2026’s big ideas, ‘The Adolescence of Technology, Anthropic CEO’s latest essay takes a much starker tone as we progress faster than he expected, Major technological advancements in the aquatic realm, The end of Vimeo via PE takeover (RIP staff picks), and Two books on making and existing in the art world which I highly recommend.

As I mentioned previously, if you’d like a free subscription, feel free to reach out on why, I’ll most likely be happy to oblige.

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‘Give me 6 hours to cut down a tree. I will spend 4 hours sharpening the axe’

Lincoln

The ‘main thing’ this week is tools, the exponential advancements on what feels like a weekly basis. The new Axe.

This week’s dispatch dives into Claude Cowork as a paradigm shift in AI productivity (built in 1.5 weeks), the evolution of listening parties (pioneered by YE and embraced by artists like Rosalia) as a play to emphasis the the full album listen, Spotify’s inflection point as co-founder Daniel Ek steps aside, Dan Koe’s hyper-viral blueprint for fixing your life through ego development and his content virality playbook, the New Museum’s major expansion finally nears completion, Thibaut Grevet’s milestone collaboration with NYC Ballet, Delta's K-shaped while commodity aviation enters freefall, Saks’ bankruptcy fallout exposing massive creditor claims from Chanel to Amazon, Polymarket's 93% Golden Globes accuracy and expanding media partnerships, U-Haul’s migration data, breakthroughs in animal communication targeting 2030 for cross-species translation, and my reading list for 2026.

COWORK AS A LEAP FORWARD

Anthropic shipped Claude Cowork in 1.5 weeks after spotting users tinkering with Claude Code over the holidays. A significant leap from browser prompt boxes, highlighting the speed of iteration cycles in this space.

Originally built for developers, people realized the desktop app could handle a much wider range of assignments. It’s more powerful than browser interfaces via terminal connections, enabling system-level interactions such as browser control, file management, and background processes.

Anthropic moved quickly. If people were experimenting despite an intimidating ‘90s terminal-style UX, there’s a massive market for something friendlier. They spun that up in under two weeks, development guided by humans but written by Claude Code itself.

Last week, my timeline was bombarded with video examples. Cowork’s demo racked up over 46 million views on X. Monday’s Odd Lots episode (a show typically about markets) dedicated an hour to Claude Code’s impact, which is telling.

Semafor reported SaaS stocks down 15% YTD following the launch, with Intuit seeing its worst week since 2022. Fortune noted the competitive threat to dozens of productivity startups now that these capabilities come bundled.

I’m seeing connections to entry-level work being “cooked.” Ed Elson admitted that the majority of the work he did in his first year is now automated via Cowork, connecting his Prof G Markets conversation to the already concerning contraction in entry-level hiring.

I’ve been playing with the desktop app and realizing its power is limited only by imagination. The “connectors” are the key difference: they function like plugins, with ways to sync Google Drive, Gmail, and HubSpot, plus desktop extensions where things get interesting.

Turn on “file system,” and Claude reads and writes files directly on your computer, syncs iMessages, or connects with Figma. Some examplesare more powerful than browser chat:

• CRM: With access to my email history and HubSpot contacts, I can say, “Look at all emails between 2021-24 with X brand, find the last meeting and correspondence, remind me who I was talking to.” HubSpot can’t do that query. Claude runs in the background, checks old calendar appointments, finds email threads, and returns a summary—names, titles, context.

• Article aggregation: I’m building my own personalized aggregator, a huge part of writing this weekly. A short list of favorite publications, writers, and trending topics across X, Reddit, and Instagram. To understand my preferences, it has the entire archive of everything I’ve written. Goal: a daily email linked to a Google doc with the most relevant reading, personalized to me. I’ll report back.

Writing files also solves a persistence issue. Previous chats have limited memory, LLMs “compress” conversations, and ChatGPT drops earlier parts after a period. Code and Cowork’s file-writing allows conversation memory stored locally, enabling persistence across sessions and sharper personalization.

This only scratches the surface. I’ve been reading about leveraging screen recording to monitor how you approach tasks, then having Claude suggest augmentations.

This is a major leap for Anthropic while OpenAI has been quiet on product releases. Nothing groundbreaking from GPT lately, besides a statement they’re ‘on track’ for their first Jony Ive-designed product in H2 2026.

TBPN gave credence to leaks, a headphone / AirPod-esque product codenamed ‘Sweetpea.’

Anthropic seems focused on enterprise, which can prove more lucrative. ChatGPT has a massive reach, but only ~5% of 800 million weekly users pay. Claude, more business-focused, converts 15-20%.

ChatGPT was first and achieved ‘verb’ status akin to ‘googling’, but that doesn’t guarantee the lead without a superior product. Gemini has been taking traffic, and their Apple partnership is integrating Google’s models into upcoming “Apple Intelligence” features. That is a major threat.

2.5 billion people in Apple’s ecosystem could be onboarded to Gemini.

THIBAUT GREVET X NYC BALLET

A major milestone for an artist I’ve loved for years. Thibaut Grevet’s work is the major focus of this year’s @NycBallet Art Series Performance.

The French director’s works will be on display at Lincoln Center, and The New York City Ballet will showcase three special Art Series performances on January 28, January 31 eve, and February 6.

Tickets.

THE LISTENING PARTY

Streaming drastically changed the way we consume music, playlist algorithms emphasize singles, the modern pace and supply of music is over-inundating, very few people purchase albums anymore, and all this combined has reduced the attention given to the totality of an album.

4 years ago, Kanye (Ye) did something no one had considered before, selling out multiple stadiums for ‘listening events’ which, while increasingly theatrical, included no actual performances. The purpose was to return gravity to an album, to make the experience of hearing something in its entirety, for the first time, the event itself.

I worked on these; it was groundbreaking that people would pay concert ticket prices and go to a stadium without a performance. Ye was considering this performance art, placing emphasis on the content itself over a live act. An initial Stadium sellout in Atlanta proved his ability to make a much bigger moment around the release of a new album; the first show was Spartan, essentially the artist alone with an aux cable.

He doubled down, returning a week later with changes to the album and drastically improving the production quality of subsequent shows. Niklas Bildstein (Sub) was brought on for set design, which reached theatrical levels, from raising Ye to the rafters as the finale in Atlanta, to burning down a full-scale replica of his childhood home in Chicago. Ye delivered a concert-quality experience without a single word uttered.

Years later, more artists have applied this playbook, from Rosalia to Billie Eilish, Frank Ocean, and others are launching albums via immersive experiences. Whether intimate or grandiose, all are tailored to return the focus to a collective listening of an album in its full form. Dazed writes about how the listening party has become a central pillar of a modern album rollout.

We produced the Weeknd’s visual album experience at HERO last year, ‘hurry up tomorrow’ as a multi room timed exhibition that brought the album to life through vignettes and short films.

With ‘presence’ a growing scarcity, these events are ways to create moments of focus and community. Rosalia’s event had guests place their phones in Yondr pouches and started with complete darkness. These experiences are taking the intimacy of listening events, which in the past were reserved for industry insiders, and opening that up to fans.

Artists are emphasizing the collective experience as an essential part of the connective power of music.

It does have to be said that, as in many things, Ye was the pioneer here.

SPOTIFY’S INFLECTION POINT

The same product that has dominated the streaming era and changed how we consume music is entering an existential phase itself. We’ve had streaming in some form for a quarter century now; that disruptive force is experiencing its own forms of fatigue and disruption. Spotify, once the disruptor, has become the incumbent.

Spotify’s co-founder Daniel Ek is stepping aside after decades running the company. He got it to profitability in 2024, but there’s much work to be done reputationally. Despite being largely responsible for convincing people to pay for music in a post-Napster world, Spotify contends with tenuous artist relationships in a world where ‘streaming doesn’t pay the bills.’

Gustav Söderström and Alex Norström take over as co-CEOs at an inflection point. Bloomberg Businessweek’s feature maps out challenges from AI-generated content (Spotify has refused to ban wholly AI-created music), political landmines tied to Ek’s €600m investment in defense-tech company Helsing, and algorithm fatigue.

Prompted playlists, so far well-received, represent the evolution. Discovery needed to adapt, giving users control over AI-assisted curation, is an example of GOOD AI.

Side note, but somewhat related, retro audio tech is seeing huge growth, as younger generations embrace “retro-core” and a more specific consumption of media. Vinyl resurgence has been ongoing; something interesting is happening with cassette tapes. Artists are releasing new music on tape, often with custom players. Sales of cassette tapes were up 200% in Q4 of 25.

See the leading modern cassette players (with Bluetooth). WeAreRewind & Yanko

DAN KOE’S SUPER VIRAL TRANSFORMATIVE ADVICE

Dan Koe’s harsh truths about goal setting, the 80-90% failure rate and why, has driven How to fix your entire life in 1 day, to over 150 million views. It hit terminal velocity last week as high-profile reposts and shares accelerated its reach, likely hitting 1 in 4 X users.

There are two parts to this: first, the validity of this article’s thesis;

It’s a great read. I challenge those wanting behavioral changes over goals to tackle. Read it in one sitting (hard in our distracted timeline), then carve out a day for the self-assessment protocol at the end. It’s about ego development, figuring out where you are on the journey of 9 stages from impulsive to unitive, with the understanding it doesn’t matter where you land, because there’s a pattern to move through every stage.

Secondly, there is Koe’s general approach to producing viral content, which I find equally interesting and useful.

The process of virility. This is not Dan’s first article to reach millions of people; he’s been consistently putting out pieces that resonate widely for years. His October 2025 podcast with Greg Isenberg on The Startup Ideas Podcast is a goldmine.

Parts of His process can be applied to a variety of content strategies.

• Test short, scale long. X posts crystallize a thesis; if they perform, go deep. The same concept becomes a newsletter, YouTube video, podcast episode, and social cutdowns across multiple platforms. Showing up everywhere extends content lifespan and creates a massive flywheel.

• Mine what works. He uses tools like SuperX and Tweet Hunter to scrape top-performing posts from accounts in his niche, filtering by engagement to identify thematics and structures worth adapting.

• AI as an interview partner. He has LLMs interview him to extract ideas, stories, and experiences, then formats them into shareable structures. Six hours of research become 1,000 usable words.

• Newsletter-first architecture. Everything starts with the weekly Koe Letter. That becomes the YouTube script, the podcast, the social posts. Two hours each morning: one newsletter section plus three social posts distributed everywhere.

The virility of this particular piece led me to his larger body of work. My wife recommended him ages ago, and I’m finally catching up. If this article resonates, there’s a wealth of material to explore.

NEW MUSEUM EXPANSION

Late March will see the opening of the New Museum’s additional building after 3 years of construction.

The expansion will double the museum’s gallery space, add a residency program, and house a new restaurant, which will be an artist-run space by chef Julia Sherman. Sherman has commissioned artists for plates, mugs, and illustrations for the children’s menus.

The expansion will debut with a single exhibition across the entire museum, “New Humans: Memories of the Future,” which explores the impact of technology on humanity.

Opening: Mar 21, 2026

STUDIO PRACTICE

My first piece of 2026, titled Chrysalis, for its evolution of the butterfly wing underpainting, which started it.

36” x 48”

Acrylic & Oil on Wood.
2.5” Depth

More of my work and process on my studio site.

DELTA’S K-SHAPED REALITY

Delta just put the K-shaped economy in stark relief.

The airline closed its centennial year with record revenue, and a milestone that tells the whole story: premium cabin revenue overtook main cabin for the first time. Q4 premium tickets were up 9%, while main cabin fell 7%.

Despite surveys showing over half of Americans slashing travel plans amid economic jitters, Delta CEO Ed Bastian is bullish, projecting record highs for 2026 with earnings potentially leaping 20%

Delta pivoted early to chase high-income flyers, pouring billions into premium overhauls like revamped cabins, exclusive lounges, and targeted marketing that’s paying off handsomely. More than 95% of Delta’s revenue comes from households earning $100,000 or more annually. All seat growth in 2026 will be in premium cabins, zero in the main cabin.

This premium tilt, fueled by partnerships like American Express, now makes up 60% of Delta’s total haul, insulating them from broader turbulence. As Bastian put it bluntly, “The bottom end of the industry on the commodity side of the business has been struggling greatly.”

That commodity end of aviation is in freefall.

What’s below the paywall:

The ‘commodity freefall’ Cont’d…Spirits struggles and the broader picture. Saks and the wild list of creditors. Polymarket’s continued accuracy (nailing the golden globes!) and growing partnerships. U-Haul is the best source for where people are moving. Were getting closer to talking to animals!! The 20 books I aim to read this year and what I’m reading for fun.

As I mentioned previously, if you’d like a free subscription, feel free to reach out on why, I’ll most likely be happy to oblige.

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“For me, not working is the real work”

Steven king

I spent last week fully unplugged in the Caribbean, Como Parrot Cay specifically. About two days in, I started to beat myself up over productivity. For those with a type A personality, not working is work.

Prior to the break, I did my goals, combining Grace Clark’s epic annual planning template with some addenda, then running that through an aggressive AI prompt to create a 2026 goals project in three different LLMs so I can cross-reference.

Aspects of the prompt (which is over 40 lines): “You have an IQ of 180. You’re brutally honest and direct. You’ve built multiple billion-dollar companies. You have deep expertise in psychology, strategy, and execution. You care about my success but won’t tolerate excuses…Provide COT step-by-step actionable plans…Ask me questions, as many as you need, to provide a very thorough plan. NO question is too small.”

Message me if you’d like the full prompt.

All three LLMs gave me the brutally honest response that I was trying to do WAY too much.

There is one zero sum, and that is TIME - no matter how I try to skin it, there are 168 hours in a week. Which has led me to Essentialism as a concept, my week’s book recommendation that, without exaggeration, is one of the most transformative 4-hour listens of my life.

As a process, I loved batting my goals against AI for the first time. I went in with over 14 goals and came out with 5, prioritized into categories, with 90-day plans and a manageable schedule to attempt the multitasking. This is the most actionable goals plan I’ve ever had, thanks to modern technology, but the tech alone wouldn’t have given me the framework I’m happy with if it weren’t for the structure of Grace’s planning templates and the time put into them.

One thing that’s helping me distill the constantly bouncing ideas and priorities into what matters most is a new routine:

DAILY (2 minutes, evening): Answer these 3 questions in a notes app:

1. What did I complete today that moved a priority forward?

2. Did I protect my family time? (Y/N)

3. Tomorrow’s single most important task is: ____________

I share this because it may help others who suffer from the desire to do everything all at once.

This week’s dispatch explores the future of content creation amid AI’s rise, from Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri’s predictions on raw authenticity trumping polished perfection to trend forecasting’s evolution in a post-social media era, Jordi Visser’s 2026 playbook on AI infrastructure and why English is now the most powerful programming language, Hermes doubling down on handcraft with a fully illustrated website redesign, the case for OpenAI acquiring Pinterest, Jeffrey Katzenberg’s third act VC pivot,

Tim Cook’s quiet bet on Nike’s turnaround, Lego’s first major innovation in 50 years with smart bricks at CES, a British aerospace company achieving plasma generation in orbit, why the biggest trend of 2025 was looking backward, and book recommendations on focused living and masterful writing.

Poll results, thank you for the feedback, which overwhelmingly skewed to keeping a longer weekly dispatch with depth:

A$AP ROCKY’S HELICOPTER

Let’s start with something fun. Rocky’s newest video bangs, but it’s the VFX that really blew me away. Credit to Dan Streit on those, an ongoing collaborator across many of Rocky’s trippy cuts.

ADAM MOSSARI’S TAKE ON THE FUTURE OF CONTENT

Instagram's head, Adam Mosseri, kicked off '26 with a 20-slide text-only carousel laying out predictions, hard truths, and some polarizing denigrations of professional photography. As AI tools reach parity with reality at an exponential rate, Mosseri says 2026 is the year we can no longer tell the difference, and that's going to massively impact creators, marketers, and social platforms.

His take, likely correlating with Meta's at large, is that AI now enables anyone to replicate creator'’ work, the perfect Instagram grid has died, and a less polished 'raw aesthetic' is a reaction to combat AI fakes (rawness as proof, as he puts it). AI will soon replicate this aesthetic too.

We're entering an era where you cannot tell what is real. The New York Times just ran an article explaining why they couldn’t verify photos of Maduro, as platforms surged with realistic deepfakes.

The quote that sparked the most backlash:

Professional photographers and creators pushed back hard. Sentiment in comments and responses tilts heavily negative. Engadget declared, “AI slop has won.”

Mosseri seems to be pushing speed and output over craft. Meta's overall narrative last year pushed to replace craft’s role in marketing, see Zuckerberg’s May 2025 statement about AI agents running whole campaigns:

However, some of the best social campaigns this year were highly craft-driven: the Nike Jacquemus film I wrote about in December, Dairy Boy’s short films, and Celine’s recent Lunar New Year work. Look at what gets featured on Outlander; it's highly imaginative, craft-driven work.

I wager we'll enter an era where both things are true. 'Middle' content, influencers just being 'hot' and posting exotic travel, is highly under threat. We'll get more content that looks real and feels 'same,' then we'll see high craft and original thought break through.

Some things from Mossari’s post I found interesting:

• Young people don’t share personal content on Instagram anymore (they share it in DMs)

• The grid is dead—de-emphasized algorithmically in video, and young people don’t use it

• Detection will get harder; a looping arms race between replication and detection

• Authenticity will become a scarce resource. More in the story behind the content, vs the making of it.

I do think we’ll see a big change in the business of the ‘influencer’. The traditional influencer is most under threat from accounts like Professor EP and others that create AI influencers like @isabellasofiarossi and @majafitness (cumulative 2.2M followers).

Storytelling. Craft. Smart campaigns I feel are here to stay, but I admit I have my own biases. Like Mossari, I’m vested in that narrative.

DOES TREND PREDICTION MATTER POST SOCIAL?

Trend prediction used to be a human endeavor. Companies hired college grads to permeate high schools, campuses, and urban centers, physically spotting trends to be sold via reports to big companies.

When I was fresh out of college working at Strategic Group we delivered a monthly trend report to Coca Cola which was essentially a round up via email of cool stuff that I and a few other young people at the company were paying attention to, they paid a lot for it.

It went both ways. With a tighter flow of media consumption, forecasting companies would steer fashion, music, product tastes, even ‘color of the year’ through presentations to brands. When WGSN or Peclers Paris told the industry that coral was coming, brands fell in line. That top-down control is evaporating.

Social media changed everything. Mainly by shortening TIME. The consumer now has access to trends in real time; we don’t look to MTV or an Abercrombie catalog anymore. This has opened a world of micro, ‘niched down’ aesthetic movements. There’s a scene for any possible direction in taste.

I went to a panel earlier this year where a forecaster walked through cultural predictions for 2026. It felt antiquated to project over that long a time frame; the best you could do is state the obvious. The real trends that emerge will be so random and move so fast it makes more sense to get good at riding digital waves.

The production side is getting crushed as the pace of consumption has also fundamentally shifted. 85% of Gen Z and millennials now expect to purchase a trending product within 24 hours of seeing it on social media. Fashion’s traditional supply chain runs 12-18 months from design to retail. Shein has compressed this to 15 days. Target has introduced “speed tracks” that reduce timelines by 80%. Zara now produces 85% of garments in-season, analyzing 3 million social media images daily to stay current. For brands without this infrastructure, when trends “flame out in weeks, production cycles can struggle to keep pace, leaving brands overstocked with yesterday’s looks or understocked on today’s viral hit.” In 2023 alone, excess stock across the industry was valued at $70-140 billion (BOF).

What I love about access in a digital age is the endless possibilities for curation. The internet has allowed for the deep archival research of essentially anything one can imagine. There are now endless reference points to pull from; the challenge is drinking from a firehouse.

Tech can now scrub the entire digital landscape, scrape trends, analyze them, and extract themes and insights in real time. For example, people are building N8N agents that can be given a category (fitness, skincare, beauty, whatever), scrape all trending reels or posts, analyze comments for sentiment, and build real-time databases to inform content creation. Human out of the loop.

Getting OFFLINE also becomes an edge.

Some NYC hacks:

• FIT archives, they have a library with nearly every issue of every fashion magazine ever, things that haven’t been scanned.

• Flat file archives. The New York Public Library has over a million physical items in a building across the street. Ephemera, sketches, manuscripts, exhibition brochures, art, all ‘uncatalogued resources’ meaning it hasn’t been scanned, thus not available to everyone online.

• Being outside. With an office in Soho, I can simply go outside, checking lines outside stores. Someone I respect once told me every time they come to New York, they sit outside Balthazar for 3 hours, have a tea, and track what shoes, bags, etc., they see people wearing. Develop real intel. You can do this anywhere.

Niche players like K-HOLE do provide insights that feel more in line with the pace of culture. The New York art collective releases trend reports as free PDFs, treating forecasting as cultural criticism rather than corporate service. They're best known for coining "Normcore.” Their reports show how trend forecasting can blend art, sociology, and consumer insight in unconventional ways.

The irony is that the biggest trend in 2025…was nostalgia. Vintage ‘fashion’, ‘music’, ‘car’ all trend up and to the right via Google search since 2021. CD players are back in vogue, as are board games, Pokémon cards, and film cameras. The biggest IP in entertainment is basically an homage to the 80’s.

A VISUAL DEPICTION OF LAST YEAR’S SEARCH

On the subject of data, here are 2025’s biggest moments as they pertain to Google’s search.

A visual way to see how much really happens in a year and how short our attention spans can be.

Only two constants, Sydney Sweeny and inflation.

90’s TATE

Nostalgia plays in the UK as well.

The 90’s at TATE celebrates a post-recession era which saw the UK plant its flag in the cultural zeitgeist.

This “new dawn of optimism, freedom, and rebellion” brought the UK massively to the forefront. Rave culture, aesthetics from Nick Knight, Juergen Teller, and Damien Hirst, and fashion Icons like Kate Moss, Alexander McQueen & Vivian Westwood will all be explored in a massive exhibition curated by Edward Enninful this October.

HERMES CONTINUES TO EMBRACE CRAFT WITH NEW SITE

Illustrations by Linda Merad have flipped the entire aesthetic of hermes.com, showing the brand's ongoing commitment to real handcraft in a digital age.

The stipple work spans each section along with a fun animation as the sites’s intro header. Hermes has really stood out over the past year with their “drawn to craft” initiative, contracting over 50 artists in 2025.

VERVOORDT

Axel Vervoordt’s aesthetic has been a major source of inspiration for years.

I look at how he balances minimal color into these muted rooms, his ability to make dark feel warm, and the texture achieved through a clear wabi-sabi philosophy in what he composes. Browse through his interiors, and you see worlds that feel lived in, or that you want to live in.

His business practice extends 50 years across multiple galleries, interior design, and Antiquaire. For those into wabi-sab,i I highly recommend exploring his work.

** If you like this aesthetic, another studio I recommend is Oliver Gustav.

THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF RICH STAPLETON

Los Angeles-based Rich Stapleton brings work that feels like Renaissance paintings forth. The work is extremely RICH.

Portraiture, interiors, and product are the strengths.

BUSINESS

JORDI VISSER & POMP 26 PLAYBOOK

Jordi Visser has become one of my favorite pundits; he brings insights that are new to me on shows he joins. I like his direct way of breaking down complexities, and he speaks with reference points I can dig deeper into via my own research.

It was Visser who introduced me to the concept of ‘Make your AI bed,’ playing off the bestselling book by Admiral William H. McRaven, the idea of building a relationship through consistency, in the case of AI, using it daily.

If he’s unfamiliar, Jordi’s Substack is a great place to start, along with his 2026 playbook with Anthony Pompliano.

The core thesis: AI isn’t a bubble, it’s an infrastructure buildout that will drive productivity gains in ways GDP calculations struggle to capture. Visser points to five months of sub-40k job creation alongside 4% GDP growth. In other words, productivity expanding without headcount.

Companies aren’t replacing workers with AI agents yet; they’re simply not hiring the 2 million people they would have in a normal expansion year.

Amazon currently has a 2/3 human-to-robot workforce; what happens when it inverts?

The areas where you’re screaming ‘representative’ into a phone? Those are the sectors about to see margins explode.

The Infrastructure Gap. Consumer AI, ChatGPT on your phone, Claude in your browser, runs in the cloud. Enterprise AI cannot. When JPMorgan deploys AI agents to create investment banking decks in 30 seconds (work that previously took junior bankers hours), that data never leaves their controlled environment. The company’s $18 billion annual tech budget funds a hybrid infrastructure where sensitive workloads stay on-premise. Industries adjacent to these build-outs, the ‘picks and shovels’ of security, compliance, and data residency, will see massive infrastructure demand.

Regarding vibe coding, English is now the most powerful programming language, proven by the prevalence of Claud Code.

Andrej Karpathy, former Director of AI at Tesla and OpenAI co-founder, published a year-end post: “I’ve never felt this much behind as a programmer. The profession is being dramatically refactored.” He described a sense of being “10X more powerful” if he could properly string together what’s become available in the past year.

Google Principal Engineer Jaana Dogan put it bluntly: “I gave Claude Code a description of the problem, it generated what we built last year in an hour.”

Meanwhile, Jamie Dimon is telling JPMorgan managers to ‘resist headcount growth,’ noting the bank’s $2 billion AI investment has already “paid for itself” with 150,000 employees using AI tools weekly.

The second-order effect Visser hammers is the velocity of money. This is the Caitlin Long thesis (See: The $16 Trillion Unlock). As AI agents connect with stablecoins, transactions happen faster, which will exponentially change commerce across many industries.

Coinbase already launched Payments MCP, allowing LLMs like Claude and Gemini to transact on your behalf. A16z’s State of Crypto 2025 report shows stablecoin adjusted volume hit $9 trillion last year, more than 5x PayPal’s volume, over half of Visa’s. That’s before agents really take over. AI needs money that moves at machine speed; traditional banking rails simply can’t.

The people with the most to lose will adapt the slowest.

My advice: commit to using these tools daily, learn to prompt well (Visser’s average prompt is 60 lines), and understand that curiosity and persistence are now more valuable than technical credentials.

KATZENBERG’S THIRD ACT

One of the great entertainment titans of the early aughts shares insights and explains the creation and philosophy of his third act Wndrco on the podcast Sourcery. A household name, but one I admittedly knew a lot less about prior to listening to this conversation.

Katzenberg has used Technology as a competitive edge his entire career, from Disney & DreamWorks to what he is doing now in the VC space. His edge in the realm of technology investing will be storytelling, something a lot of founders and complex technological businesses struggle with. A16z stands out as a VC that understands story, something I wrote about just before the break. They’ve built a brand that is evolving into a media company, which has a halo effect on their investment access.

When asked about an area they are most interested in, Longevity. A space with a lot of snake oil, but there is real tech that is going to change the human condition from mental acuity to bone density. My children may very well live past 200.

There’s a moment Katzenberg talks about his mentorship under Barry Diller, how grinding, demanding, tough a person he was to work for, and how he found that exhilarating.

Lots of great takeaways from this conversation, full podcast here.

Companies in Wndrco’s portfolio include: 1Password, Airtable, Harvey, Abridge, and Granola.

What’s below the paywall:

Does OpenAI buy Pinterest? Tim Cook bets on Nike. Lego Smartbricks. Space Based Manufacturing. Books: Essentialism & On Writing.

As I mentioned previously, if you’d like a free subscription, feel free to reach out on why, I’ll most likely be happy to oblige.

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Stubborn is believing in something when all the facts have changed.

Conviction is riding through the volatility.

It’s not easy to tell the difference until history has already passed

Tom lee / On prof g markets

The last post of 2025, and about a month away from a full year of weekly INTAKES. Thank you to everyone who’s read, especially those who have reached out, sent me advice, interesting articles and encouragement.

My friend Oliver Diamond gave me one of the best pieces of advice: Turn each sub section of these articles into a LinkedIn post in full.

This gives me really interesting insights across hundreds of sections on what topics get the most engagement. A piece on the AI actress Tilly Norwood and AI’s impact on Hollywood got about 20x more than average, most surprising was an article on supersonic travel taking #1 with 50x engagement.

Thank you to the two haters! I got my first two emails from people telling me to fuck off, well one was more about my need to proof read (fair) and the other was more generally upset at the overall structure of these articles which in his mind was ‘all over the place’ and an attempt to ‘flex that I read’.

I appreciate anyone who takes the time to send me how they feel, and genuinely found some actionable feedback in the criticism.

My wife was happy for me, having haters is a statistical result of growth she pointed out. I started with a few hundred readers and as that’s grown, negative feedback is going to be par for the course. I often look at the comments section of any major article and that’s honestly more interesting than the article itself, it’s fascinating how heated an online debate of unanimous people can get.

End of year news cycles skew heavily to recaps, round-ups, and predictions. Something I’m trying to avoid the cliché of but I do find the big ideas and forward predictions interesting.

As I get closer to completing this year long assignment I gave myself, I’ll be thinking about slight changes to the format based on what I’ve learned and what people seem to respond most too.

One thing I’ve been mulling over is frequency, would 2x weekly letters be better, breaking them up and putting them out with more frequency. Benefits would be staying closer to the relevancy of some of the stuff I’m covering, and a shorter more digestible read.

The final issue of 2025 covers a lot of ground: wearable devices that listen to your entire life, a16z’s Big Ideas, predictions on AI evolution, the death of the prompt box, and whats coming for consumers. why established writers are abandoning major platforms, a Ghost in the Shell exhibition thirty years in the making, the end of a Nolita staple that predates the neighborhood's name, a breakthrough biodegradable plastic alternative, the paradox of record S&P gains against historic consumer pessimism, why asset ownership has become the dividing line between two Americas, and year-end reading recommendations from Dan Carlin's Hardcore History to Genghis Khan.

A16z 2026 BIG IDEAS

As 2025 closes out, A16z’s been releasing prediction podcasts where their analysts get about 10 minutes each to bring forth what they see shaping the tech business sector next year. Ranging thematics, that often intersect. Some that stood our for me:

Death of the prompt box as the primary user interface. Ai use will evolve past the prompt box and become more embedded into other app flows.

Evolution from LMM’s and human to AI interaction evolves into more creation and use of agentic ai, means design will shift to interfaces for the Agents not for humans. Visual design becomes less important for communication in this stage, data infrastructure and compute will be prioritized.

Consumer AI - Where it stands at the end of 2025 & where its going. This one in particular is really insightful, especially the product recommendations at the end. The point that the best way to up-skill in AI is to constantly be trying and using new products.

Interesting stats; For most of the year, less than 10% of chat GPT users even visited another platform, only 9% of GPT users have another subscription. This shows how early we are in wider adoption.

The VC also launched a16z Build, real life networking through curated dinners and retreats aimed at creating spaces for founders and operators to connect. Self nomination or nominating others can be done here.

Build will obviously skew heavily into tech, I think there’s space for something similar to this in the creative industry, something I’m actually working on and will share more about soon. Key is quality and small, so that real connections occur.

AMBIENT LISTENING

Summarized living, the subject Scott Belsky’s most recent implications, has me thinking a lot about willing submission to surveillance through undeniably advantageous tech, with important societal implications.

A step further than recording zoom calls (we use Notion for minutes on a meeting, I’m hearing Granola pop up more and more), some are willingly applying ambient listening to their entire days.

Physical products like Plaud and Limitless (a recent meta acquisition) listen all day, providing mind maps of all your conversations, pulling out actionable aspects and over time building a digital memory you can interact with.

This in some form is probably what Jony Ive has been cooking up at open AI, he tends to build products with mass appeal which could normalize the concept of ever present listening. Future generations of these products will evolve from summarization to intelligent synthesis, they’ll be more than word-for-word meeting minutes, they’ll be interactive extensions of your brain.

It will change how we converse, we may be more conscious of sensitive information, sources, knowing things said are more ‘on record.’

Digital records will confront memory bias, a known flaw in our human memory’s perception and distortion of events.

The notion of memory ownership will emerge:

Should we be able to search each others’ memories like we do shared documents? If not, what is the new etiquette for accessing a colleague’s summarized work life? What happens to your memory when you leave a company – do they get to keep it? (Scott Belsky)

We’ll have to confront the limitations of a singular mind vs the power of collective thought, will we be pulled towards a hive mind existence?

I’m personally intrigued while simultaneously seeing the darker big brother overtones.

THE SUBSTACK MIGRATION / DEBATE

Should authors be on Substack? A short piece on Vulture (which strangely I can’t find online anymore) has sparked a debate which seems to really center on another industry seeing embedded gatekeepers resisting a new medium.

It’s about loss of control.

I see parallels to galleries vs an artist’s ability to self promote with social media, the decline of the record label’s importance, and the rise of podcasters / youtube and creators vs traditional networks.

These industries have existed for decades with models based on arbiters of control, whether it galleries, labels or media, control sat in the institutions ability to curate what was deemed worth seeing or hearing. Each of these industries has seen substantial disruption, artists break on SoundCloud or TikTok, and youtube / podcasts audiences far outweigh mainstream media’s top shows.

The past two years have seen many established writers and personalities leave major platforms for more control of voice. Censorship, concern over upsetting advertisers, or larger viewpoint alignments of major media outlets has become a major point of contention on ‘what can and cannot be said’

When Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, broke the major story alleging that the United States was responsible for sabotaging the Nord Stream pipelines, he dropped it on his Substack. Hersh made a point that ‘reporting is back’ in his ‘Why Substack’ article;

Jon Stewart’s Apple TV+ show “The Problem with Jon Stewart” was abruptly canceled in October 2023 amid creative differences, primarily over planned episodes critically addressing China (where Apple has massive manufacturing and market interests) and artificial intelligence, a field in which the company was heavily investing. While Jon did not migrate to an independent platform, this is an example of narrative control many people are no longer willing to forgo.

The counterpoint here would be factchecking, sources, and the concerning rise of a less diligent flow of news. Half of U.S. adults now say they get news from social media at least sometimes, and trust in mainstream media in the U.S. is at a historic low. Personally I find that news hits faster on social, while being far less accurate, there is a real truth to certain stories not being covered by mainstream media. Be sure to check sources.

Theres a fiscal aspect as well, writers with large audiences can make significantly more with their own subscriber base on independent platforms than they can on salary in a newsroom. Some examples:

Glenn Greenwald - His Substack income is reportedly at least twice his prior salary at The Intercept.

Bari Weiss - Resigned from NYT in 2020, built The Free Press on Substack to $20 million annually in revenue. October 2025, Paramount Skydance acquired The Free Press for $150 million, and Weiss was appointed editor-in-chief of CBS News.

Matt Taibbi - Left Rolling Stone for more independence; his newsletter ranks among Substack’s highest earners at an estimated $1–2 million annually

Emily Sundberg - Feedme started as a side project after being laid off in 22’. Now with over 150,000 total readers and consistent top rankings in Substack’s business category she has and estimated revenue in the 7 figures.

This exodus lead the Atlantic to go on a hiring spree this summer, trying to lure top reporters back with 300k + salaries.

Like youtube and podcasts, Substack is going to massively disrupt journalism and writing at large.

GHOST IN THE SHELL AT TOKYO NODE

An extensive large scale exhibition covering the entirety of the Ghost In The Shell series opens at the end of January in Tokyo.

This is one of the more influential IP’s in sci-fi putting its fingerprints on everything from gaming to Hollywood while also providing prolific predictions and philosophical proddings about the meaning of consciousness in a post AI world.

This seems to be a highly experiential exhibit, with set builds and interactivity alongside a trove of production materials from original drawings and cel animation from the artists and directors who built this incredible world.

The montage sequence from the 1995 film is probably one of the most inspiring 3:00 of animation and sound design I’ve experienced, it holds up after 30 years.

I remember being at RISD’s pre college program where they’d show us obscure films each week (This was way before Ghost went mainstream with a Hollywood adaption). seeing this film, and specifically this scene started an obsession with Manga.

If you’ve only seen the film, there is a much deeper world here, a show spanning multiple seasons and graphic novels with incredible art and rich philosophical themes.

January 30 to April 5, 2026. TOKYO NODE.

STUDIO PRACTICE

I’ve spent this break moving into my new studio which is full circle, as its the same building our MATTE offices were in during COVID shut down, this lead to me painting again.

The building owner gave me an incredible space to return home too. The biggest benefit is proximity to the city, I’ll be able to host people a lot easier.

My goals for the remainder of holiday break are; updates to my website, new portfolio materials and getting back into the actual painting.

More of my paintings, and process here.

ZEIT MAGAZINE

Specifically the issues with creative direction by Munich boutique design studio Bureau Borsche. This studio also recently did a guest design issue of Numero Berlin Autumn/Winter 2026 .

Niche, independent, design driven publications are pretty much the only magazines I buy in print anymore, everything else I read digitally.

CAFE GITANE, END OF AN ERA

The closure of Gitane marks a chapter as soho looses a staple for downtown locals. Lasting 30 years, pre dating the term ‘Nolita’ NYC looses a great neighborhood spot.

Outside seating at Gitane was the scene before Sant Ambroeus. The cafe drew crowds way before social media, through the 2010’s and for the past decade I put it with Cafe Select and Lovely Day as the places legit downtown New Yorker’s hung out. The new generation of hot spots seem more driven by social media (ALD café, Jack’s Wife, Ruby’s) and don’t have the same vibe.

Sadly, Gitane didn’t go out with a bang, and its final months also saw financial mayhem as staff and vendors reported not being paid (New York Magazine). In the same quarter that we saw Raul’s celebrate its 50th, a simple boarding up marked the closure of this classic.

A NEW BIODEGRADABLE PLASTIC

Plastic is probably one of the greatest man made inventions with the most harmful impact. It’s embedded in so many aspects of our daily lives, with the dark side of ‘forever’. Microplastics have permitted our oceans, soil, air and blood.

As much as we try to move off plastic, we seem to be hooked on it’s quality, paper straws would be an example. Material science, and human ingenuity hopefully progresses us past this.

Japanese researchers have made a significant breakthrough with a new material that could be an alternative.

A tough, flexible plastic made from plant cellulose that breaks down quickly in salt water, leaving behind no microplastics.

MATTE WEEKLY SHARES

Each week our creative team connects for thirty to an hour to discuss things outside what were up too. A chance for creatives to share who their clocking, other great work were seeing, and anything else generally worth being up on.

This week designer Callum Abbott, who’s doing killer editorial layout and type work.

Photographer & Artist Petros as well, they’ve been working a lot with Billie Eilish and have this hard ass digital painterliness to their work.

SOREN SEJR

I just came across this artist from Denmark, I’m particularly drawn to his 2023 works, the last two years he’s moved to color and their beautiful but the black and white compositions really got me. Everything prior is black and white, really channeling Pierre Soulages (one of my favorites).

Soren’s next show will be:

2026 Gallery Jacob Bjorn, Aarhus DK

A YEAR OF DIVIDED SENTIMENT

The S&P 500 just delivered its third consecutive year of double-digit gains, And yet, 52% of Americans believe we’re already in a recession.

In November, the University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index was gloomier than the depths of 2008 and worse than June 2022 when inflation peaked at 9%. Basically our vibes were some of the worst in the index’s history.

And then Black Friday happened. A record $11.8 billion spent online, up 9.1% year-over-year. The National Retail Federation expects total holiday spending to surpass $1 trillion for the first time.

There’s a term for this; the ‘say and do gap’ (cnbc)

Basically you can’t trust these sentiment surveys, they don’t align to the actual numbers. Higher-income households and those on the coasts have been particularly likely to keep spending even while reporting low sentiment.

McKinsey’s ConsumerWise research uncovered an even stranger wrinkle: “Consumers most concerned about their personal finances, inflation, and the cost of living were also more likely to report plans to splurge.”

Buy now, pay later usage hit an all-time high on Cyber Monday.

So a lot of people are stretched, but that doesn’t necessarily correlate with a recession. Kyla Scanlon, the economic educator who coined “Vibecession” in 2022, described it as “the vibes of a recession, but maybe not the economic reality of one.” Three years later, the definition has evolved. It’s no longer just fear of a future recession, it’s rejection of the current “recovery” as inadequate for the average citizen’s needs.

What were seeing is a sentiment gap reflective of a widening wealth divide.

Those without assets aren’t participating in record market runs while 70% of Americans now say the area where they live is “not very affordable” or “not affordable at all” for the average family. “Vibecession”

Morgan Stanley’s Lisa Shalett put it even more starkly in a November research note: the top 40% of households control nearly 85% of America’s wealth, two-thirds of which is directly tied to the stock market. Spending by the wealthiest households is growing 6-7x faster than for the lowest cohort. The top 10% of income earners now account for 49.2% of all consumer spending, the highest share since we began tracking this data in 1989.

As Kobeassi put it ‘Own assets or get left behind.’ In 2025, If you were invested and stayed the course, even through the early tariff chaos, you’ve done remarkably well.

On a positive note, younger generations are getting into markets earlier than their parents did. Nearly a third of Gen Z has developed investing habits while still in college, a global trend enabled by commission-free apps, fractional shares that removed barriers previous generations faced, and a plethora of financial content readily available online.

The poster child for this democratization? Robinhood, up about 225% this year after joining the S&P 500 in September.

The platform has created an empowered retail investor class, while also being criticized for encouraging high risk bets, meme coin trading and now betting on a wider variety of prediction markets. It’s reflective of a generation and the financial nihilism they embrace.

This retail cohort is also getting smarter, they may have been on-boarded through meme stocks in covid, but they’ve stayed and diversified, they’ve gotten more patient and continue buying dips.

Steph Guild has been a fascinating guest on many podcasts recently. She closes out the year on risk reversal sharing insights from the data they have on user behavior.

The clearest divide is housing. At 7% mortgages, and real affordability issues, the American Dream of homeownership feels increasingly out of reach for anyone who doesn’t already own.

For the first time on record, the median age of a first-time homebuyer is 40 years old.

What happens when people abandon homeownership?

What’s below the paywall:

Divided Sentiment continued. Hardcore History. Book Reccomendations. Page Spread, my new favorite source for rare books.

As I mentioned previously, if you’d like a free subscription, feel free to reach out on why, I’ll most likely be happy to oblige.

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We dig into The Row's rumored Tribeca flagship, the luxury arms race hitting East Coast skiing with Killington's $3 billion transformation, and why "Storyteller" is replacing "Coder" as the hot job title. Plus: the TikTok deal finally closes (and the consolidation concerns that come with it), Notre Dame's controversial new stained glass, Instagram's leap to TV, Rauschenberg's centennial at the Museum of the City of New York, and fresh creative talent from DotDotDot's year-end Source Code. We close with studio updates, satellite maps, a West Village gallery worth visiting, and books to carry into the new year.

I found this quote quite applicable, processing the sad fact that literacy is on decline. The deterioration of our collective attention span is no longer anecdotal, it is a measurable cognitive shift.

Technology-driven attention span deterioration is real, I’ve noticed a shift myself, and I love to read. Personally, I’m aware of the increased distraction, apps have gotten better at siphoning off my time.

I just looked at my past goodreads challenges, I’ve gone from over 20 books a year in 2018, to 7 in 2025.

As the New York Times recently highlighted, we are pivoting toward a audio and video-first culture that sacrifices the “stamina” required for long-form literacy. This is reflected in the data: high school reading scores have hit 30-year lows, and a 2024 survey reveals teachers now assign an average of only 2.7 whole books per year, favoring “excerpts” over complete narratives.

This erosion persists into adulthood, where National Endowment for the Arts data reveals adult literary reading at its lowest in decades. Daily reading for pleasure has plummeted 40% over the past two decades, with only 48.5% of adults reading at least one book in the past year.

Cognitive neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf warns that our “digital brains” are being rewired for speed and skimming, eroding our capacity for critical analysis. This is the calculated result of “persuasive design,” where behavioral psychologists engineer dopamine-driven loops that prioritize the infinite scroll.

We are trading our depth for a fragmented digital consciousness, forgetting the warning of the Stoic philosopher Seneca:

PUCK’S 2026 MEDIA TRENDS REPORT

The media landscape is changing in radical ways. The past few years have seen streaming massively disrupt television, big networks lose ground to niche channels, advertising give way to a diversification of revenue streams and other fundamental shifts to the media industry at large.

Puck just dropped a media trends report thats pulling insights from a very targeted audience. They polled over 170 media insiders and executives to bring forth some great findings and predictions for the years to come.

Video streaming is vastly surpassing other sectors for growth potential for advertising (See my coverage on youtub’s meteoric rise).

AI is creating an overwhelming concern about the diminished content quality it’s going to cause. That concern overweighs job displacement.

There is a huge disparity between ‘elite’ news sources and general population. Meaning, of the executives surveyed only 7% get their news from Twitter, Threads, or Bluesky while over 50% of Americans are getting their news from those sources.

There is a general tonality of fear and dismay regarding the future of media, this could be specifically attached to the status quo systems but respondents don’t seem to have a bright outlook. Consolidation, and AI anxieties drove that.

MARTY SUPREME MARKETING RUN

This has got to be the greatest marketing run I’ve ever seen for a film. Really its a run for Timmy, homie’s been everywhere in the past month, dropping viral bombs back to back. First the zoom calls, then the merch and genius seeding. Then a Druski coulda been records collab in Brooklyn, into an underground pingpong tourney.

He’s threading pop culture masterfully, and then he drops a remix of 4 Raws leaning into that theory the he IS Esdeekid.

He’s said that a lot of this he’s paid for himself, and that makes sense because its the only way you can MOVE like this.

Flawless Victory.

THE ROW TRIBECA

Issey Miyake’s Iconic Space in Tribeca closed this month after 24 years in the Frank Gehry designed space on Hudson street. Rumors began circulating this week that The Row will take on the space early next year. The row only operates 5 flagships globally, so the fact that their opening a second NYC location is testament to the strength of this market.

Tribeca is seeing a post pandemic commercial renaissance, largely driven by hospitality moves.

Rigor hill proved the appetite for pricey farm to table vibes which paved the way for Meadow Lane. Jean-Georges is planning to take over De Niro’s Tribeca Grill, and the family behind Beef Bar is bringing Paper Moon to the old Sarabeth’s space next year as well.

YEAR END SOURCE CODE

Christopher continues to be a source of inspiration, his DODOTDOT source codes keep me up on talent often not on my radar. Last week he dropped a year end round up of fresh source material.

Some stand outs for me:

• Garance Vallée | Architect & Designer

• Cole Furgeson | Photographer

• Jack Grange | Photographer

• Jake Vanden Berge | Artist

• Sienna Murdoch | Prop Designer & Artist

STUDIO PRACTICE

Settled into my new space, painting resumes.

Newly shot diptych in blue. Large format. 72”x 96” | Acrylic on wood.

More of my studio practice and process on my website.

FRONTIER OF THE YEAR 2025

As far as year end lists go, this ones the most enlightening. From Arb Research a fun site listing things humans discovered and did this year.

FRONTIER OF THE YEAR 2025

Some high notes:

We produced the most energy dense molecule ever (hexanitrogen), brought murder rates down 25% since 2020, a malaria treatment is in sight (leading to three new countries now malaria free), for the first time in history China’s emissions may be falling, we’re making antimatter 8x faster now…The list goes on.

If you want to feel good about the human condition and our capabilities as a species, this lists for you.

DIRECTORS LIBRARY

I just came across Directors Library, unsure how long its been around but what a wonderful tool. I’m constantly looking for both inspiration and new talent, looking through this site there is so much of both. Its a lot of films I’ve never seen before as well.

You can sort by Campaigns, Film, Music Video or if your putting mood boards together they have a Frames section. Highly recommend bookmarking this site.

ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG

Part of a larger centennial celebration of Rauschenberg, the Museum of the City of New York presents Robert Rauschenberg’s New York: Pictures from the Real World.

The exhibit is in three sections looking at the evolution the artists photographic practice and how he incorporated it into his paintings.

1220 Fifth Ave at 103rd St. HOURS: Mon-Fri 10-5 | Sat-Sun 10-6

PAULINE FRANSSON

Swedish artist Pauline Fransson will show new work after a residency at Spazio Sassetti in Florence.

The show, “And now I fell as bodies fall, for dead” is a reflection of her exploration of devotional spaces throughout Florence combined with painting while sick.

An interesting approach to a shows manifesto, exploring the limitations of ones body when your fatigued, with fever, and generally feeling like shit. How that reflects in the work.

NOTRE DAME’S NEW STAINED GLASS

Despite controversy, the cathedral of Notre Dame is moving forward with 6 new stained glass windows by French artist Claire Tabouret. Issue surrounds the fact that the original windows from the 19th century were undamaged in the fire, leaving architects and art historians questioning the move to replace them.

Full-scale, maquettes are now on display at the Grand Palais in Paris.

CODINGS OUT STORYTELLINGS IN

This is the year Vibe Coding took over tech, and decimated what was for the past decade one of the most lucrative and promoted career paths.

As one door shuts another opens. Linkedin postings for the title ‘Storyteller’ doubled in the U.S this year and its becoming one of the go-to buzzwords for executives on earnings calls.

Storyteller is basically a merging of traditional comms, pr and social roles with a rebrand in title. The plethora of new platforms creates opportunities for those great at content creation to catch absurd salaries.

That money could be justified, as were consuming depressing amounts of ‘content.’ Activate Consulting just released a report claiming average time spent on media and technology by U.S. consumers will reach 13 hours and 5 minutes a day. (Multitasking plays a role here, as you can be listening to a podcast while working, allowing consumption to surpass 24 hours.)

This is also an attempt to merge silo’d departments like paid, influencer, social, organic, and other various communication departments into move cohesive structures or ‘storyteller teams’.

Ashwinn Krishnaswamy’s hot take this week made one great point; “Most Companies don’t have a story worth telling”

An area that comes to mind here is PE companies and funds, who are evolving their communication strategies to be considerably more forward facing then they have been in the past.

A16z is an example, not only is Andreessen incredibly outbound, they have begun operating like a media company with their own podcast covering their industry at large, with constant integration of coverage and spokespeople from their portfolio companies. I listen to it, its good.

Founders are becoming much more camera facing, the businesses themselves are acting like brands. I had a call a few weeks back with another top fund looking to develop a comms plan ranging from their social footprint to video podcasts and short form shows.

KILLINGTON’S ASPEN ASPIRATIONS

The East Coast has long been the "brute force" theater of American skiing, defined by bulletproof ice, biting winds, and a culture of grit. However, this identity is facing a massive transformation as the global "luxury arms race" reaches the Green Mountains.

The $3 Billion Bet on the “Aspen of the East”

Great Gulf, a Toronto-based developer, is wagering $3 billion over the next 25 years to transform Killington into a premier destination village. The project, designed by renowned architect Moshe Safdie, plans for 2,300 residential units and a 450-acre commercial hub, fundamentally altering the resort’s “parking lot and a base lodge” aesthetic.

This is part of a broader, high-stakes trend across North America, a broader luxury arms race in skiing, where resorts are chasing high-net-worth crowds amid skyrocketing costs that make the sport feel increasingly elite.

To the west, Deer Valley is investing over $5 billion to double its skiable acreage. I recently wrote about Powder Haven, Reed Hastings’ private mountain development where building lots average $4 million plus annual membership fees up to $100,000.

On the east coast the ‘luxuryification’ has been tried, take Windham Mountain’s 2023 rebrand to a semi-private club: Lifetime memberships hit $200,000, with annual dues around $9,000, emphasizing NYC proximity and hospitality over quality terrain. It’s not a skier’s mountain, it’s fine for kids learning, but the pricing feels off for what you get.

I’m not sure Vermont can capture the après-luxe crowd that flocks to Aspen, Jackson, Sun Valley etc. At over 5 hours from New York, the math starts favoring a flight to Colorado.

Boston is where I’d center marketing efforts.

There’s absolutely an underserved audience on the east coast for luxury amenities, but it will clash with deeply embedded local culture. Vermont’s Act 250, the state’s landmark 1970 land use law, has historically stymied large-scale development. A major point of contention is the planned 50% reduction in resort parking to make room for the village, which critics argue prioritizes overnight high-net-worth guests.

Ultimately, the clash is between the “mid-century shabbiness” of the old lodges and a new “five-star, white-glove” future.

I grew up east coast skiing, you learn to ski on the east, you can ski anything. Writing this stirs gratitude for my dad hauling me to Sunday River and Killington every weekend from ages 4 to 16.

Looking back as a father myself, that is a serious time commitment I’m only now appreciating. My love of skiing can be credited to those trips, and I’ll always have a fond memory of Killington.

ALEX KARPS ASPEN COMPOUND

On the subject of Skiing’s luxury arms race, Palantir CEO Alex Karp just bought a monastery outside aspen, paying a record $120 million (WSJ).

It’s got very Every Battle cult hideaway vibes.

What’s below the paywall:

Instagram Comes to TV. TikTok Deal’s A Go. Live Satellite Tracking Map. K’ab Juun (an incredible west village gallery and store), Book Recommendations.

As I mentioned previously, if you’d like a free subscription, feel free to reach out on why, I’ll most likely be happy to oblige.

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This week: that show’s phoneless crowd, Raoul’s 50th, Hauser & Wirth’s Sicilian expansion, MATTE’s backgammon tourney, MoMA PS1 going free, Solomon’s post-gorpcore growth, the Warner Brothers bidding war, Spotify’s music video play, SpaceX’s record-shattering IPO rumors, Google’s return to Glass, and Pinterest’s 2025 trend forecast.

Below the paywall: Disney bets $1B on OpenAI, McDonald’s pulls their AI ad after three days, Anthropic’s study on why 70% of workers feel judged for using AI, power beaming from space inches closer to reality, and MIT’s ‘near-telepathic’ brain interface.

Key developments in technology, business, finance, and art for the culturally literate and financially curious.

LCD RESIDENCY IS DIALED IN

Wednesday night, I went to UTA’s holiday party, a takeover of the Four Horseman pop up at Knockdown alongside one of the final 2025 shows of LCD’s residency. The whole back bar was quintessentially music industry, all black attire; hoodies, crews, a universal look across the entire bar.

LCD’s performance was extremely dialed in, they have HITS, the synchronicity of that show just feels tight, especially after a month long run. They have 4 shows left in 2025, if you can make it, go see an incredible performance.

The crowd was the most beautiful thing, 99% phone free, it was striking how present that makes a room. Clearly this is generational, this was a heavily millennial crowd, grey hair everywhere including on stage, but the energy was so much better than what I see at most concerts now, I can only imagine what it feels like to perform to a wall of phones.

RAOUL’S AT 50

Speaking of aging gracefully, a true New York institution, Raoul’s celebrated its 50th on Tuesday. An incredible feat, maintaining relevance that long in a city with thousands of options and new hot spots opening monthly.

Raoul’s sits among rare company, Indochine, Mr. Chows (midtown), Balthazar and Odeon come to mind as some of the few places able to last that long and maintain a social currency. There are plenty of places that have lasted a test of time, I put Lugers and Keens in that category, but they are by no means ‘scenes.’ Vanity Fair covers the celebration and an oral history of the Soho institution.

A Thursday res is still a hard ticket, deservedly. One of the best vibes in the city, cozy, familiar and a perfect amount of background noise without being loud. Raoul’s can claim without flinching to have the best version of not one but three city staples; their martini, the bar only burger, and their au poivre.

Raoul’s is perfect for a meal that extends into drinks with a rotation of guests, as random run-ins are what make Raoul’s such a gravitational force in Soho.

Moda Operandi dropped a capsule of some iconic products celebrating the 50th.

OUR BACKGAMMON TOURNEY

Thursday night we hosted our first backgammon party at 7 Spring, which if you haven’t been, is a really cozy, small, chic backgammon lounge next to Supreme in Nolita.

This one came on a whim after I randomly ended up here with friends a month back, I was really impressed with the vibe, cool crowd and a great room. Luck had it my friend Lily was involved, and a month later we had our first backgammon night with the grand prize being a custom MATTE backgammon board of the highest quality. Runner up got a custom Rangers jacket thanks to my friend Reese and the good people at Moose Knuckles.

People are already texting me for another one of these, so we’ll run this back soon.

HAUSER & WIRTH SICILY

Palermo, Sicily brings Hauser & Wirth to 18 properties globally in just three years. This is one of their more ambitious developments yet, Palazzo Forcella De Seta, a 19th century building on Palermo’s waterfront is historically protected and a massive undertaking.

Beyond galleries, Dealers Iwan and Manuela Wirth began expanding into hospitality ventures in 2022 with the success of Manuela, the restaurant operating out of their Las Angeles gallery. In that same year they acquired a substantial property in Scotland with Fife Arms and have continued a global expansion of hotels.

Building roots in the service business is a very smart way to capture and maintain proximity to their collector base. The hotels are all incredibly unique properties, perfect for rotating and showcasing art, and see a constant flow of the same people their aiming to sell works too.

This is playbook were now seeing major luxury houses follow, just last week I wrote about the chrome hearts families acquisition of the Surfrider in Malibu and some of Bernard Arnault’s similar moves.

With significant galleries closing, and so much dour news on the state of the art market through 2025, Hauser & Wirth is a beacon of growth. The gallery also is planning to open a space in Palo Alto in 26’

MOMA PS1 WILL BE FREE

I’m a huge supporter of public access to Museums. Art and knowledge institutions being free keeps society at large exposed and interested to positive cultural forces. The Met has ‘pay what you want’, and thats beautiful. Starting in January MOMA PS1 will wave tuition to all for the next three years, made possible by a donation from Sonya Yu, a creative entrepreneur and art collector.

I grew up taking art classes at the MFA in Boston, as young as 5 they’d let you run around that museum with sketchpads and charcoal, exposing me to masterworks while my pre frontal was forming.

STUDIO PRACTICE

I’m nearly unpacked in my new space, so I’ll be back to new works this week. So in the meantime, two new photos I just received from Figo Wang, who stopped by my old space just before I moved out.

More of my studio practice and process on my website.

WARNER BROTHERS

A lot can happen in a week. Paramount’s hostile $108B counterbid bypasses the board that greenlit Netflix’s $82.7 billion deal last week, going straight to shareholders. WBD has 10 days to respond; expect a counter or lawsuit.

The key difference: Netflix wants the studio and streaming assets (HBO Max, Warner Bros. Pictures, DC Studios), while Paramount targets everything, including CNN and cable networks. Paramount argues their deal closes faster and clears antitrust easier. The Ellison family proximity to Trump, Kushner’s Affinity Partners funding, and backing from Middle East sovereign wealth funds (PIF, QIA, ADIA) tips the political scale.

Trump praised Netflix’s Ted Sarandos but flagged their “very big market share,” vowing to get “involved” in the review, highly unusual for a president to have direct say on corporate deals. Trump wants regime change at CNN, a clearer shot with Paramount owning WBD outright.

Scott Galloway’s No Mercy No Malice zeroes in on consumer impact:

The average household spends $70 a month on streaming, it rings different when you say $850 a year.

As for antitrust, both bidders will argue neither controls 50% of the landscape. YouTube leads TV viewing share at 11.1% (Nielsen, Dec 2024). Tubi is gaining, with 2.2% of TV viewing in October, nearly double HBO Max and Discovery+ combined.

Hollywood’s unions are issuing statements. The DGA raised “significant concerns” for “safeguarding the careers and creative rights of Directors and their teams.” The WGA went harder: “This merger must be blocked... The world’s largest streaming company swallowing one of its biggest competitors is what antitrust laws were designed to prevent.”

Netflix has the industry weary of what this will mean for the future of theatrical releases, despite statements it’ll honor Warner’s current pipeline (slated through 2029).

Historically there is precedent for mergers leading to less theatrical titles. This isn’t a Netflix thing though, it’s a consolidation thing, the clearest recent example is the 2019 Disney-Fox merger. Pre-merger in 2016, Disney and 20th Century Fox together released 26 wide theatrical titles (over 2,000 screens each). Post-merger, the combined Disney output (including 20th Century Studios and Searchlight) has dropped sharply, down to just 14 in 2025, a 46% decline. Box office from former Fox titles alone fell 63% in that span.

Theatrical decline is a whole article in itself, with many factors including consumer behavior, streaming options, and the reduction in cost of large screen HD tv’s.

Netflix simply represents new consumption habits, they broke the mold and were not going back. Theatre attendance has been on steady decline since 2019, seeing fifty percent reduction in attendance over the past six years.

Puck’s editorial spotlight this week by Julia Alexander lays out some of the reasons Netflix needs, and would greatly benefit from the Warner brothers deal. Netflix has seen amazing success with the playbook of pairing high-quality original titles and algorithmically optimized licensed content.

Licensed content accounts for an estimated 44% of Netflix viewing hours. Warner’s quality library (Friends, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones) solidifies their model. If Ellison wins, the logical move is pulling WB content from Netflix entirely.

How this plays out will be interesting, currently its a toss up. Prediction markets (Polymarket) have Paramount at 48%, Netflix at 36%.

The great irony: Blockbuster rejected buying Netflix for $50 million in 2000. In 2010, Jeff Bewkes, then CEO of Time Warner, dismissed Netflix as a threat:

Last week, Bewkes walked it back: “That was an unfortunate flippant remark because I didn’t want to admit how big a threat Netflix streaming really was.”

The Albanian army is now at the gates.

SOLOMONS POST GORPCORE GROWTH

While it played a major role in the explosive growth of Solomon, Gorpcore is over and the brand now has to contend with a significant increase of competitors in the trail running space, according to chief executive, Guillaume Meyzenq in BOF’s recent feature.

Solomon is facing those challenges head on with great product, smart global expansion like LA and a significant Paris outpost, decided investments in becoming a lifestyle brand vs purely technical. Sales outside Europe now account for half the business.

They’ve ridden a wave over the past several years to become a fashion favorite.

The lifestyle pivot, and continued credibility in sportstyle opens them to a market roughly 3 times bigger than running shoes.

We recently worked with Solomon to open the first LA store this fall, competing for line lengths against a same day Skims opening.

The brand saw $1 billion in footwear revenues last year.

MUSIC VIDEOS ON SPOTIFY

This week Spotify added music videos to the platform for premium users in U.S. and Canada. The app continues to innovate on the platform, while music videos themselves are nothing revolutionary, its another way Spotify is capturing users and increasing engagement. Earlier this year they turned on comments for many podcasts and layered in other social components.

Spotify now has 713 million monthly active users, up 11% year-over-year.

2025’s Wrapped saw 200 million users in its first day.

That stickiness is important as Spotify plans on increasing the cost of premium subscriptions in the first quarter of next year.

SPACE X IPO

SpaceX’s rumored 2026 IPO at a $1.5 trillion valuation would shatter records, dwarfing Saudi Aramco’s $29 billion and making it the biggest debut ever.

Elon Musk called Bloomberg’s report “accurate” on X

At 60x projected 2026 revenue of $22-24 billion, SpaceX would trade at multiples only Palantir approaches in public markets. It’s an incredibly pricey valuation, but the fundamentals backing the number are staggering. SpaceX is in a league of their own, on Prof G Markets this week, Scott Galloway acknowledged SpaceX as an “incredible company” with a “much bigger moat” than OpenAI. The industry of space, building rockets, fabrication and material costs are such that its incredibly hard for competition to arise.

SpaceX now carries roughly 90% of the world’s payload mass to space. The company has been instrumental in driving the launch costs per kilo down by over 95% (from $65,000 to under $1,500). Now they’re looking to build data centers in space.

I’m surprised he’s taking the whole company public, I had thought he would spin off Starlink and take that company public. Market reaction to launch failures is going to be volatile, there is no precedent.

Space is HARD as Elon once said, he’s gotta blow a lot of shit up to achieve what he’s doing, quarterly reporting and market fluctuation will be a pain in the ass, but it can also be what funds us becoming multi planetary.

GOOGLE. FOR YOUR FACE

Google plans to try again with wearable vision tech in 2026 after initial failure with Google Glass in 2013. Google teased v2 of the wearable tech as part of The Android Show on December 8. To be fair, they were the first, and looking back 2013 feels incredibly early in regards to tech just not being there yet.

Since then Meta has set the playbook with Ray Ban and Oakley, focus on the tech and get best in class partners that understand how to make a product people will want to wear. Meta proved a good product is possible, within a few more iterations and product cycles these will be transformative to our lives.

Googles initial faux pas was not realizing people don’t want to wear ugly things. This time around they have partnerships in place with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster so they’ve learned a lesson.

PINTEREST PREDICTS™

Pinterest is probably the most suited platform for trend prediction, especially in the areas of design and aesthetics. While instagram, reddit and X are good barometers of social sentiment, fashion and community movement, Pinterest’s purpose as a platform is largely tied to mood-boarding inspiration. Their trend prediction is on point, 88% of predicted trends have materialized. Now the question is how much of that is self fulfilling as a leading platform for inspiration.

DOWNLOAD THE 2026 FULL TREND REPORT HERE

Use AI to filter 80 billion monthly searches from 600 million users and you can pull together predictions across colors, aesthetics, and styles. 67% of the 2026 trends are driven by Gen Z.

Nostalgia is continuing its grip on Gen-Z: “expect a letter writing renaissance in 2026,”

I find Pinterest to be one of the best image and inspiration sourcing platforms, hands down the algorithm is amazing, especially when you power it by uploading your own source material. Many times I’ve found the best imagery here vs other forms of search.

My personal Pinterest archives.

What’s below the paywall:

A big week across the AI landscape. Disney x OpenAI. McDonalds pulls their AI ad after backlash. Anthropic reports on how people are using and feeling about AI at work. Oracle wiffs. Power Beaming & Futurism, Direct Brain interface, Book recommendations.

As I mentioned previously, if you’d like a free subscription, feel free to reach out on why, I’ll most likely be happy to oblige.

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For over a decade the tradition of high stress production through Thanksgiving into that event supernova has been simultaneously invigorating and consuming.

The memes are accurate, the stereotypical personas, all of it. I’ve evolved in passion points as well, I finally track the art now. I’ll shamefully admit to several early years of being there and not even making it to the fairs, lost to the scene.

From early years taking over Soho House when they first put tents on the beach, to filming and producing multi million dollar events, to raves, to club deuce. It’s been a massive business for us and traditionally one of my favorite weeks of the year. We still did things this year, specifically a kick off with Frederic Malle Hosted by Vanity Fair’s Nate Freeman at the Miami Beach Botanical Garden.

Things kept me in New York, mainly moving studios and some demanding projects. Not being there gives an interesting perspective on how much ELSE goes on at the same time.

Outside Basel, ALL THIS happened in a week:

This week’s dispatch covers Black Friday’s record numbers, SKYLRK′ strategic Tokyo debut, Spotify Wrapped′s Polymarket leak, Sam Altman′s ”CodeRed” as Gemini gains ground, Nike x Jacquemus, Chanel′s NY take over, Alex Katz still painting at 98, Chrome Hearts’ hotel acquisition, and the Dells’ $6.25 billion pledge for youth investment. Plus Parsel Systems, JR’s Paris installation, and why luxury brands keep betting on hospitality.

BLACK FRIDAY HIT A RECORD. SORT OF.

Black Friday has become the annual litmus test for American consumption and a great way to measure leading brands. This year’s numbers were an optimistic counterpoint to the drumbeat of negative consumer sentiment surveys over the past several months.

The headline: $11.8 billion in U.S. online sales, a new record and up 9.1% from last year (Adobe Analytics). Between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., shoppers were moving $12.5 million every minute through digital checkout. Alo, Skims, Merit Beauty, and Ilia topped Shopify’s charts.

Teen Brands were the largest driver to in-store, with the most crowded stores Friday in cities across the US belonging to Edikted, Kendra Scott, and Bath & Body Works. Casey Lewis, one of my favorite sources of teen trends, went manual, viewing thousands of tiktoks to provide her recap of most mentioned items and brands.

Large consumption events are a great way to pick leading brands in the zeitgeist, from back to school to sale season, a great way to see a lot of purchase power at once and where its going. Teens this year seem to be leaning towards:

LULULEMON’S VIRAL POLKA-DOT SET - the #1 hot item

Skims unsurprisingly is mentioned across a large majority of videos, surprises to me were, Victoria’s Secret, is relevant again with teens, as is GAP & Free People.

The paradox: Americans feel shitty about the economy but they’re still spending.

The University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index hit 51.0 in November, the second-lowest reading in the survey’s 73-year history. Sentiment has plunged nearly 30% from a year ago. The current reading sits at the 0th percentile of all 575 monthly data points since 1978, meaning there has essentially never been a worse reading for American consumer confidence on record.

The catch: Americans spent more but bought less. U.S. online shopping grew 9.1%, but was driven by a 7% jump in average selling price (Salesforce). Order volume declined 1%. Units per transaction dropped 2%, meaning the growth is almost entirely inflation. Volume barely budged in 2024 either, so consumer spending has been stagnating for two years now.

This is the K-shaped economy in full bloom. Consumer spending in 2025 has been largely driven by high-income households, with the top 10% accounting for nearly half of all spending in Q2 2025, an all-time high in Moody’s dataset going back to 1989.

Buy now, pay later is another elephant in the room. BNPL usage on Black Friday was up 8.9% year over year, driving $747.5 million in online spend (Adobe Analytics). Adobe forecasts $20.2 billion will be spent through BNPL from November through December, up 11% over 2024.

The other story is AI’s infiltration of the buying process. AI traffic to retail websites grew 805% year over year, with $3 billion in online sales driven by AI and agents (Salesforce). Shoppers using generative AI to reach products were 38% more likely to complete purchases (Adobe Analytics). Over 62% of Americans now say they interact with AI at least several times a week (Pew Research).

SKYLRK TOKYO

After launching this summer, Justin Bieber has chosen Tokyo as the first market for SKYLRK’s physical retail with a 4 day pop up in Shibuya. Lines were over 1500 people long starting at 8am on the first day.

It is a really interesting move, the city is known for a high bar when it comes to taste and aesthetic, details matter. North America would be the standard launch playbook, but launching in Tokyo first, will probably do more to drive hype. It also keeps product scarce, much of this collection was a limited Tokyo drop, the hoodies and Japanese denim for example, you’d need to get there.

The level of build out for a 4 day pop up is impressive, everything is custom from the spacial design, down to the hangers. Making a purposeful decision to launch retail in this market shows a real care and attention to all aspects of the brand, beyond just product.

New livestreams teased an upcoming collaboration with Hailey.

RECKONING

50 Cent’s victory lap this week with the release of ‘The Reckoning’ is one for the books. The doc dropped this week on Netflix, and similar to Fyre, never before seen footage leaves you dumbstruck that Diddy continued filming through it all. Also like Fyre, not paying your videographer can bite you in the ass, as thats reportedly how 50’s production team was able to legally acquire all the unreleased tape.

Apparently, ABC was chosen for the exclusive interview because its one of the only channels played in prison. You don’t feud with 50, he takes petty to another level. In 2018, he bought 200 front-row tickets to a Ja Rule concert, just to leave the seats empty.

Diddy sent a bouquet of funeral flowers to 50 last week, they arrived while he was at 11 in Miami, very hit coded.

SPOTIFY WRAPPED

It’s wrapped season, from books (Goodreads is a favorite of mine) to articles and media, brands love putting our annual data to work. Spotify has masterfully owned this for the past several years, creating an annual moment turning our playlists into public confessions. It also works because music is such a personal rorschach test.

Despite my heavy rotation of The Blaze, Ghostface and Paul Kalkbrenner, all my 7th street jazz put my listening age at 71.

Globally, Bad Bunny takes a fourth year on top with 19.8 billion streams. Taylor Swift slides to second worldwide but holds firm as America’s most-streamed artist, followed by Drake and Morgan Wallen in the U.S. top three. The Weeknd, Billie Eilish, and Kendrick Lamar round out the global top five.

For U.S. 13-17-year-olds, Gigi Perez’s “Sailor Song” led tracks, while the 18-24 crowd crowned Kendrick and SZA’s “luther.”

The rollout was a big improvement over last year’s AI podcast misfire. They doubled down on social mechanics with “Wrapped Party,” letting you rope in nine friends for real-time stat showdowns. New layers include “Listening Age,” an interactive Top Song Quiz, and “Wrapped Clubs” sorting listeners into vibe-based communities. Finally, top albums make the cut.

In the world, this years OOH evolved physically, with 50 pop-ups globally, from a Lady Gaga paw on Copacabana Beach, to a 800-foot Chappell Roan hair installation in NYC’s Union Square. Spotify showed a smart evolution of their massive OOH campaigns into IRL events.

THE LEAK

Polymarket traders had the exact global top 10 artists nailed 24 hours early.

Odds for The Weeknd locking third place flipped from ~40% to near-certainty overnight, with the full leaderboard circulating on X by Tuesday evening.

Similar to the Nobel Peace Prize in October, someone scraped early-stage web assets (profile images, JSON endpoints, preview pages) that Spotify had staged for the drop. Were going to see more of this, prediction markets are still the wild west, and any inside information or hacked data access is going to allow front running and manipulation.

The wrapped leak is more proof we’re past the point where platforms can control reveal timelines. The crowd, armed with scrapers and real-money bets, will beat the press release.

STUDIO PRACTICE

Moving day. After 5 years in Greenpoint I had my last week in a space thats been a very special creative refuge. I’m excited to get back to actual painting, after running all over this city, I found a new space in Tribeca, blocks from my house, I couldn’t be happier.

Figo Wang came by for a photo session before I left, he was did a fellowship at MATTE before branching out on his own, a wonderful photographer I highly recommend in New York.

More of my studio practice and process on my website.

PARSEL SYSTEMS

Parsel is hard to put your finger on, as a brand, its really cheeky, mixing this sorta high art aesthetic with not taking itself seriously (see the initial campaign by Roe Ethridge).

As a product its refreshing, I can’t really place it, sitting between utilitarian, highly functional and aesthetically new.

Launched by Nur Abbas, the former Head of Design at Yeezy and Design Director at Nike ACG, its not a bag, its a “modular carrying system” (Office Magazine sums it up well).

I got the big one, its gonna be perfect for the beach. The closure systems, magnetic snaps, neoprene (waterproof), its all very technical.

Theres cool people behind it, some of my best friends. It’s independent, and they are growing the brand through cool associations. Next week, their gonna have a party at FOOD (Lucien Smith’s revitalization restaurant I wrote about a few weeks back), I’ll be there.

CODE RED

Three years after Google declared its own “code red” when ChatGPT burst onto the scene, the tables have turned with Sam Altman sounding the alarm at OpenAI.

According to a leaked memo reported by The Wall Street Journal and The Information, Altman is pivoting teams to urgently upgrade ChatGPT’s speed, reliability, and personalization—shelving plans for advertising, AI agents in health and shopping, and a personal assistant called Pulse.

Google’s Gemini is catching up faster than anyone predicted leading to ChatGPT’s product edge eroding, fast.

Gemini grew to 650 million monthly users by October, with app downloads surging 45% month-over-month in September, fueled by the slick new Nano Banana image model per TechCrunch. ChatGPT still leads with 800 million weekly active users, but its growth has slowed to just 5% from August to November, while Gemini posted a 30% gain in the same window.

That’s a seismic shift when you consider OpenAI had a two-year head start and cultural ubiquity that made “ChatGPT” synonymous with AI the way “Xerox” once meant copying.

What’s driving this? Product parity, or at least perceived parity, combined with Google’s structural advantages. Gemini is baked into search, Android, and the entire Google ecosystem, a billion daily users, and now a superior product leading to frictionless adoption.

The Bleed Out Theory: Google can afford to give Gemini away for free indefinitely. They have the cash flow to sustain a premium product until competitors simply can’t compete. It’s the Amazon playbook applied to AI.

Google has another edge that’s nearly impossible to replicate: they see more of the internet. At Wired’s Big Interview event, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince revealed that Google currently sees 3.2 times more pages than OpenAI, 4.6 times more than Microsoft, and 4.8 times more than Anthropic or Meta. “They have this incredibly privileged access,” Prince said. When your training data advantage is measured in multiples, that’s a moat.

Code Red as Management Tactic

The phrase itself is instructive. “Code red” isn’t just crisis language, it’s a focusing mechanism. Strip away distractions, rally the team around an existential threat, ship faster.

Zuckerberg deployed the same tactic in 2011 when Google launched Google+. According to former Facebook employee Antonio Garcia Martinez’s book Chaos Monkeys, Zuckerberg called an emergency meeting and declared a “lockdown” the day Google+ launched. Facebook went into war mode, froze other projects, and ultimately destroyed the competitor.

The moon race with Russia. The Manhattan Project. When the stakes are high enough, organizations move with terrifying speed and focus.

The question is whether OpenAI can execute that pivot. They’re not a trillion-dollar company with infinite runway. They’re a startup, albeit well-funded, burning cash on compute while trying to build a business model that works. Google doesn’t have that problem.

NIKE JACQUEMUS

Nike continues to claw its way back to athletic cultural frontrunner.

This time with a really clean collaboration with Jacquemus (Hypebeast), both across the product line and its campaign roll out. The film is quirky and stylish, the collection is really simple and chic, and they managed to do an outdoor activation without pissing off environmentalists (Something Arc’teryx fumbled this year with their Himalayas fireworks).

Nike has been hitting some notes with their “Win Now” strategy post appointment of new CEO Eliott Hill, showing signs of a come back (WSJ), but its still early innings.

Some of this I’ve been covering since the summer, from their Scary Good campaign, to ‘did nike loose the youth?’ in previous INTAKES.

CHANEL. NYC. A$AP ROCKY.

Chanel for years has gone head to head with Basel, they may be one of the only brands that can have an annual show directly overlapping with one of the busiest cultural weeks of the year and still get everyone to come, wherever it is.

The impact was outsized this year with a trifecta; the first Métiers d’Art presentation under new creative director Matthieu Blazy, New York City as the backdrop, and a surprise reveal of A$AP Rocky as their new ambassador.

The creative thematic was brought to life exceptionally across, branding and invitation materials. The custom subway map was my favorite.

What’s below the paywall:

Chanel continued. Alex Katz at Gladstone. JR Paris. Creative Directory. Chrome Hearts buys Surfrider. The Hopeful Rise of Youth Investment.

As I mentioned previously, if you’d like a free subscription, feel free to reach out on why, I’ll most likely be happy to oblige.

Read more

“Create like a child, and edit like a scientist”

- Tyler the Creator

Since its Black Friday, and I was late, this week’s free. Also, a good way to see the total content in these; they do take time to produce, around 30 hours a week, so if you’ve got the means support, and if you’d like a free subscription, reach out.

Gratitude brings you into the present moment. I’m most thankful for a pause, to literally do nothing for a few days. Thanksgiving arrives artfully at what for many is the busiest time of the year. Take the moment to completely unplug.

I’m not sure if this is a shared experience but the fourth quarter in my world is absolutely insane. Our busiest season, and this year threw me a curveball, having to find a new studio in under 20 days. I write about this below, and through the experience realized there’s a longer article to share with everything I learned, which I hope other artists or anyone in the market for raw commercial space will find useful.

That said, it completely took over, and for that reason I’m a few days late on this weeks’s article.

This week

Gen Z is officially dismantling the classic marketing funnel, ditching mindless social commerce for IRL inspiration and in-store purchases while crowning YouTube the new king of influence over Instagram and TikTok.

Intake #38 dives into that seismic shift, new threats to YouTube’s dominance as a platform, Wes Anderson’s enduring visual language, the 30th anniversary of La Haine, dance-floor phone bans sweeping clubs, Ken Fulk’s maximalist empire, and my own chaotic 20-day sprint to lock down a new studio in Manhattan. Plus Sarah van Rij’s photography, college radio’s stubborn magic, the White House’s new Genesis Mission for AI-driven innovation, and why Powder Haven might be the most underrated ski town in America.

OLD MARKETING TRICKS DON’T WORK ON A NEW GENERATION

If you work in marketing, have a product or brand, or just want to understand the consumption habits of Gen Z, this digital feature in Vogue is a visual breakdown of how they’ve completely broken the old playbook. (It’s a product of a study done by Archival, a youth culture agency.)

The primary marketplace of social media has evolved, as younger generations have grown up inundated; they are savvy to algorithmic feeds. Instagram has actually fallen to 3rd place in influence.

The ‘metaverse’ didn’t hit for them, they see it as something ‘pushed on them’, a generation so used to technology it’s not novel to them, and brands investing too heavily in digital may be missing out on major opportunities IRL.

The area of frictionless social commerce is ending. Youth reject ‘mindless’ shopping and are now looking for Inspiration online and and are shifting to IRL retail and experiences.

Social media like instagram, is evolving into a search platform, it’s where they research products and trends, rather than purchase. Over 70'% of Gen-Z would prefer to purchase in store, this is a big 180 from millennials who overwhelmingly prefer to shop online.

74 per cent of Gen Zs think IRL experiences are more important than digital ones (compared to 66 per cent of millennials).

3 years ago, we took a bet on Experiential Retail and immersion as a counterweight to digital over saturation. We took on 10,000 square feet in rock center, building out a venue that was designed from the ground up to support experiences. We took all the learnings from our own pain points when producing events, from the cost of bringing in AV, to lack of large modular spaces with cutting edge technology and used that to inform the design of HERO.

Mainstream is edging on niche, teens have indexed away from mainstream for generations, however there is a growing willingness with Gen-Z to embrace more ‘mass’ taste, a different directional trend than millennials.

Doomshopping and over extension. 32% of Gen Z say they’re living beyond their means, 84% have used Buy Now Pay Later platforms and 87% believe they buy more than what they need. Doomshopped purchases are giving guilt rather than joy.

There is a LOT of great info, stats and learnings in this research, I highly recommend a deeper read of the whole report.

YOUTUBE’S SUCCESS PUT A TARGET ON ITS BACK

I’ve written a lot about YouTube’s meteoric rise this year, becoming the most powerful platform on earth (See Hollywood Reporters ‘YouTube just ate TV).

The media landscape is a cage match with sharks though, and YouTube’s success may have put a target on their back. Other platforms with real money to spend are looking at the creator economy playbook and acting accordingly.

Netflix for example is paying attention, inOctober announcing a partnership with Spotify, to bring video versions to a slate of 16 podcasts which will also prevent those shows from airing in entirety on YouTube (NYT). They are also talking to iHeart and SiriusXM for similar deals. 79% of monthly podcast listeners now watch video versions at least sometimes, per Acast data.

By April 2025, YouTube had absolutely dominated Nielsen’s Media Distributor Gauge, claiming a record 12.4% share of TV viewing in the U.S. its third straight month at the top and the platform’s best showing ever. YouTube’s ad revenue alone outpaced Netflix’s total haul last quarter ($10.6B vs. $9.8B), and when you add subscriptions like Premium and Music, it’s 1.5x bigger.

YouTube now has to retain top talent they have grown or brought over to the platform. YouTube’s first Creator Premieres showcase to present new programming from top creators like Ms. Rachel (her first holiday special) and Trevor Noah (a stand-up special dropping December 2025) was a film festival style event at New York’s Metrograph theatre. It’s basically YouTube’s version of TV upfronts, pitching to advertisers and showing how creator-led content is the future.

The stakes are high, homegrown talent like Mr.Beast signing a reported $100m deal with amazon for Beast Games is an example of the flight the platform must defend against. The show became Amazon’s #1 single source of new customers in 2024.

Ms. Rachel, with 13.1 million YouTube subscribers, could be a prime opportunity for Netflix to convert a dedicated fan base to a paid audience Fortune. Her videos typically rake in millions of views, with her most popular attracting 1.1 billion hits

YouTube has paid out $70B to creators over three years at a 55/45 split, but the opaque demonetization is something that rivals could exploit.

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos sparked controversy at a Paley Media Council event in March when he compared YouTube to the minor leagues, suggesting it’s a place for creators to “cut their teeth or develop an idea” before graduating to Netflix.

The war for creator talent represents a fundamental shift in how traditional media views YouTube. No longer dismissible as user-generated content, YouTube has become, as one creator put it, “the epicenter of culture” The Hollywood Reporter.

WES ANDERSON. THE ARCHIVES

At The Design Museum London is exhibiting over 600 models, props and costumes from Anderson’s films. Opening this month and running into July of 2026.

Anderson is so practical in his process, he makes real tangible things and thats going to make for an incredible exhibit. One of my favorite Anderson ‘tricks’ is the incredible cross section esque’ cuts he does. Used heavily in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, where the whole submarine was a scale model the camera would pan around with different scenes unfolding.

COLLEGE RADIO STAYS ALIVE

88.9 WERS holds a special place in my heart, and beautifully it’s still live on air.

When I was in high school, I worked at a bike / ski shop, building bikes in the summer and tuning, mounting skis all winter. The beauty of this job was we were in the BACK and got left alone for the most part, to just tinker with tools and listen to music. Radio is deeply connected in my mind with this beautifully bliss time in my life.