June 20, 2023

what we've been watching...

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

Business

Beyhive Inflation: Sweden’s inflation rate exceeded expectations in May, and economists are putting the blame squarely on Beyoncé. Queen Bey kicked off her worldwide Renaissance tour in Stockholm last month and fans weren’t shy about attending — leading to sold out shows and sold out hotel rooms (restaurants and hotels contributed to 0.2% of the 8.2% core inflation rate in May). “Beyoncé is responsible for the extra upside surprise this month,” Danske’s chief economist in Sweden Michael Grahn said. 

Paypal Memos: The Stringer Bell rule of criminal conspiracies seems to be getting a lot of use these days. You may have read that last week a Harvard Morgue manager was arrested for allegedly selling body parts without the permission of Harvard Medical School. This story takes some wild turns, but our favorite part was the Paypal exchange of $200 with a memo reading “braiiiins.” Binance’s Chief Compliance Officer was cited by the SEC in a text stating “we are operating as a fking unlicensed securities exchange in the USA bro.” And we won’t even go into the Mar-A-Lago documents texts, photographs or suspicious draining of the pool. As Matt Levine points out, online payment platforms should have a pop-up after you type in the memo field that is like “are you confessing to, or making jokes about, a crime in this field? Don’t do that,”

Technology

Front Page of the Internet: Last week we wrote about the revolt at Reddit, where many moderators of Reddit communities took the subreddits dark or private in protest of Reddit’s new API changes (at peak protest some 8,000 communities went dark). Steve Huffman, Reddit’s CEO, didn’t take too kindly to the protests, and he argued that the protests had gone on too long and without community input. So the moderators of some communities took a vote, and now several of the largest subreddits are back open, but have changed their rules after a vote: r/pics, r/gifs, and r/aww, now only allow posts about comedian and Last Week Tonight host John Oliver, and r/iPhone is now dedicated to "dashing images" of Apple chief executive Tim Cook. Reddit moderators are mostly volunteers, and while Reddit seems to be hoping to push its users to its own app and away from third-party applications, bashing your user community doesn’t seem to be the optimum path.

Intel goes East: Intel has agreed to invest $25BN in Israel in order to build a microchip manufacturing plant. The deal will be the “largest investment ever” in Israel, according to Prime Minister Netanyahu. Intel already had a facility in the country, but it has been expanding its footprint globally as it attempts to compete with Taiwan’s TSMC, especially in the wake of the demand for chips from AI. (Bytedance, the owner of TikTok, reportedly bought 100k or $1BN worth of NVIDIA chips just in the first half of 2023.)

Old Becomes New Again: Apple announced several new features to its latest operating system update this week, but some of these updates are actually inspired by old school, analog technology. Apple will be launching Live Voicemail which sounds odd since no one actually answers or uses their phones to make phone calls, but, remember when you had an answering machine, and you could hear someone leaving a message and you could pick up mid-message? That is one of the new features from Apple. Another will be to easily share your contact information, killing the business card for good, really, we mean it, this time.

NASA App: NASA has updated their App, and if you are a Space geek like us, you know that there were a lot of reasons for this much needed upgrade. For a full review of the features, here is everything you need to know. We agree with the assessment and we like having all the NASA info in one place, NASA tv and and the ISS sightings. Still we are lazy, and our favorite app for the night sky: SkyView Lite.

Fake Engines: Electric vehicles have a tendency of sneaking up on us, so we appreciate that some car makers have considered adding noises to their vehicles in an effort to avoid running over pedestrians especially when they are reversing. However, we don’t quite understand the impulse to add a fake stick shift. We learned to drive on a stick, and yes, we love our manual, but the point of one is to feel the road and to have control, not to play with a joystick. So if you are going electric, go electric, let go of the past and let go of the gears. If you want to hear the sound of a roaring engine, go play a video game or watch Formula One. We’ll be the one laughing at you while your fake engine sounds “like a bobcat that was angry about being neutered.”

Culture

Netflix Bites: Netflix is opening a pop-up restaurant in Los Angeles that will feature food inspired by its shows. While we were hoping for meals inspired by its originals like a feast set in The Crown or The Witcher, Netflix is instead bringing its reality shows to life with offerings from Chef’s Table and Drink Masters.

Spanglish: We are from South Florida, so this story made us want to call our Spanish teacher: “a new dialect of English is forming in South Florida…that borrows lexical and semantic rules translated from Spanish,” and is distinct from Spanglish. For instance, in Miami, you’ll hear “get down from the car” instead of “get out” which is a literal translation of the Spanish, or “throw a photo” instead of “take” one. One more reason you’ll need a passport when traveling to Florida.

Orca Uprising: You may have noticed that the Ocean seems to be fighting back lately: Orcas have been attacking ships with increased regularity, sharks attacked a Netflix crew while filming a docuseries, and a submersible carrying tourists en route to the Titanic went missing on Sunday. Most of the Orca attacks have taken place off the coast of Spain (12 attacks so far in June), and some have speculated that “the female in the pod known as White Gladis may be exacting revenge for an injury gleaned from a boat rudder.” While we are personally rooting for Gladis, some researchers say the whales are merely having fun: “socializing, yucking it up with each other.” One unfortunately name author, however, in the Atlantic no less, claims “Killer Whales Are Not Our Friends,” and we think Jacob Stern should lose his editorial license along with his sense of humor.

Dreamhouse: Architectural Digest is famous for taking us on tours of houses that we can only dream of setting foot in, and now they are taking us on a behind the scenes tour of the one and only Dreamhouse: Barbie’s. The attention to detail on the set is stunning with 2D decals in the kitchen, no water or fire — just a constantly filled pool and bubble bath, the always selected outfit behind plexiglass in the over the top dream closet, and even Barbie floating down to her car (who used the stairs?). (There is even a book on the coffee table titled Moby Barbie.) The Barbie film set used so much pink paint that it even caused an international shortage. The movie opens July 19, so get your Barbie-inspired outfits ready.

— Lauren Eve Cantor

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