| Welcome, Weekenders! In this newsletter: |
| • The Big Read: Microplastics are Silicon Valley's new big worry |
| • Media: Beehiiv, the next billion-dollar newsletter startup? |
| • Plus, our Recommendations: "Camp Shame," "Algospeak" and "KPop Demon Hunters" |
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| Leave it to Las Vegas to stir up tensions between Hollywood and Silicon Valley. |
| The Sphere, the orblike amphitheater owned by billionaire James Dolan, will stage a showing of "The Wizard of Oz" over Labor Day weekend, presenting the classic film as it's never appeared before. This version, altered by artificial intelligence, adds new footage to widen the frame and stretch the film across the Sphere's enormous screens, in a process called "outpainting." (I always enjoy it when some bit of jargon tries to hide reality behind a curtain.) |
| The movie industry thinks the Sphere's "The Wizard of Oz" amounts to cinematic sacrilege. It's irritating the entertainment elite at a time when the industry is already deeply worried about how AI might erode its business. And Dolan certainly did himself no favors by insisting his goal was "not to modify the film at all." C'mon, that was absolutely the goal! And he made that intention impossible to miss: He literally plastered it all over a giant globe. It's like the Wicked Witch insisting she's not out to get Dorothy after scrawling "SURRENDER DOROTHY" in the sky via broomstick. |
| Rather than pretend otherwise, Dolan and everyone else in the business of AI-modified entertainment should just be up front what they're offering: an entirely new medium (and in the case of "The Wizard of Oz" at the Sphere, a limited chance to experience it in a place that's as much like Oz as you can find). |
| As AI makes these productions more common, I think we should embrace them just as we do a Broadway revival or an opera's restaging: as a reinterpretation rather than a replacement. No one skips "La Bohème" just because it's not precisely the Puccini original. |
| With Friends Like You, Mr. President |
| Donald Trump sure seems keen to stick it to onetime ally Rupert Murdoch at every opportunity. |
| Several weeks ago, he decided to sue Murdoch after the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal published a story on Jeffrey Epstein that involved Trump. Then a couple days ago, Trump asked a federal judge in Miami to compel Murdoch to answer questions under oath before the end of the month. Trump's thinking ahead! It'll take years to get a trial, and as his filing points out, Murdoch "has suffered from multiple health issues throughout his life [and] is believed to have suffered recent significant health scares.…Taken together, these factors weigh heavily in determining that Murdoch would be unavailable for in-person testimony at trial." |
| I just hope Trump, 79, and Murdoch, 94, save time in the deposition to battle over the issues that matter most to them, like whether Tootsie Rolls really are better than Necco Wafers.—Abram Brown |
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| "When we threw up a landing page, we didn't know that people would want it," admitted Scott Hinkle, co-founder and CEO of Throne. The Austin, Texas–based startup hopes to popularize a smart toilet (called Throne) that uses cameras and sensors to monitor health concerns. "We were just testing the idea—like, 'Is this a bridge too far?' |
| "And what we found is there is a tremendous appetite for what we're doing," he said. |
| That's especially true of the Silicon Valley elite, who are looking for such new devices to combat their worries about the microplastics—tiny shards measuring less than 5 millimeters—that some scientists say are accumulating in our bodies at an alarming rate, according to Weekend's latest Big Read from our Ann Gehan. The technorati have responded with passion-project research and a growing number of diagnostic startups, such as Throne and Proxima Health, which wants to take a blood-filtration device mainstream. |
| "So much of medicine and healthcare has been, like, add more to your body, take another pill, take another supplement," said Proxima co-founder Mike Petegorsky. "This idea of subtractive medicine, where we're taking out the stuff we don't want, is something people will really respond to." |
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| What if I told you lots of people you'd think would be on Substack are actually flocking to a competing newsletter startup called Beehiiv—even Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie himself? Well, it's all true. (McKenzie writes a media column for Breaker, a new publication launched on Beehiiv by Lachlan Cartwright, the former Daily Beast journo.) |
| And it's why a mounting buzz surrounds Beehiiv, reports Jessica Roy, a Weekend newcomer who's previously contributed to the likes of The New York Times, New York magazine and The Wall Street Journal. The startup has reached $20 million in annual recurring revenue, elbowing into the market with better design tools and a more sophisticated content-publishing system. |
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| Listening: "Camp Shame" (iHeart Radio) |
| In the 1980s and into the '90s, Camp Shane in Ferndale, N.Y., achieved a measure of fame as one of the nation's leading weight-loss camps. Celebrities like Oprah talked it up—and sent their kids there. (Campers remember Mike Tyson's daughter getting dropped off in a limousine.) The place was pricey, but as owners David and Selma Ettenberg liked to point out, they got results: Kids might drop 30 pounds or more in a matter of weeks. It was brutal and dangerous, as "Camp Shame" host Kelsey Snelling saw firsthand when she was a counselor there for several years. Nevertheless, her podcast isn't a grim "Serial"-style program. Rather, she presents her investigation more like a stern-faced MTV documentary that highlights Camp Shane as both cautionary tale and cultural artifact. |
| Reading: "Algospeak" by Adam Aleksic |
| Know what "Haylor" means? What about "Gaylor"? Or "Hiddleswift"? Perhaps the latter can provide a clue: They're all portmanteaus coined and spread by Taylor Swift devotees online—a form of linguistic shorthand that's become part of the Swiftie sociolect, as an anthropologist might call it, and one that algorithmic social media has helped supercharge. |
| More and more, so much of modern culture and language hinges on what we read on the internet, and the evolution depends largely on what social media companies decide to show algorithmically, argues author Adam Aleksic, who has considerable social media bona fides himself as @etymologynerd. The end result is a little startling. "You might even feel surprised at how well the algorithm 'knows you,'" Aleksic, 24, writes. "In reality, though, the algorithm helped to create your identity." |
| Watching: "KPop Demon Hunters" (Netflix) |
| The animated feature film "KPop Demon Hunters" is exactly what its title suggests—and wonderfully, fizzily much more. Yes, it takes place in South Korea, where a megapopular female trio, Huntr/x, must balance the demands of rabid K-pop stardom with the need to protect the planet from the wicked Gwi-Ma and his forces of evil. Stylish, vibrant animation pushes the movie along at a brisk clip, but what really makes it special is its soundtrack, one of the best of the year. Several weeks before the film climbed Netflix's rankings, those songs rocketed to the top of Spotify's charts. Any number of them could, quite honestly, contend for song of the summer, including "Soda Pop," the hit ditty from the girls' nemesis: the Saja Boys, a group of teenage demon heartthrobs. |
| Much of the joy of "KPop Demon Hunters" echoes the one I experienced from "Coco," another film with catchy music, underworldly visits and a vibrant depiction of a culture little seen in mainstream animation. My overwhelming enthusiasm may seem unexpected, but really, it shouldn't come as a surprise: The film comes from Sony Pictures Animation, the studio's latest offering since its 2023 "Spider-Verse" sequel.—Abram Brown |
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