The headline was a lie, I am fortunate to not find myself in Pennsylvania watching a groundhog with a 40% shooting percentage over the last decade predict the weather1. I’m writing to you from Cosmic Coffee in South Austin, celebrating an overdue end to an overwhelming January with breakfast tacos and a cold brew mainline.
How are you doing? I won’t lie, I struggled to get the car into fifth gear in the first few weeks of the year. Based on my conversations with many of you over the past few weeks, I am guessing quite a few of you feel some of the same. Or, even if you’re feeling good, you’re detecting that same “the vibes are off” energy that’s been going around.
Witnessing the destruction in Los Angeles took a major toll. The political maelstrom that packed more new storylines into two weeks than the entire George H.W. Bush presidency had in four years was exhausting. I don’t use TikTok, but I’m aware of its influence in the world enough to notice a weird shift in online energy after the shutdown and ByteDance’s performative restoration act2.
All of those no doubt contribute, but after talking to a lot of people I think there’s an undercurrent of something else that’s been building for some time. Between a wave of political change and then a business future that’s now shrouded in the fog of A.I., I have distilled two pent up impulses in my head. Problems I need to solve in 2025. Let me know if you feel any of the same:
Waking up in the metaverse — I think we got it wrong. The metaverse isn’t a failed Zuck bet and hasty rebrand, nor a relic of the ‘web3’ blip. It’s a place that we spend too much time now that just happens to have a much lower-fidelity form factor. Holding TikTok six inches from your face is just playing a basic voyeur game, then you switch into another app on your phone to play a game with friends. People, we have a lo-fi metaverse connecting us 24/7. I can’t escape this feeling that the version of the doomsday clock that puts us inside the matrix is minutes from midnight3 if don’t recognize how far we’ve already tumbled down the rabbit hole.
The sea of sameness and a rising tide of A.I. — Kyle Chayka's Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture and Alex Murrell's "Age of Average" highlight how algorithms and "best practices" push everything toward a safe, predictable middle. Beth Bentley recently posed the bracing question: "Is the algorithm making us LESS stylish, LESS interesting, LESS...ourselves?" All of this at the start of an A.I. age that will create exponentially more content from the pieces of today’s algorithmically-optimized blanding. The challenge isn't just recognizing this homogenization – it's creating space for genuine creativity and distinctiveness to flourish. What changes – both cultural and technological – could help break us out of these feedback loops instead of reinforcing them?
This Week
There’s a lot to unpack there, which I’m going to leave for another day as I head out to BRXND.ai in LA this week to talk these ideas out (and find some more optimistic questions to ponder as well). I’m as big of a believer as ever in the power of technology to enhance the human experience, just spending more time thinking about the ‘how’ these days.
All of that aside, there are still plenty of good things going on in the world, and I’m going to highlight a few below. One such bright spot that I’ll start with: everyone wish a happy birthday to my brother Kevin, celebrating out in California with his new neighbor (and blockbuster Lakers acquisition) 🍻🍗🎂
🎉 Additional shout-outs this week: Happy birthdays to Shakira–also celebrating today–along with my Blogs with Balls co-founder Don Povia (Wednesday), Axl Rose and Bob Marley (Thursday), and Charles Dickens (Friday).
Thank you to this week’s sources: [SIC] / Billy Chuck / Feed Me / How Long Gone / Posting Nexus / Blackbird Spyplane / Garbage Day / Marginal Revolution / Harper’s Weekly Review / Morning Brew / OffBall / BRXND / Kottke
The End of an Era
Months after his arrival from Chipotle made headlines and drove the stock up 20%, new CEO Brian Niccol has started to put his stamp on Starbucks. First, a new ad during the Golden Globes with a decidedly different vibe, this week came a series of changes to the in-store experience:
To-go cup Sharpie messages are back and the condiment bar are back
Baristas are now instructed to “warmly” engage with customers, and to always ask if they’re staying or leaving
In-store customers get ceramic mugs and free refills for iced or hot coffee and tea4
Then comes the big one: people are no longer allowed to use the restroom, get a free cup of water, or hang out without buying something.
This got employees and their labor unions up in arms5 and has sparked at least some discussion more broadly about public bathrooms. I’m not sure exactly when we agreed the expectation of public restroom availability should be on our coffee shops and fast food restaurants, but it’s one area where American business owners would be just fine with government intervention.
I don’t need to inventory the list of “this is why we can’t have nice things” that happens in the public restrooms America does have, and I can list at least five major priorities in any major city that I’d probably prioritize ahead of increasing the public toilets per capita. I concede that we’re stuck with having to wait in line and buy something being the default setting6.
Still, let me daydream about an America where we could have public bathrooms like these Tokyo:




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This is Growing Up
Screens Have Taken Over Classrooms. Even Students Have Had Enough. (WSJ)
Kids Are Having Birthday Parties at Sephora Now (Business of Fashion)
How Zyn Conquered The American Mouth (GQ)
What a difference four years makes:
The long-held hemline index, a theory that correlates the strength of the economy with women’s skirt lengths—minis in a bull market, midis in bear—doesn’t quite fit our current sociopolitical moment, but it could make more sense to consider what might be called the boob index. What does it say about the times we’re in when vocal attention is paid to breasts in the public sphere?
NAOMI FRY
What We See in Lauren Sanchez’s Cleavage
(The New Yorker)
Status & Culture
Netflix to Open Restaurant in Las Vegas Next Month as Live Experiences Business Expands (Hollywood Reporter)
Why the Sundance Film Festival is becoming more important for marketers (Digiday)
The Brand That Left Social Three Years Ago (Link in Bio)
How is Fortnite's Attempt to Become the YouTube of Gaming Going? (Julia Alexander / Posting Nexus)
Louis Vuitton Becomes Official Partner of Formula 1 (Hypebeast)
The Next Big Style Brag for Men? ‘It’s Not Cashmere. It’s Yak.’ (WSJ)
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Price Tower (his only skyscraper ever built) will be Sold for $1.4 M (artnews)
Archaeologists Are Finding Dugout Canoes in the American Midwest as Old as the Great Pyramids of Egypt (Smithsonian)
What happened to Hailey Welch? Hawk Tuah girl disappears after crypto “scam” (Dexerto)
Spirit Airlines bans see-through clothing and ‘lewd’ body art (L.A. Times)
Hyundai unveils electric rickshaws "tailored to India's unique environment" (dezeen)
And finally…
As a fitting bookend to all of the questions about our relationship to technology and media posited in the upfront, Leigh Singer gathered more than 50 clips from movies that break the fourth wall:
We’ll talk again soon, hopefully without screens between us.
Cheers,
BUNCH
FWIW, Punxsutawney Phil, the once-a-year oracle of meteorology, saw his shadow and predicted the year would see a longer winter.
The kissy-kissy face at the President upon the app’s reactivation didn’t go unnoticed by the kids.
I promise you Andreesen and others will be romanticizing (and funding) some sort of future that sounds a lot like The Matrix by the end of 2026.
Excluding cold brew and fun drinks like lattes or Refreshers.
Understandably, b/c would you want to add enforcement to your list of duties without a pay increase?
We’ll see how Starbucks’ move actually changes anything (I am very skeptical about baristas newfound will to enforce, as many stores already try to behave this way).
Maybe the traffic migrates over to CVS and Walgreens, where they have all of the actual products locked up but sneaking into the shitter is remarkably easy in most locations.