In this issue:

PRESENT
-Apple fucks up the game again-
-The invisible shopper you’ll never see-
-The issue with underground hip-hop’s hyper-distribution-

PAST
-1900s: How 28 men got stranded in the South Pole for 3 years-
-1st century: A royal tomb carved out of a giant rock-

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
― Abraham Lincoln

Tech

🔥 Temp Check: Apple Vision Pro

The Apple Vision Pro is out, and the world is doing the thing: Memes, videos, and hot-takes are flooding the interwebs.

The general sentiment is either one or a combination of the following:

a) It’s uncomfortable, unnatural trash.
b) It’s awesome and I will live inside the VR space forever.
c) It’s not there yet, but it’s a signal of the greatness to come.
d) It’s the end of the world.

But why worry about the future when there are funny memes and tweets to laugh at right now?

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Twitter says:

King says:
“I like God-made reality too much to engage in BS like this.”

Fashion

How the invisible super-rich shop.

A tranquil, dark, and seemingly invisible lane for the super-rich to shop in is being built by luxury houses. This all springs from a demand from a customer who longs for something beyond luxury. They want:

• Secret, isolated shopping salons.

• Unique items that there’ll only ever be one of.

• Luxuries that money cannot buy.

• Most importantly real relationships with the real people they’re buying from.

According to a case study by BoF, houses like Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Tiffany & Co., and MyTheresa are making huge efforts to satisfy the needs of the super-rich - which by the way is a measly 2% of all of their customers.

Why? Because this 2% segment drives 40% of all revenue. In fashion-industry speak, these 2% are called EICs: extremely important customers. And they’re more important than ever now.

Times are rough, the rest of the 98% would rather hold onto their money and pull back on luxury spending. EICs don’t have that problem, so luxury houses are aggressively trying to rake in EIC spending by trying to understand their needs.

✦”Give me the good good stuff”✦

Shoppers, EIC or not, are more climate-aware now; people want the unique and the long-term. For luxury houses, this means increasing prices and stocking unique one-of-a-kind pieces.

Tiffany & Co calls this supplying “once-in-a-lifetime acquisitions” of rocks that nature’s hand only creates once every billion years. BoF reports one of these acquisitions: a 71-carat fancy vivid yellow rough diamond from the Ekati Mine in Canada. And it’s working, Tiffany reported a 300% growth since the LVMH acquisition in 2021.

Here’s said rock:

✦”In the good good room, with the good good people”✦

And of course, this type of shopping can’t happen anywhere with anyone. For such spending to happen EICs need wining, dining, conversation, and personal relationships with a high-tier service staff that are friends first, and salespeople last.

This has to do with the unique emotional profile of EICs, a consequence of people always wanting to squeeze money out of them. This means that shilling a product won’t work; instead, the centerpiece becomes building relationships and trust.

Gucci’s VIP salon strategy is an invitation-only model. These invitations welcome EICs to an intimate, tailored space far secluded from the prying eyes of the masses. In there EICs will find products costing more than €40.000 and up to millions of euros for high jewelry. According to BoF, this has worked wonders for Gucci, driving higher spending and helping develop long-term face-to-face relationships with customers.

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King says:
“The past decade has seen an extremely wide distribution of designer and luxury goods. These days, anybody anywhere can get these products. Logically then, the super-rich’s tastes are adapting to attempt to outmaneuver the rest.”

Music

Xaviersobased: speedrunning underground rap

Xaviersobased’s newly released album Keep It Goin Xav was given a score of 8.2 by Pitchfork and named Best New Album.

That's higher than:
Lil Uzi Vert's Pink Tape, 5.7.
Travis Scott's Utopia, 5.7.
Drake's For All The Dogs, 6.5.
Yeat’s Lyfë, 7.0.
Playboi Carti’s Self-titled, 7.3.
Ken Carson’s A Great Chaos, 7.8.
Kanye West's 808s & Heartbreak, 7.6.
And the same as Kanye’s The College Dropout, 8.2

There’s a problem with this, and it’s not the score. Xaviersobased is a 20-year-old kid who’s barely racking up 100k views on his videos.

✦How are they even finding this stuff?✦

Pitchfork is a media institution under Condé Nast, which makes it a part of a multi-billion dollar operation. Why are they reporting on this? And it’s not just them, several Gen-X-led institutions are reviewing this music too:

• Rolling Stone named Xaviersobased on a list of 50 Innovators Shaping Rap’s Next 50 Years.

• New York Times, a 200-year-old institution, is covering these rappers on their music podcast.

For a big media conglomerate to report on an underground rap act so early in its development was unheard of 5 years ago.

But what’s new isn’t the fact that they’re reporting. After all, hopping onto trends just to stay relevant is the name of their business.

✦The normie is evolving✦

What is new is how fast these guys are catching on. Just 7 years ago today’s household acts like Trippie Redd, Playboi Carti and Yung Lean were invisible to Gen-X-led media institutions despite racking up millions of views.

Now, underground rap (and information in general) gets into the hands of those who should’ve been late adopters almost instantly - all thanks to the sacred algorithm gods.

☀️The bright side: The quick exposure is great for these young artists. These guys will blow up, no question.

🌘The dark side: Will they get spit out just as quickly? Phreshboyswag, nettspend, and xaviersobased are speedrunning the whole underground rap scene and might get redundant before they’ve even had a chance for their creativity to mature to its fullest potential.

As always, time will tell.

• This video was inspired by fash1r300’s video: XavierSoBased gets rated higher than Kanye, Travis, Carti, Uzi & More

• No idea who any of these rappers are? Have a listen:
  xaviersobased - special
  phreshboyswag - hottie
  nettspend - 2024 Freestyle

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YouTube says:

King says:
“What the fuck is this? Why did you write this? Do people care about children rapping? Get this out of my face.”

Quick hits.

• Wall Street Journal released a big investigative article on The money and drugs that tie Elon Musk to some Tesla directors.

• ZYN, the nicotine pouch, sees soaring sales in the US with a 66% sales spike. It’s especially popular within tech and finance industries. Peter Thiel (Facebook, PayPal, Palantir), says nicotine raises your IQ by 10 points. Lol.

• King Charles III was diagnosed with cancer.

• Killer Mike was arrested moments before he won three Grammys.

• Nike is down bad. Researchers are finding that retailers are slashing prices on 44% of their Nike sneakers.

• Taylor Swift gets her fourth Album of the Year Grammy, the only other artists with that honor is Frank Sinatra, Paul Simon, and Stevie Wonder.

PAST

History

Their ship sank in a place nobody had been.

They were stuck; held hostage by a dense pack of Antarctic ice. Several months were spent sailing the harsh arctic seas toward the South Pole, but nothing prepared them for the long, agonizing pain of the Endurance slowly being crushed by ice.

She was a glorious ship, handcrafted by Norwegians who had first-hand experience of whaling in the harshest of climates; so, every detail of the ship was designed to ensure maximum durability.

This meant that she was insanely strong. Any other ship would have been crushed in a week or so. But as the months dragged on the crew realized that her doom was star-written. The crushing ice would soon claim her, and after 497 days she sank.

✦The original mission✦

The 27 men onboard led by Sir Ernest Shackleton were on a mission granted by the British monarchy itself to do what had never been done before: They were going to be the first to cross the South Pole; the Imperial-Trans Antarctic Expedition they called it.

These men were well prepared for anything except sinking before they even reached the South Pole. Their supplies included:
- Enough food to last two years.
- 60 dogs, trained for sledding across the polar expanse.
- A collection of equipment including guns and tools.
- Robust, warm clothing.

But fate had shuffled. These supplies, meant for a groundbreaking journey, became their lifeline for survival for the next 2 years.

On November 21, 1915, the Endurance met her fate. Her sinking was expected months ahead, so the men had plenty of time to accept their grim reality and strip the ship of everything they needed to survive.

Their new mission: escape. Head north, the same way they came.

✦The survival plan✦

Moving across the densely packed ice, they dragged three lifeboats, each weighing about a ton, plus some more tons worth of food, tobacco, equipment, supplies, tents, and sleeping bags.

Their diet consisted of meager portions of the food supply, plus whatever wildlife they could hunt. Seals, penguins, and sea leopards were essential for survival, as they were not only food but their fat was also their only fuel to heat their portable stove from which they got heat and could cook. On a good day, they’d slaughter some 300 penguins, which was barely enough for 28 starving men.

For the first year or so, their only way back was to drift on the floating islands of ice. They were at the mercy of a combination of their navigation skills and wherever the wind felt to blow them.

As they moved north, the ice grew thinner, breaking under their feet. It was time to get on the boats. The dogs were slaughtered and eaten, their sledding capabilities weren't of much use on the open sea. After mounting their lifeboats, they embarked on one of history's most perilous open-boat journeys to the islands north of the South Pole.

✦Finally home✦

After half a year, a rescue division of the expedition team reached South Georgia Island. They were going to fetch help for the rest of the men, who were left on an island to wait for help.

After another month of travel, the rescue crew set foot on South Georgia Island, and they were unrecognizable. They looked like monsters. Their Burberry coats had been completely distorted by water, their hair was shoulder-length and their faces were black from facing the stove for years.

When Ernest Shackleton came knocking at his old friend Thoralf Sørlle’s door, he was met with disbelief.

“Who the hell are you?”
“My name is Shackleton”, he replied.
Legend has it that Sørlle turned away and wept.

A rescue expedition was promptly organized, and all men came home alive.

(If you want to read more about the Endurance, I recommend the legendary book ‘Endurance’ by Alfred Lansing. A fantastic story you won’t regret reading. -S)

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King says:
“My type of party. No phones, no girls, no drugs. Just straight vibes.”

​

/Architecture

The Lonely Castle

We’ll never know who this amazing tomb belonged to. It’s known as the Qasr al-Farid or the Lonely Castle. It’s a 2000-year-old tomb in Hegra, an ancient city in Saudi Arabia. What we do know one thing though: whoever deserved a four-story monument cut out of a giant rock as a grave, must’ve been very wealthy and influential.

✦The story of the Nabateans✦

These types of graves belong to the Nabateans; some of the wealthiest people of ancient times. In their heyday, they controlled a significant part of the Incense Route, a network of land and sea that connected the Mediterranean with Africa and the Middle East.

The Incense Route was a big moneymaker, as it was the main trading route from which luxury goods came. This meant that the Nabateans controlled the flow of goods and things only kings were interested in, such as incense, myrrh, Indian spices, precious stones, pearls, ebony, wood, feathers, animal skins, and silk.

This isn’t the only tomb of its kind though. Many Nabateans grew immensely wealthy and powerful. And so, when they died, they signaled their wealth by creating these seemingly impossible graves, cut out of mountains and rocks. Throughout their old kingdom, you can find amazing tombs like these.

✦The Lonely Castle’s enigma✦

The Lonely Castle is one of the most famous ones though. It’s special because, for some reason, it stands alone. Most of the tombs in this style were constructed in groups, often in mountains.

Nobody knows why this person decided to spend their wealth to be buried all alone. But the mystery certainly tickles the imagination to manufacture a story. Perhaps during all his efforts in wealth-chasing, he was a lone wolf and felt that all their success was due to his own capacity. And so, the representation of his fate should stand alone, in beautiful grandeur.

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King says:
“Literally me.”