In this issue:

PRESENT
-The AI-generated fake-ID underground business-
-Performance art: spazzing in the woods-
-Mickey Mouse flashes his wallet again-

PAST
-90s: Birdman and Cash Money Records-
-17th Century: How aesthetics shift and will continue to shift-

“Listen pussycat, smile a bit.”
― Borat

Tech, AI

OnlyFake: the underground economy of AI-generated fake IDs.

No, not OnlyFans. OnlyFake. In an eye-opening investigative article by Joseph Cox at 404Media, Joseph uses OnlyFake to create realistic images of bogus IDs, which he then used to create an account on a crypto exchange.

OnlyFake claims that it’s using “neural networks” to generate realistic photos of fake IDs. And get this… It’s only $15.

What you get for those $15, Joseph writes, is a “highly convincing California Driver’s license, complete with whatever arbitrary name, biographical information, address, expiration date, and signature we wanted. The Photo even gives the appearance that the ID card is laying on a fluffy carpet as if someone has placed it on the floor and snapped a picture which many sites require for verification purposes.”

According to Cox, the technology produces fake IDs nearly instantly. It’s a mere 2-minute process.

OnlyFake’s owner told 404Media that the generator is fed a large collection of identity documents in very high resolution, such as 10,000 x 10,000 pixels. These types of resolutions reveal micro text and any lines and imperfections, which can be used to render very real renditions of the documents.

The owner claims that their service works on a slew of sites, including:

• Binance

• Revolut

• Wise

• Kraken

• Bybit

• Payoneer

• Huobi

• Airbnb

• OKX

• Coinbase

The implications are intense for any service that revolves around ID, from Airbnb to banking. It’s hard for legislation, companies, and regular humans to not be vigilant about the development of AI when operations like these are plopping up overnight.

For companies, this is turning out to be a very annoying game of Whac-A-Mole - something Microsoft recently learned after its tech was used to create nonconsensual deepfakes of Taylor Swift.

As always, time will tell.

……………………………………………………………………………………………

Twitter says:

King says:
“I suspect McLovin is behind this.”

Living Legend

This is @muda.japan.

A couple of times a week, @muda.japan posts a 60-second Insta-video of him performing in a still, quiet Kyoto forest.

As far as one could tell from the videos, the space is very distant and secluded. Probably, this is a case of “function follows form”; a hiker catching a bald Muda in his nylon get-up mid-performance would not be practical for either part.

When watching Muda perform, you do not know what will happen. You try to make sense of it, and maybe you can, maybe you can’t.

If you can’t, perhaps it’s basic nonsense. Or satanic. Or modernist goo-goo-ga-ga doing what it does best. Which is a fair conclusion - to each his own.

But if you can, you might see an exaggerated representation of being a victim of what your emotions might do to the nervous system.

It’s like an exaggerated depiction of cringing when you remember something from your past. Is there any other way to depict this? Suddenly then, the performance makes a lot of sense; it’s natural, relatable and honest.

But… Regardless of whether you think Muda’s art is nonsense or not, you cannot deny for one second that you were entertained. And these days that holds a rich value in and of itself!

There isn’t much information about Muda on the internet, so much else cannot be said. But honestly, nothing needs to be said that he hasn’t communicated himself.

Take a look at his Instagram, there’s a sound element that GIFs can’t do justice.

……………………………………………………………………………………………

Instagram says:

King says:
“Retarded.”

Gaming

Disney pays $1.5B stake in Epic Games to build an ‘entertainment universe’ with Fortnite.

In the past decade, Fortnite has grown more and more ingrained into the pop-cultural fabric of the day.

At this point, it’s sort of a crystallization of modern culture and a chance for big media to put their assets on the virtual hyper-stage.

Getting control of this stage is worth a lot of money. And for Disney, who recently announced a stake in Fortnite, it was worth paying $1.5 billion.

This Thursday, Epic and Disney announced that they’re going to partner on an “all-new games and entertainment universe” that’ll bring characters from Disney’s deep catalog to life through a tie-in with Fortnite.

Disney CEO Bob Iger said: “This marks Disney’s biggest entry ever into the world of games and offers significant opportunities for growth and expansion.”

It’s hard to say exactly what’ll come of this, but it sounds like a blend of Disney assets into Fortnite’s lucrative infrastructure.

Fortnite reported $5.5 billion in total revenue last September; $4.5 billion of which came from the V-Bucks players use to buy digital goods in the seemingly limitless digital shopping mall of pop-cultural goods.

You don’t need a whole lot of brain-compute to figure out why that might be worth a lot for Disney’s giant library of cultural icons.

……………………………………………………………………………………………

Twitter says:

King says:
“Children's company invests in children's game.”

Quick hits.

• Tucker Carlson interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin.

• Meta said it would start putting “AI generated” labels on images created with outside tools like Midjourney (it already flags ones made with its own AI) as it tries to combat misinformation in the lead-up to the presidential election.

• Gap, Inc. names Zac Posen creative director. CEO Richard Dickson says he’ll serve as “the cultural curator and creative partner”. Dickson also said that “Zac’s combination of technical design, creativity, as well as awareness of pop culture will really lend well to the future endeavors of Gap Inc.”

• Tesla sold only one car in South Korea in January, giving it its worst month in the country since July 2022, when it sold zero.

• Fox, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Disney’s ESPN plan to join forces to create a new sports streaming service, and each will own a third.

PAST

/Music

The Birdman and Cash Money Records Story, very quickly.

New Orleans was the murder capital of the United States throughout the 90s. Much of these murders happened in the Magnolia projects, where black-on-black violence, much like other American ghettos, soared as a consequence of the crack cocaine epidemic.

This brutal environment is where Bryan Williams, known as “Baby” or “Birdman”, grew up, and it’s from there that he built the most culturally significant hip-hop empire of all time: Cash Money Records.

But long before Cash Money was formed, Birdman lived a completely different life. At the age of 7 his mother died; being so vulnerable, the pressure in Magnolia was early to make him an efficient cog of the street economy.

He made a lot of money playing that game. After enough robberies and heroin sales, he could finally get the style, cars, and women the other street dudes had, but it also got him a three-year sentence at the age of 16.

Slim, his brother, would never go to jail. He was way too laid-back and business-minded; understanding that money could come in many ways. But he didn’t want to start up grocery stores and bars like his dad, he saw a bigger, more fulfilling business opportunity in the music scene.

When Birdman got out, he and Slim started plotting. With Birdman’s hustle and Slim’s brains, they figured they could get big money without going to the streets.

✦The plan✦

The brothers decided that they were going to take “Bounce Music”, the popular party music of Louisana, and make it a nationwide phenomenon. Otherwise known as Pussy-Poppin Music, Bounce was a genre of high-tempo, rapid, vulgar, and sexual party tracks. If a respected rap act built their sound on that foundation, they were sure to make a huge wave, at the very least in the South.

The same way other record labels had done with LA’s g-funk, Miami’s big bass and NY’s breaks - Slim and Birdman were going to build a full-on profitable record label on the geographical sonics of Louisana.

But music distribution wasn’t like it is today. Anybody couldn’t just pick up a laptop and make/market music. You needed cash. Luckily, by the age of 20, Birdman had made a million dollars in cash in the streets.

✦Cash Money takes shape✦

And so, they started signing artists to “Cash Money Records”, among the first:
• Baby D (an 11-year-old kid, later known as Lil Wayne)
• Juvenile
• B.G.
• Turk

These four were all well-known in the South, but under Cash Money, they’d be bundled together to form Cash Money’s flagship act, the Hot Boys.

What followed was a Southern hip-hop takeover that held America by a chokehold. Cash Money toured the nation, released records, expanded their roster, and soon enough… they signed a $30 million deal with Universal in 1998.

Since then, Cash Money went on a highly profitable 27-year-long run, all the way to 2019. During that time Cash Money survived several cultural fluctuations through its ability to constantly adapt, sub-branches include:

• Cash Money Films and Cash Money Content
• Young Money - a branch led by Lil Wayne that is responsible for acts like Nicki Minaj, and Drake.
• Rich-Gang - an expansion of the Cash Money brand that introduced the world to Young Thug, Rich Homie Quan, and LondonOnThaTrack.

Today it’s hard to watch any culturally significant hip-hop music video without seeing Birdman in the back, rubbing his hands and plotting. This man is a sort of Mark Zuckerberg of the rap industry, his influence is omnipresent and the reason for its pulse. Anybody who has liked anything about hip-hop for the past 25 years has Birdman to thank for shaping rap music.

Put some respect on his name.

Classic Birdman moments:
• The Breakfast Club Incident
• Violating Druski on Instagram Live
• Speaking about why he kisses Lil Wayne

……………………………………………………………………………………………

King says:
“I do not look up to anybody but Birdman.”

Art History

How taste moves and will always move, with Gianlorenzo Bernini (history’s greatest sculptor).

Historically, taste sensibilities moves have always moved in two ways:

1. Cyclical movement; what was out will once come back.
2. Polar shifts; when one flavor gets oversaturated, we move to the opposite.

Gianlorenzo Bernini, one of the greatest sculptors of all time, was caught in the middle of such a shift; and the way he adapted resulted in the works of legends.

✦Reason is in, the Church is out✦

Bernini lived in the 17th century, a time when a cerebral change was overtaking the entire West; the Enlightenment. Across Europe, thinkers and leaders had a new emphasis on logic, empiricism, and a human-centric view of the world.

Most importantly, it meant that people were not as eager to idolize the Christian Church anymore. This meant that beauty, as it was understood, would disentangle itself from Christianity. Before Bernini’s time, Christianity had a supreme, unquestionable rule, and Western culture followed its baton.

(Below is a portrait of Bernini himself.)

✦When God was king✦

During the Medieval times (500-1500-ish), beauty was intertwined with Christian religious expression. It was as engrained in the cultural fabric as Fortnite is today, maybe more. Maybe.

What this meant was that if you were a craftsman of any sort; painter, sculptor, freemason, architect, weaver, pot maker; then you’d express beauty through Christianity. That meant that crosses, angels, saints, and apostles would decorate anything truly beautiful. Christianity was the cornerstone of identity, morality, and art.

✦Make Greece great again✦

But during Bernini’s time, this wasn’t the case. Christianity had gone out of style. What came back in style was the opposite pole: pagan culture; the culture of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Depicting marble statues of Greek gods before the Enlightenment was a sure way to get executed. But now, what was out was in; and all over the West, Greek architecture and pagan statues were commissioned. A new standard for beauty arrived.

Bernini’s most famous sculptures depict scenes from Classical mythology, such as Apollo and Daphne. This sculpture was even commissioned by a Catholic cardinal, something that would’ve been unthinkable before.

(Below is the sculpture, Apollo and Daphne)

……………………………………………………………………………………………

King says:
“If I had to choose, it would’ve been better had Bernini sculpted me. Just an opinion.”

B