In this issue:

OVERWORLD:
-Even in the Apocalypse, We Wear Moncler-
-Fanfiction Writers Get Their Shit Rocked-

THE DEPTHS:
-Destroy Your Ears, with Indian Bass Culture-
-You Can Now Buy THE Sopranos Prop-

“The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free”
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

✦Top Trends✦

Fashion

How Moncler Will Keep Creating Luxury in the Global Warming Apocalypse.

If you didn’t know, Moncler has not always been synonymous with coating drill rappers and Chinese oligarchs. For your enlightenment, here’s a quick timeline:

Great come-up story, but there’s an issue… after 70 years of being a down-jacket brand, what do you do when the whole planet starts heating up?

In 2022, the snowless Alpine season proved itself a real threat to Moncler’s business. So much so, that analysts claim it might make Moncler’s business redundant in some geographies.

But Moncler has an edge that most luxury groups lack…

According to CEO Remo Ruffini, Moncler is the “smallest of the big groups, and the biggest of the small ones”.

Don’t get it twisted, he intends to keep it that way - it makes them fast and adaptable.

Moncler is where luxury and activity intersect, and that should be true for any weather. Therefore, Ruffini has a new vision of Moncler as a luxury Swiss army knife that can outfit people for all seasons.

That means that Moncler will transcend their skiing identity and provide the Moncler lifestyle, even when the Earth gets scorching hot and rising water levels swallow your parent’s seaside home. Nice.

Culture

Weirdo Problems: 149$ Hand-bound Books of Fanfiction Hits are Flooding Etsy.

Are you hardcore? Like, in everything you do? Then you might understand why fanfiction readers want a beautifully bound, physical book of their favorite Harry Potter fanfiction. You might also understand why they’d pay up to $149 for them on Etsy.

Yes, this is real. All over Etsy, there are now gorgeous hand-bound versions of romance literature about Draco Malfoy’s and Hermoine Granger’s complicated relationship (the genre is called “Dramoine”, and it’s huge).

But imagine if you wrote that fanfiction, for free, no less. Where’s your cut? Do you even want to make money off it? Are you mad? These issues are currently rocking the fanfic writer community.

Fanfic is generally considered fair use. Selling fanfiction, however, is a whole different ordeal. This has led to some friction between Etsy, fanfic writers, and sellers. Friction that isn’t worth chasing down for the authors.

As a result, some fanfic writers are pulling their hugely popular fanfiction from the web. Those who won’t pull their works, are bummed out.

SenLiYu, a hugely popular Dramoine writer, says:

✦Mini Stories✦

-Leap Year, TikTok is for Adults, Klarna Takes on the World-

🗓Here’s why the leap year keeps society from collapsing.
In case you weren’t paying attention, yesterday was the 29th of February. It’s the extra day we tack onto February because if we don’t: Holidays are on the wrong date, agricultural cycles fail, and legal registration makes no sense.

How the leap was born: Back when Julius Caesar was banging Cleopatra, Rome’s lunar calendar had been offset to the seasons by 3 months. And so, he created the “Year of Confusion” in 46 B.C., a single 445-day-year that would correct the offset in one go.

After Julius’ fix, Rome ran on 365.25-day years, which is how long it takes the sun to rotate around Earth. But the 0.25 discrepancy meant that 16th-century Christians were celebrating Christian holidays 10 days late. Pope Gregory XIII fixed this in 1582 when he developed our modern leap year. And that’s what we have today.

Thanks, Gregory. Good boy.

🕺 52% of adult U.S. users have posted a TikTok - which is cringe.
 You have nowhere to run. We have found your mob-wife aesthetic supercut. In a survey by PEW, 52% of respondents said that they’ve posted at least one video to their personal TikTok.

And here’s the kicker: the 35-to-49-year-old cohort scored the highest on that axis; 60% of them have posted one or more TikToks. Make of that what you will.

The most interesting part is that the 18 to 34 age group doesn’t post more than the 35 to 49 group, denting the standing idea that TikTok is a youth app.

🤑 Klarna is coming.
BNPL (buy now, pay later) is popping off worldwide, and Stockholm-based Klarna is at the center of it all.

Now, they’re teasing a stock-market debut that’ll come in very timely as their finances looked on point after an annual report this Wednesday, where they reported a yearly gross profit of $1,1B and a 22% revenue increase to $2.2B.

This comes as good news after previous valuation challenges, dropping from $45.6B in 2021 to $6.7B, and might suggest that Klarna is worth $20B by the time of the IPO.

✦Quick hits✦

• X goes to court as they’re suing the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a nonprofit that researches hate speech and misinformation on social media. usk accuses CCDH of spreading false claims about X and violating its terms through data scraping.

• Christiano Ronaldo was suspended for one game and fubed for “provoking” fans who chanted “Messi” in a Saudi Pro League Game.

• Tim Cook claims Apple is going to break new ground in generative AI this year. Which probably means nothing, honestly.

• Varg²™ drops a very, very good video featuring Joon Gloom, Yung Sherman and Woesum ahead of his upcoming album: Nordic Flora Series, Pt. 6: Outlaw Music.

• Dries Van Noten FW24 is sick.

• TikTok vs. Universal: The battle over royalties escalates as even more music is being pulled off TikTok.

• Rolex officially holds 30% of he Swiss Watch retail market share.

• You should buy this: A rotating house in New Zeeland.

THE DEPTHS

/Culture

New Obsession Unlocked: Indian Bass Competitions

Trucks with giant, giant speakers face each other in a showdown. Who can make the most noise? Hundreds of people gather - many between the speakers. The music? Sounds like this: pipipipi boom pipipipi booom boom wiuu wiuu wiuu.

There’s not much information on the English-written internet about this insane Indian youth subculture of eardrum-destroying, so one simply has to look at the video and make an assessment as to why and how.

Therefore, the rarest of links will be provided, for your own analysis.

obsessed with indian bass competitions like this shit is literally insane (2 minutes)
Chudakuti Melana DJ Competition (51 seconds)
Sound Check || DJ XPLOD || Bajrang Bali Song... (21 seconds)

/Wishlist

Auction: You Can Buy the Booth From the Sopranos Finale.

Because you’re fly like that.