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OVERWORLD:
-What the fuck is“Kimchi Premium”?-

TWO BETWEENS:
-Beyoncé has boomed cowboy hat sales-
-The only real way to become a billionaire under 30-

THE DEPTHS:
-Henry Darger, the ‘sadist, pedophile, serial killer’ artist-

“I'm not a businessman, I'm a business, man!”
— Jay-Z

✦TREND PICKS✦

Crypto

What the fuck is “Kimchi Premium”?

You just overheard a Gen Z crypto bro say "I'm eating good off that Kimchi Premium."

You're happy for him. The boy is eating a nutritious fermented cabbage dish and he's getting cultured on South Korean cuisine.

But you're wrong about Crypto-Michael. He's not literally eating fermented cabbage. He’s making fat wads of money.

"Kimchi Premium" is crypto talk for the arbitrage opportunity when selling Bitcoin to South Korean exchanges.

To not get too complicated: Because it’s decentralized, Bitcoin's price can be listed at a higher price on a South Korean exchange than on a US or European exchange.

Get hip:

✦Easier said than done✦

It's not as easy as flying from your local airport to Korea with a wallet full of Bitcoin. That'd make South Korea a honey pot for money laundering.

Crypto-Michael is most likely a South Korean citizen or resident - that's the only way he'd be allowed a full-fledged bank account there.

Also, South Korea's national currency, the won, is tightly restricted - transfers outside the country are super controlled.

Transfers also take a long time. During that period, your Kimchi Premium might shrink (or grow) as pricing fluctuates.

But if you pull all of that off... See you in the Bahamas, friend.

✦QUICK HITS✦

Apple bailed on its electric cars in February, but now they’re reportedly working on mobile robots that could follow users through their homes and robotic tabletop displays.

The White House directed NASA to create a time standard for the moon by 2026. It’s going to be called "Coordinated Lunar Time" (CLT). It’ll address time discrepancies caused by the moon's different gravitational forces, which impact time perception differently than on Earth.

Spotify’s stock surged 8% following a report of its plans to raise prices for its premium subscription, marking its second price increase within a year. Pay up, dweebs.

Nicki Minaj, Metro Boomin, Billie Eilish, Jon Bon Jovi, and about 200 other musicians teamed up in an open letter against the “Predatory use of AI.” Read the full letter here.

A new “miniature liver” might be able to grow after injecting healthy liver cells into a person's lymph node, new research finds. This is a game-changer for people who can’t have regular transplants. Neat.

The Matrix is… sigh… getting a fifth film. For the first time, a Matrix film won’t be directed by Lana and Lilly Wachowski. Instead, Drew Goddard, who screenwrote The Martian and Cloverfield, is set to write and direct.

Amazon is discontinuing its "Just Walk Out" grocery store technology. Instead, they’ll do Dash Carts, which integrate scanning and checkout directly inside the shopping cart for a more reliable solution.

 🤠 Beyoncé has boomed cowboy hat sales
Beyoncé just dropped her album, and Beyhive has been activated. Last year, her tour’s arrival in Stockholm caused a sudden rise in inflation. This year, her cowboy era is pumping the price on cowboy hats and boots.

Some numbers: According to Trendalytics, the stock of Western accessories has skyrocketed by 300% in just the last month, marking a significant shift towards Western-inspired fashion.

And the fast-fashion industry is acting fast (duh). That’s because the new surge in searches for “rhinestone cowboy hats” is proving to be a cash cow for many.

Forever 21, under CEO Winnie Park, has been at the forefront of this trend. Observations from Beyoncé's Renaissance tour in Chicago, where fans flaunted metallic boots and accessories, prompted the retailer to highlight similar products, resulting in a sales increase of up to 40% in tour cities.

Inspired by Beyoncé's Grammy look, Forever 21 has doubled down on Western wear. Cowboy boots now represent a whooping 21% of the chain's shoe sales.

💰 Here’s the only real way to become a billionaire under 30
If you’re 27 and sad you’re not a billionaire yet, shut up. Stop watching so much YouTube. It is statistically impossible for you to do that.

New research by Forbes has shown that all billionaires under 30 have inherited their fortunes. And actually, most of the up-and-coming young billionaires are getting piss-rich via the death of relatives.

Over the next two decades, more than 1,000 affluent individuals are set to pass down over $5.2 trillion, contributing to an unprecedented rise in the number of billionaires, which already stands at a record 2,781 according to Forbes. This incoming money-wave is set to make millennials “the richest generation in history.”

Here are some lucky humans:

• Firoz (27) and Zahan Mistry (25), inherited $4.9 billion in stakes from Tata Sons, which owns several car brands, including Jaguar Land Rover after the death of their father, Cyrus Mistry.

• Leonardo Maria (28), Luca (22), and Clemente Del Vecchio (19) inherited $4.7 billion each after their father Leonardo died. The family owns nearly a third of EssilorLuxottica, the company behind Ray-Ban and Oakley.

• World’s youngest billionaire, Livia Voigt (19), inherited a $1.1 billion fortune after her grandfather, Werner Ricardo died. He was the co-founder of Brazilian electrical equipment producer WEG Industries. 

THE DEPTHS

Art

Henry Darger, the “sadist, pedophile, serial killer” artist

When Henry J. Darger died in 1973 in a nursing home in Chicago, nobody knew who he was.

Not the nurse who attended him, not the physician who signed the death certificate, and none of the nuns who ran the nursing home where he lived out his last days.

Nobody had a clue that Darger, 81 years old when he died, was a novelist who illustrated his texts with hundreds of vibrant watercolors.

More importantly, nobody knew that he was about to be one of the 20th century’s most important painters.

✦The art itself✦

His magnum opus is called… get ready… ready?

Okay, here goes: "The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion."

And it’s fucking huge - a sprawling 15,145-page work.

In it, hundreds of pages of magazines and catalogues are the canvas for vivid illustrations taking you through the story of the Vivian Girls - heroic young girls caught in a brutal war between good and evil forces.

✦Sadist, pedophile, serial killer✦

Darger is, and always was controversial.

Critics constantly accused him of being a sadist, pedophile, and serial killer. Not for anything he did, but because of how disturbing his art could get.

The Vivian Girls are often portrayed naked and under various forms of danger and torture by adults.

It is suspicious, but there’s no real evidence that supports accusations of crime.

✦Darger’s lived life✦

Darger led a solitary, impoverished, and terrible life. Some argue the content might’ve had more to do with Darger’s troubled psyche than real criminal activity.

To start, his mother died when he was four, and his father struggled to care for him. And so, he was put in a Catholic boys' home. Bad behavior at the nursing home landed him in the “Illinois Asylum for Feeble-Minded Children.” Then his father died.

Darger escaped from the asylum as an orphan teenager, returning to Chicago as a lonely, unstable outsider.

For the rest of his life, he was a hospital janitor.

…And the 20th century’s most prolific artist.

Inside a single rented room on Chicago's North Side, Darger devoted his existence to creating a complex, fantastical world through his art and writing.

But the art never saw daylight. At least until his landlord found it in 1972. Remember, Darger died in 1973.

His life was bad as it was, avoiding being called a pedophile serial killer sadist might’ve been for the better.