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Happy Friday, Future Party. Four-time Formula 1 champion Max Verstappen is about to face maybe not his hardest opponents, but his most opponents yet in a race at Silverstone — a go-kart race. On September 16, Disney+ will air Max Vs. 100, which will see Verstappen race against a mix of pro athletes, influencers, and fans. As a handicap to those 100, Verstappen will start all the way in the rear. Let the overtaking begin. |
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Drake Collabs With Authentic Brands On New Era Of OVO |
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Courtesy of OVO |
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Drake sold a majority stake in OVO (October’s Very Own) to Authentic Brands Group. |
Why It Hits: Celebrity-fronted brands have become some of the biggest moneymakers out there, especially in retail, beauty, and food & beverage. There’s an inherent marketability built in. Drake, one of the biggest rappers in the world, has owned and operated OVO for nearly two decades, giving the brand both the longevity and momentum for a major expansion. |
Between The Lines: Drake — along with co-founders Oliver El-Khatib and Noah “40” Shebib — wants OVO to have its Fenty or SKIMS moment. |
While Authentic bought a majority stake in the lifestyle brand, the founders will “retain a significant ownership stake” and continue to lead the company’s “creative identity.” Additionally, apparel company Vince Holding Corp. (VNCE) will be “tasked with overseeing product development, retail, and more,” according to Complex.
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Closing Thoughts: Authentic has been on an acquisition tear over the past decade, acquiring stakes in celebrity labels or making NIL deals with boldface names like Kevin Hart, Shaq, David Beckham, and the estate of Marilyn Monroe. That’s on top of big deals in the fashion space for brands such as Champion, Reebok, Lucky Brand, and Volcom. It also has expanded into media IP rights, taking stakes in Care Bears and Sports Illustrated. |
Authentic is actually the second-largest licensor in the US, just behind Disney, per THR. Who knew? |
Prediction: Authentic could be building the first equal-parts media-and-apparel empire. |
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Together with SuperhumanAI |
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Go From AI-Overwhelmed To AI-Savvy Professional |
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AI keeps coming up at work, but staying on top of it is easier said than done. |
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Join 1M+ pros. |
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AI Companies Are Buying Books Just To Cut Them Up |
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De-spined and deep-fried // Image by Kait Cunniff with DALL-E |
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Independent booksellers across the country are reckoning with the fact that increased sales are coming from an unlikely source — AI companies tearing apart books to train LLMs. |
The Big Picture: An LLM is only as good as its dataset. As the top firms race to gobble up as much information as they can, the ability to track down and ingest even the most niche topics could theoretically give companies an edge in answering any user query. But that quest for knowledge is already ridding the world of a century’s worth of physical books. Is the cost worth it? |
Between The Pages: Indie book shops all reported a similar phenomenon to WSJ — bulk book orders are literally disappearing into the cloud. |
The orders are typically placed through third-party marketplaces like Alibris, Biblio, and Amazon by unusual buyers like Red Sparrow Project, Blue Finch Project, and Green Parrot Project. They typically order hundreds of obscure titles at a time, like Home Long-Term Oxygen Treatment in Italy and Marriage Litigation in Medieval England — especially ones with an ISBN (a unique identifier given to published books since 1960). Suspicious sellers have tracked these books to facilities “where books are sliced up, scanned, and destroyed.” Taking books apart makes them easier to scan than bending the spine. They’re then sent to recycling facilities, where the books become your next iced-coffee straw or roll of toilet paper.
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Last Chapter: Booksellers are very conflicted about AI companies’ practices. On one hand, revenue at some of these shops has doubled over the past few years, and many of the books sold are considered “dead stock” — titles that were heading for the recycling bin anyway. |
But booksellers are concerned that rare titles are getting lost in the shuffle, putting access to them solely in the hands of AI companies. Anthropic says it doesn’t destroy antique books, while SpaceXAI says it created a library to “preserve any rare books.” Still, some sellers are holding back titles from bulk buys or asking other sellers to fulfill orders if the only copies they have are signed by the author. |
The Future: Don’t be surprised if indie booksellers organize to create a consortium that logs and protects endangered books from finding their way into an AI firm’s shredder. |
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Together with Nibbles |
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You Work A 9-To-5 So Your Pet Can Live Like Royalty. Get Rewarded For It. |
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How much does a celebrity’s involvement influence your interest in a retail, beauty, or food & beverage brand? |
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34.5% of you voted No, and I’m not interested in yesterday’s poll: Have you watched Widow’s Bay? |
“I like to wait and see if a series is picked up for a second season.” |
“As a horror-comedy, I didn’t find it particularly funny or scary.” |
“We thought it was corny and inane.” |
“Too many instances of campy menace. Several moments of platinum-level writing and storytelling. A challenge for me to love it about to tail. Rhys is top-notch throughout.” |
“I couldn’t stop. I binged it!” |
“So quirky.” |
Let’s keep the conversation going. Join Poll Of The Day, so your opinions can shine. Discover how your views line up with your peers’, check out cool insights, and have some fun. It’s data with personality. |
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Let us know how we are doing... |
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PARTNERSHIPS | COMMUNITY | PODCAST | FRIENDS |
Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Nick Comney. Polled and Copy-edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar. |
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