Amazon and Meta plan shock collaboration
Don't you just love the autumn aesthetic?
Hello,
We’re hurtling towards Christmas and cosy season is in full swing. It’s really the last season to be commercialised, winter has Christmas, spring has Easter and summer is all flip-flops and suncream.
For a long time, autumn was defined by little more than slippery foliage and a couple of fireworks. These days you can’t move for spiced lattes ($800m of them last year), big jumpers and new TV series. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for it. I quite like the fact that the positive aspects of what has traditionally been a gloomy time of year have been crystallised in all the autumn aesthetic content. Life’s all about how you frame stuff and autumn is all about enjoying the prosaic, taking delight in being warm and wearing a good sweater.
All the leaves are brown,
Hugo Delamain
Chief Knitwear Officer
The Business of Stuff
The Stuff
Las Vegas remains the world's wedding capital 👩❤️👨 - last year 80,000 couples got married there, adding $2.5 billion to its economy (tourism brings in $80 billion in total). The majority of weddings in Las Vegas are elopements which have been growing in popularity in recent years.
Cyprus confidential files lifts the lid on dodgy football contracts ⚽ - an investigation has uncovered how Roman Abramovich and super-agent Pinhas “Pini” Zahavi engaged up-and-coming players in ‘third party ownership’ contracts that some have likened to modern slavery in the control it enables them to exert.
Rare whisky becomes world’s most expensive at £2.1million 🥃 - the Macallan from 1926 was sold at Sotheby’s on Saturday. This would put each sip at around £30,000. The head of whisky at the auction house was able to try some and said it's got “a lot of wood” - would probably want a bit more for £30k, I’ll be honest.
Sam Altman ousted from OpenAI 😬 - he was sacked by the board on Friday because he was “not consistently candid in his communications” but is now in negotiations to return after a mass revolt from staff at the organisation. The board are now having to consider resignation as the majority of the staff at OpenAI would join Altman in any new venture. Dramaaa.
StabilityAI audio head quits over copyright row 🐱 - the executive has described the practice of AI firms training their models on copyrighted material as “exploitative”. Ed Newton-Rex who is also a choral composer said he wouldn’t want to give his music away for free so wasn’t happy to effectively ask other musicians to do the same by using their content.
Factories are using AI to predict faults 🏭 - this year the focus has been on generative AI and asking ChatGPT whether there are more wheels or doors in the world but there are some pretty serious use cases at play. PepsiCo has deployed sensors made by Augury that use the sounds of machines to identify when they are at risk of a fault.
Amazon and Meta collaboration really quite scary 🛒 - the two companies have quietly been working together to directly link people to Amazon through Facebook and Instagram making it much easier to buy stuff. This is of course bad news for everyone’s wallets and the competition. They’ll also be sharing more data to improve advert targeting.
Karlie Kloss acquires i-D magazine from Vice Media 👗 - the supermodel is part of a cadre of celebrities who are using their positions to invest in a number of different businesses. It makes sense that someone who has benefited from coverage by magazines like i-D wants to help secure what is a struggling industry.
Mars is buying Hotel Chocolat for £534m 🍫 - Angus Thirwell and Peter Harris started the business in 1993 and the sale will see them take a payout of £144m. The British brand has previously struggled to expand abroad but it is hoped Mars’ global reach will enable it to thrive.
Lab building approved despite being described as grim 🏗️ - the new natural sciences laboratory in Cambridge will sit on the site of The Vitrum Building. Martin Smart, a Labour councillor is not impressed by the design, describing it as a “grim-looking building”.
Quote of the week
“Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald