I’ve been putting all of my time into the pursuit of capital and power
but here is the news...
GM everyone happy Friday. Apologies for the inconsistency lately. I’ve been putting all of my time into the pursuit of capital and power, but I’m working on a new system to ensure we get out the daily letters you’re all dying to read.
In Today’s Newsletter
Ven. Space hosts a pop-up
Meta employees get fired + my tips on avoiding this
Netflix’s genius solution: ads
The dorkiest thing to do in New York? wait in a line.
🧢 MENSWEAR CORNER 🚨
Our friends at Studio Nicholson are hosting a pop-up at Ven. Space next Thursday (Oct. 24th) from 5-9pm.
The event will feature pieces from Studio Nicholson’s Winter ‘24 collection. If you missed it, I interviewed the owner of Ven. Space a few weeks back. Chris is a menswear veteran with equal parts experience and taste. Go read that and I’ll see you there on Thursday.
- are dropping pleated pants today. The pants look like a great everyday pant for Fall.
They gave early access to paid subscribers here on Substack, which is really smart. The duo have consistently dropped products throughout their run, ranging from full collections with Mr. Porter or mesh ‘pod shorts’ Purchase here.
As for me, I’ve made quite a few purchases this Fall and I want to do a dedicated post on what I’m wearing next week. I will tease I was able to acquire what is perhaps the best of Demna Gvasalia’s nearly 10 year tenure at Balenciaga…
🧑🏻💻 TECH CORNER 📈
Meta fired two dozen employees for spending their meal allowance on laundry detergent, wine glasses, and acne pads. The employees were based in Los Angeles, and one apparently had a base comp of $400k. This may seem a bit petty… and maybe a warning would have sufficed. But nonetheless, they’re gone.
MY TIP: Once I started making good money I set my basic household essentials to auto-order on Amazon. Stuff like that is negligible and just shows up at the door every month so its basically free and you don’t have to abuse any perks or waste your time going to Target.
Netflix beat Q3 revenue expectations with a little known secret: ads. The streaming company has essentially hit mass total addressable market, literally everyone has it. So a few year’s back they started to hunker down on password sharing, offering a cheaper ad-supported model that is seeing responsible for their grew 35% quarter over quarter. This goes to show: literally all media and content eventually becomes an advertisement play. Newspapers? Ads. Straming? Ads. Social media sites? Ads. They would have put ads next to cave paintings if we had media buyers back then. People are used to ads being literally everywhere, they don’t give a f*ck, and those who do can pay.
Remember earlier this year when the SEC posted about Bitcoin ETF’s approval before they were actually approved? This was due to a 25-year old hacker from Alabama, and it sent the price of Bitcoin soaring before the actual approval. The FBI was able to track him down and are now charging him. He apparently googled, “What are the signs that you are under investigation by law enforcement or the FBI even if you have not been contacted by them” Amazing. No notes.
Other News
The ven diagram of people who drove upstate to see Charli xcx at Storm King and people who waited in line for Anora merch is just a circle. The movie is good but come on this is dork behavior.
Obviously I adore this post-Chicago marathon video from Nike. Content like this helps build a sense of community, and reminds us all how embedded Nike is in the running community still despite the rumors of their demise.
From the Cosmos
Selections from my Cosmos board.
Have a great weekend :)
Jake Bell is a brand consultant, creative strategist, designer, and writer based in NYC.
He specializes in brand building, content strategy, creative direction, business development, and making things cool.
Want to chat? Email me: jake@jb.studio
That Nike ad was me on Monday and Tuesday! Chicago marathon was a blast!