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Mic check. It’s back to school, so here’s some homework for you. The next time you listen to your favorite rap or pop song, try to pay attention to the vocal nuances you hear. More likely than not, the microphone being used is the Sony C-800G… and it has a pretty inspiring origin story. Besides being hand-assembled by folks with disabilities, the factory floor where the gear is built is specifically tailored to suit each employee’s physical needs. Cool, huh?
It looks like the gold standard in recording just went platinum.
In other news… Silicon Valley leaders plan new California city, Cameo benefits from the actors strike, and surfing gets the ski resort treatment.
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TECHNOLOGY
California dreamin’ // Illustration by Kate Walker
Silicon Valley leaders want to beta test a city in the California desert
The Future. After years of mystery, Flannery Associates, a group of high-profile tech heads and VCs, has unveiled their identity as the primary stakeholders of a controversial land development project in Northern California. Apparently, they’ve been pooling together their money for a new kind of startup: a utopian city. While billionaire titans of industry (Elon Musk, Marc Lore) love to wax poetic about dreams of building cities in their image, the VIP Rolodex of backers and the amount of land already acquired might actually make this project a reality.
Silicon Valley 2.0
Flannery Associates has come out of stealth.
The group is run by former Goldman Sachs trader Jan Sramek and backed by investors like LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, a16z’s Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon, and philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs.
It plans to create a new city in Solano County (60 miles northeast of San Francisco) “with tens of thousands of new homes, a large solar energy farm, orchards with over a million new trees, and over 10,000 acres of new parks and open space.”
The hope is to build a community that “could generate thousands of jobs and be as walkable as Paris or the West Village in New York.”
To that end, Flannery Associates has already purchased 52,000 acres of land for over $800 million (sometimes paying five times the market rate), even though most of it’s zoned for agricultural use and will require the vote of residents for approval to break ground. They’ll also need government sign-off due to all the land they now own around Travis Air Force Base.
So, why the wild plan to build a new city instead of just helping to restore struggling San Francisco? According to another investor, Sequoia Capital chairperson Michael Moritz, the whole point is to ditch SF. “This effort should relieve some of the Silicon Valley pressures we all feel — rising home prices, homelessness, congestion, etc.”
It sounds a lot like leaving the playground before you up your toys.
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SOCIAL MEDIA
Strike revenue stream // Illustration by Kate Walker
Cameo gets a starring role during the actors strike
The Future. Amid the SAG-AFTRA strike, celebrities and working actors are taking to Cameo as a way to make up for lost income. With most of SAG-AFTRA’s 160,000 members not making a living from acting, Cameo may be a good bet for keeping those health and pension benefits not just during the strike but during any dry spell.
Strike funds
In a strange twist of fate, the actors strike is the best thing to happen to Cameo.
CEO Steven Galanis says over 2,400 celebrities have started or reactivated their accounts since the strike began in July.
That represents a 137% sign-up increase compared to June and the biggest jump in sign-ups since the start of the COVID pandemic.
Celebrities who’ve joined or rejoined Cameo in recent months include SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher ($1,500 for a personalized video; $20 for a message), Mistresses star Alyssa Milano, and Everybody Loves Raymond actor Fred Stoller.
And by either a stroke of good fortune or terrific planning, SAG and Cameo struck a deal just before the strike that allows actors working under the platform’s “Cameo for Business” tier to count their earnings toward health and pension benefits.
For Cameo, the partnership may end up being a business lifeline.
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Biohack your night out
Ever wake up the morning after drinks and question last night’s decisions or wonder why you feel so “meh” after drinking? You’re not alone.
The culprit? Acetaldehyde.
A byproduct of alcohol called acetaldehyde wreaks havoc on your body and causes you to feel awful the next day.
So here’s what you do: you biohack it with ZBiotics Pre-Alcohol Probiotic Drink, which breaks down acetaldehyde while you drink. And you know what that means? You can have a night out AND feel good the next day.
Try it with code TFP15 for 15% off.
SPORTS
Courtesy of Wavegarden
Big wave surfing is coming to a city near you
The Future. A startup called Aventuur is giving surfing the ski resort treatment… on dry land. The goal is to create the Topgolf of surfing essentially. While the first location won’t open until 2026, a date in a landlocked city like Denver could soon consist of catching some waves and then catching a movie.
Ocean Ave.
Aventuur wants to expand access to surfing by making it possible for those who don’t live on a coast.
The company plans to build “integrated surf park developments,” which are “mixed use projects of hotels, housing, restaurants, and wellness facilities built around lagoons equipped with wave-generating technology.”
The surf parks, made possible by Spanish firm Wavegarden, would generate 900 surfable waves per hour, measuring up to six feet high to accommodate both amateur and experienced surfers — all housed within a five-acre lagoon.
Aventuur already has developments in the works in Perth, Australia, and Auckland, New Zealand, with 11 others planned in US cities like LA, NYC, Denver, and Nashville — all costing around $50 to $100 million per location.
While there’ll certainly be some novelty to the surf parks, Aventuur co-founder Nicholas Edelman stresses the surrounding vibe of the parks is equally important, with yoga studios, spas, and bars all planned.
Normalizing surfing outside the ocean may take some getting used to, but it’s not without precedent. In 2015, surfing legend Kelly Slater opened Surf Ranch in Lemoore, CA — 110 miles from the Pacific Ocean.
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Highlights
The best curated daily stories from around the web
Media, Music, & Entertainment
Sunday’s National Cinema Day (when movie tickets were $4) surged theater admissions by 8.5 million, counting for $34 million at the box office — helping Barbie to become Warner Bros.’ biggest movie ever. Read more → deadline
A reworked version of The Beatles’ classic “Let It Be” with Dolly Parton and surviving members Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr reached #3 on Billboard’s Hot Trending Songs chart — showing these legends can still capture the attention of the younger-skewing X (Twitter) crowd. Read more → forbes
The New Yorker’s Richard Brody argues, in the fickle age of streaming and digital distribution, maintaining a physical media collection is an act of grassroots archival. Read more → newyorker
Fashion & E-Commerce
Retailers are holding their breath as inflation and the restart of student loan payments could cause a “retail-cession.” Read more → fastcompany
American fashion brands are signaling they’re all in on publicly reporting their greenhouse gas emissions. Read more → bof
Klaviyo, a marketing automation platform backed by Shopify, filed to go public on the New York Stock Exchange. Read more → fastcompany
Tech, Web3, & AI
Tesla has gained approval to build a diner and drive-in theater at a new supercharger station in Santa Monica, CA. Read more → hypebeast
Museums across America, including The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center in Skokie, IL, and The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration in Montgomery, AL, have implemented new technologies like holograms, AI, and VR to let visitors have simulated conversations with survivors and hear the words of enslaved people. Read more → axios
DoorDash is rolling out an AI-powered voice tool that’ll allow restaurants to answer every call (and fulfill a lot more orders). Read more → techcrunch
Creator Economy
MrBeast took home the Streamy Award for Creator of the Year for the fourth time in a row this past weekend. Read more → tubefilter
TikTok has surpassed Instagram in daily usage and will likely pass Facebook by 2025. Read more → insider
YouTuber Justine Ezarik launched the Creators Guild of America — a “professional services organization” that could be the first step toward starting a union for digital creators. Read more → tubefilter
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Nick Comney. Copy edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.