Together with
Bitcoin bump. Happy Friday, FutureParty people (and all you HODLers out there). ICYMI, crypto stocks had quite the bounceback this week, but the SEC wasn’t too happy about it. That’s because the US Court of Appeals recently sided with Grayscale in its lawsuit against the commission, increasing the likelihood that a spot bitcoin ETF could soon become a reality. While there’s still a lot to unpack around the ruling and its future impact, we’re here for the ride.
In other news… TSwift hits a theater near you, Gen Z prefers trade schools over college, and news outlets experience fallout from AI-written articles.
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ENTERTAINMENT
Swift in her cinematic era // Illustration by Kate Walker
Taylor Swift turns The Eras Tour into a blockbuster
The Future. The fall movie season is getting its own Barbie moment with the release of Taylor Swift’s Eras concert film. Seemingly the first time a concert film has been released simultaneously with its ongoing tour (which will gross an estimated $1.4 billion worldwide), the bold move shows there’s truly no end to the demand for seeing Swift do her thing… and may be a good sign that her announced movie with Searchlight Pictures will be a massive hit.
Stadium seating
TSwift is taking her tour to the big screen for four weekends this fall.
The concert film, directed by Sam Wrench at LA’s SoFi Stadium, will play at AMC, Regal, and Cinemark every Friday through Sunday on Oct. 13-15, Oct. 19-22, Oct. 26-29, Oct. 31, and Nov. 2-5 (and maybe expand to smaller chains).
AMC, which produced the likely three-hour-plus movie, has set tickets at $19.89 and $13.13 in IMAX and Dolby auditoriums.
And AMC already expected ticket demand to be so high it developed a new system to handle presale transactions (avoiding a Ticketmaster situation). It’s even barred AMC Stubs A-List members from reserving tickets. Ouch.
AMC’s planning has paid off. The film clocked over $10 million in presales in a matter of hours — a rate similar to a Marvel movie, says a distribution exec. Box office analysts expect the concert film’s debut to easily blow past that of the record-holder, Disney’s Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert (how’s that for a fun fact), which scored $31 million when it opened in 2008.
In fact, the film is expected to be such a juggernaut Universal promptly rescheduled its horror tentpole The Exorcist: Believer from Oct. 13 to Oct. 6, with producer Jason Blum announcing the change in the best way possible.
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WORK
AI-proof
Gen Z looks to trade jobs in the era of AI
The Future. Young people are increasingly interested in trade-skill jobs like plumbing, carpentry, and mechanics. Despite the fear that there may be a lack of infrastructure for training the next generation of trade workers, those jobs may be about to undergo a renaissance in an age when AI is being developed to take over entry-level desk positions.
Tangible talents
Handyman-hiring platform Thumbtack conducted a series of surveys about the state of trade jobs and found some surprising insights.
73% of Gen Z respondents have a high opinion of trades and say it’s almost as respectable a career choice as going into medicine.
47% are interested in pursuing a trade career themselves.
80% of respondents say benefits like a more flexible schedule and a faster, cheaper educational path make it more appealing than a desk job.
But 82% are still being told going to college is the only option for having a successful life — so there’s still a strong generational divide.
Gen Z’s positive feelings about trade skills are validated by people currently working those jobs. Thumbtack found 87% of people in those positions are happy with their occupations and would choose the same path again, with more even saying they’d encourage their kids to pursue them.
But, workers are also worried the trade industry isn’t doing a good job attracting recruits, which could scare off young workers — a feeling buoyed by the fact that technical job applications were down 49% in the past two years.
It may take more schools like Tampa’s Kirkland Ranch Academy of Innovation to reverse course.
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Celebrate Labor Day sustainably!
Degradable plastic is not great for the environment! And Matter knows that. So, they make all sorts of stuff with plant-based biopolymer and fiber as an alternative — things like trash bags, food storage containers, tableware, plates, and bowls.
All of their products:
Return valuable nutrients to the soil
Reuse crop waste
Are certified compostable
We’re in love. Oh! And did we mention that creating Matter products uses a lot less energy than conventional manufacturing? Let that sink in for a moment.
Now, check out Matter and start replacing your traditional plastic items with better ones!
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Not sophisticated enough // Illustration by Kate Walker
Gannett retracts AI from writing newspaper articles
The Future. American newspaper giant Gannett has rolled back its use of AI to write articles after they came out robotic, erroneous, and just plain bad. Coming on the heels of BuzzFeed going all-in on the use of AI to generate articles, US journalism may be sacrificing trust with readers just to boost SEO.
System malfunction
Gannett-owned papers like The Des Moines Register, The Columbus Dispatch, and Florida Today have been using Lede AI to write regional sports stories… and it’s been going terribly.
Readers complained they were “lacking in detail, badly written, and read as if the writer had never watched the sport in question,” according to Insider.
Case in point:
Calling an Ohio football game a “close encounter of the athletic kind” (unintentionally hilarious).
Writing the "The Worthington Christian [[WINNING_TEAM_MASCOT]] defeated the Westerville North [[LOSING_TEAM_MASCOT]]" (a total failure).
After getting mocked on social media, Gannett reversed course and “paused the high school sports Lede AI experiment” until it could meet its “highest journalistic standards” (read: not sound like a malfunctioning robot).
The stories were ultimately fixed with the correction that they’d "been updated to correct errors in coding, programming, or style." That’s as equally hilarious as the AI-generated mistakes.
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Highlights
The best curated daily stories from around the web
Media, Music, & Entertainment
Media Rating Council, which oversees TV-viewership membership tools, is at odds with Nielsen’s plan to include Amazon’s own viewership count in the rating for Prime’s Thursday Night Football. Read more → thr
Seth Rogen has become a celebrity in the pottery world thanks to his custom ashtrays for his cannabis startup, Houseplant. Read more → fastcompany
YouTube Music is the first major music-streaming app to include a comments section under songs, pulled from the associated video. Read more → theverge
Fashion & E-Commerce
Shopify has debuted surprising integrations with rivals Amazon and TikTok. Read more → theinformation
GM and FedEx are collabing on the future of sustainable delivery: the electric Zevo van. Read more → fastcompany
London’s Victoria & Albert Museum is putting on the UK’s first-ever exhibition of the history and style of Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel. Read more → highsnobiety
Tech, Web3, & AI
As the US Copyright Office opens up a public comment period on new rules for AI-generated works, researchers are pioneering an innovative way of measuring how much a copyrighted work is worth to an LLM, dubbed “data leverage.” Read more → insider
Hot and generated: Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd would love to create an AI dating coach that can teach users to flirt and ultimately cure America’s loneliness epidemic. Read more → bloomberg
FEMA and the FCC are testing a national alert system that could reach smartphones, TVs, and whatever other device people are on that’s connected to the internet. Read more → deadline
Creator Economy
The Streamy Awards hit a record 15 million viewers in its first 48 hours — a big jump over the 2021 show’s record of 9.7 million. Read more → variety
TikTok reigns supreme when it comes to engagement with sponsored posts, reports CreatorIQ and Tribe Dynamics. Read more → tubefilter
X wants to make the “cool” competitor to LinkedIn (we guess no one told Musk LinkedIn is already cool). Read more → engadget
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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.