Happy Monday, Future Party. Meta rolled out its new AI agent, Muse, last week… and there’s already been some collateral damage. Brace yourselves: the tech giant forced long-running rock band Muse to change their Insta handle to @museband. It just goes to show that, in the age of AI, nothing is sacred anymore.

DAILY TOP TRENDS

Cities Want To Chill

Too big to chill? // Illustration by Kate Walker

Several municipalities and organizations are developing cutting-edge ways to keep residents cool at scale.

Why It Refreshes: This past August was the hottest month in recorded history... and the climate won’t be getting any better on its own. In fact, NYC is expected to have a subtropical climate by 2050, comparable to Alabama. With heat contributing to an excess of 25,000 deaths in Europe alone, figuring out how to cool down city blocks might become one of the most pressing priorities for local governments over the next few years.

Between The Mist: Ideas being explored to cool down cities range from the simply brilliant to the wildly bonkers. Bloomberg breaks down a few:

  • Phoenix has added reflective coating to streets and roofs to minimize heat from the sun, while several Chinese cities have outfitted buildings with giant misters.

  • Madrid is experimenting with katabatic towers — cylindrical structures that use hoses to spray water from the top, cooling the air and letting it fall down “like bathwater spiraling down a drainpipe.” A big enough one could cool an entire street.

  • Researchers at TU Delft in the Netherlands are testing turning offshore wind turbines into giant fans that can “spray plumes of seawater into the atmosphere, which onshore winds can carry into cities.”

  • Non-profit organization Reflective is testing cloud brightening in Australia, which involves spraying saltwater to act as “nuclei for clouds to condense around, allowing low-lying marine clouds to become more dense and reflective.”

  • Some startups, like Make Sunsets, are trialing geoengineering, such as finding scalable ways to safely block sunlight in the atmosphere — including releasing chalk dust at low altitudes to create a reflective layer.

Last Splash: Bloomberg notes that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution for cooling cities — it all depends on their unique climates and topographies. What works in LA won’t necessarily work in Paris. Whatever is used will hopefully at least help offset some of the heat dumping that happens as everyone turns up their AC.

The Future: Figuring out how to cool cities could soon become one of the biggest policy pitches for local politicians. Welcome to the Chill Party.

Together with Notion

Your Notion Workspace Is A Product — Start Treating It Like One

Early-stage teams move quickly, but their internal systems often struggle to keep up.

In the first few months of building a company, it’s easy for documentation, roadmaps, meeting notes, hiring plans, and customer insights to scatter across different tools and conversations.

At first, that mess feels manageable. But as the team grows, every unclear process becomes a drag on execution.

The most effective founders treat their workspace like a product — designing it intentionally with a clear structure, useful templates, shared naming conventions, and a simple onboarding experience for every new team member.

A strong workspace should make work easier to find, decisions easier to track, and priorities easier to understand.

Operational debt compounds just like technical debt. Every duplicate doc, lost decision, or unclear handoff slows the team down.

By building a clean, scalable workspace early, founders create a stronger foundation for faster execution, better collaboration, and less time wasted searching for context.

Build a workspace that scales with your team.

Auto-Tune Comes For The Live Show

A little pitchy-perfect // Illustration by Kate Walker

One of the dirtiest secrets in modern live touring is just how many artists are regularly using Auto-Tune tech to sound perfect during performances.

The High Note: Live music has become so expensive that expectations are now sky-high… which means artists feel pressure to sound perfect. That’s led many of them to seek solutions that can tweak their pitch in real time, fearing that a flub could disappoint fans and turn into online ridicule. It’s a practice that can strip authenticity from what should be the most real way to see an artist.

Behind The Songs: Maybe having the tools to be pitch-perfect is making it harder to have a genuinely authentic experience.

  • Catherine Provenzano, a professor of musicology at UCLA, told NYT that almost every modern high-profile live performance “has had somebody working live sound with Auto-Tune on it.”

  • Singer JoJo summed up why perfectly when she recently wrote on Instagram that “the standard for live singing isn’t human anymore.”

  • That’s even affected what shows artists are willing to do. Bobby Carter, the creative director for NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts, said that many artists have turned down performing because they can’t use Auto-Tune.

Encore: Ironically, more and more fans are realizing that their favorite artists are using Auto-Tune live… and they’re not too happy about it. Essentially, people want pitch to be perfect, but they want it done naturally. That expectation may already be pushing fans to embrace artists who are more raw and offbeat — people who feel human, warts and all.

Prediction: If fans are shying away from artists revealed to be using Auto-Tune, it feels like there may soon be a wholesale rejection of AI-generated music.

Together with Roku

How Jennifer Aniston’s LolaVie brand grew sales 40% with CTV ads

The DTC beauty category is crowded. To break through, Jennifer Aniston’s brand LolaVie, worked with Roku Ads Manager to easily set up, test, and optimize CTV ad creatives. The campaign helped drive a big lift in sales and customer growth, helping LolaVie break through in the crowded beauty category.

DEEP DIVES

  • Read: THR speaks with Geoff Macnaughton, VP of market programming and theatrical and programmer of Primetime at the Toronto International Film Festival, about how TIFF is angling to become the global marketplace for film and TV.

  • Listen: The Town chats with Constantin Film CEO Oliver Berben about managing international IP over the decades, including Resident Evil.

  • Explore: YouTube dropped its annual Culture & Trends report — the definitive guide to what people are watching online.

37.6% of you voted No, and I’m not interested in Friday’s poll: Have you ever traveled somewhere specifically to see a musical artist’s residency show?

“Not sure I would anymore. If I happened to be there, yeah, but not a trip specifically to see one.”

“No Doubt at the Sphere in Vegas was a very unique and amazing show!”

“Been to Vegas for the Backstreet Boys twice already and planning on going again.”

“I traveled to London for the Spice Girls reunion tour in 2019 and would absolutely do it again.”

“Pet Shop Boys played five shows at the Royal Opera House in London in July 2024.”

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.

QUICK HITS

→ Entertainment / Media

🍿 The Odyssey has become Universal’s highest-grossing movie ever after crossing $1.677 billion at the global box office.

🎥 Avengers: Doomsday has already racked up $50 million in pre-sales, with 70% coming from Infinity Vision screenings.

🏌️ LIV Golf has scored $14 million in bankruptcy financing to get back in the game.

→ Technology

🤖 OpenAI has allegedly paused new subscriptions to its Pro plan because demand for its Astra model is so high.

🚢 Shipping giant Maersk is reinventing the sail with a 115-foot-tall spinning cylinder.

👔 Meta wants some employees to become managers again. Amazing.

→ Creator Economy

🎮 Roblox will start allowing creators to turn their games into standalone apps for PC, mobile, and consoles.

📱 Instagram will let users add posts they’re tagged in directly to their own grid.

🛑 TikTok denied Meta’s ads proposing that TikTok match its $17 billion settlement with the federal government. Who could’ve seen that coming?

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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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