Infoman

Member since 2017-07-15T03:50:57Z. Last seen 2025-03-18T19:45:31Z.

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  Infoman

  ‘She is a snake – in the most positive way!’ How Taylor Swift became the world’s biggest pop star, again

  D'Souza

  The Guardian (USA) 09/9/2023

  Last month, Taylor Swift wrapped up the first leg of the Eras tour – a career-spanning, three-hours-plus stadium spectacular that’s proved to be the year’s single most significant pop culture phenomenon, Barbenheimer be damned.

  Eras has generated an estimated $5bn boost to consumer spending in the US, forcing cities to ramp up underprepared public transport systems and world leaders to turn into reply guys: Justin Trudeau pleaded with her on Twitter to come to Canada. And fair enough: I saw the final US Eras show in August and found it to be one of the most euphoric concerts I’ve ever seen, a reminder of Swift’s singular generational talent.

  When Eras concludes in November 2024 it is likely to be the highest-grossing tour of all time with an estimated $1.4bn in revenue – half a billion more than Elton John’s farewell tour, the current record holder. Even a filmed version of Eras being released in US cinemas in October brought in $37m the day that tickets went on sale. All told, the tour has re-established Swift as the most successful pop star in the world,

  after a few years in which a resurgence seemed far from likely.

  By the time the South American leg commences in November, Swift will have released her third album in 12 months, the re-recorded version of 1989. It’s the album that, on its original release in 2014, made her as omnipresent as Michael Jackson and Madonna had been in the 80s. Newspapers and blogs obsessed about “the squad” – the revolving clique of models, actors and musicians that surrounded her. But by the end of the attendant world tour she was being accused of self-serving and superficial “girl boss” feminism and there were public squabbles with Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj and Calvin Harris. A fierce backlash was soon under way.

  But next month, when Swift releases 1989 (Taylor’s Version), it’s possible that it may debut with higher firstweek sales than the album it’s recreating; her current cultural dominance makes the original 1989 era look small scale. How has Swift managed to restore her stature without succumbing to the pitfalls that felled her last time?

  In the immediate aftermath of the 1989 fallout, Swift broke her pattern of releasing a new album every two years, instead waiting three to return in 2017 with Reputation, billed as her retort to the haters. Louis Mandelbaum, host of the pop music podcast Pop Pantheon, says that Reputation is “actually more interesting than that: it’s really about her finding refuge in a new relationship in the face of [being] ostracised”, but its presentation – she wiped her once effusive social media accounts and adopted gothic imagery – allowed Swift to play with her newly tarnished image. “She attempted to parlay the negative press about her into the narrative of the record; like, ‘I’m taking ownership over how you view me,’” he says.

  Many fans now feel Reputation is underrated, but “relative to 1989, it was less [commercially] successful. And she was so intent on responding to the backlash that she obscured what the album actually was.” In 2019, Swift released her seventh album, Lover, a record that literally wore its heart on its sleeve to affirm that she had moved on from the drama and was happy. It was one of her least successful records, her first since 2010’s Speak Now’s to not produce any US No 1 singles.

  Its release did, however, coincide with another feud: the original masters of her first six albums were acquired by manager Scooter Braun and then resold without Swift’s approval. She announced that she would release notefor-note re-recordings of the albums in order to devalue the Braun-owned versions.

  Mandelbaum says that Swift’s feud with Braun “allowed her to gain a certain amount of empathy from the public that she had lost at the peak of her post-1989 era. It was easy for most pop fans to say: this male music executive is attempting to steal the art of this female singer-songwriter. It then allowed her to put the focus back on her songwriting: ‘I should own my songs because I wrote them in my bedroom when I was 15 years old.’”

  The pandemic provided another boost: in 2020, Swift surprise-released Folklore and Evermore, two albums produced with the National’s Aaron Dessner that repositioned her as a serious musician, not just a pop star. Maltese-British singer-songwriter Lauren Aquilina, a Swift devotee who supported her on her 1989 tour, cites Folklore as her favourite of Swift’s albums, calling it “so well rounded and sure of itself” and the work of “somebody who has absolutely mastered their craft”. The lyrical focus turned outwards again, giving new fans “an opportunity to appreciate her storytelling”.

  Swift started releasing the Taylor’s Version re-recordings in spring 2021 andput out another original album, Midnights, in 2022. That record “brought some of those more folky storytelling elements into the pop stuff, and blended them naturally,” Aquilina explains, saying that songwriting-wise, Swift has now “proved she can do whatever she wants to do”. She hasn’t left the charts since, breaking records for having the most albums in the US Top 100 and becoming the first act since the Beatles to have songs from three different albums in the US singles chart.

  Crisis publicist Lauren Beeching says that beyond the musical talent it’s Swift’s ability to recast her image that’s given her such longevity. “She is a snake in the most positive way,” she says, referring to an insult hurled at and then reclaimed by Swift during the Reputation era. “She sheds her skin and becomes a new version of herself to fit in with today’s culture. You never know what will come next, which is what keeps her fans so engaged.”

  Now Swift is more famous than ever, fans and critics are wondering if another backlash is brewing. The Eras tour has become a huge story, not just for Swift’s performance but for its unprecedented cultural and political impact – Ticketmaster’s mishandling of the Eras tour rollout, criticised by Swift, has led to an antitrust investigation – while moments from the show constantly go viral online.

  Swift has seemingly put up the “squad” bat signal, being spotted with Gigi Hadid, the Haim sisters and Blake Lively, and her dating life is back in the news: in January, she broke up with Joe Alwyn, her partner of six years, and was soon linked to Matty Healy, firebrand frontman of the 1975. Healy got in hot water for laughing along with racist jokes on a podcast, leading extreme Swifties to petition her to break up with him. Some fans have also expressed disquiet at the endless stream of special-edition merchandise that Swift puts on sale – the same record in various vinyl colourways, endless associated apparel – feeling gouged by what some are calling her “capitalist era”.

  But the nature of fame has changed since Swift’s last fall from grace, and in her favour. When Swift released 1989, there was no way to be a megastar pop icon without blanket media coverage, meaning that there was a vast audience forced to interact with Swift content who didn’t actually want to see it. Beeching says that, at that point in time, Swift “was so analysed – the poor girl couldn’t even go on a date without receiving a ludicrous amount of hate”.

  Today there is less of a monoculture, and conversation is chiefly driven by users of TikTok, Reddit and X. The fandoms that have emerged on those social media platforms are siloed and diffuse; the algorithms that serve users content are prone to showing them things they are already predisposed to like. This ecosystem has spawned celebrities such as the video game-esque vlogger Pinkydoll, dancer turned pop star Addison Rae and riotcausing Twitch streamer Kai Cenat – hugely famous to those who are interested, largely unknown to those who are not.

  “We’re in the era of everyone being a cult star, from Taylor, down to Charli XCX,” says Mandelbaum. “There is less imperative for pop stars to create music that’s all-encompassing; all Taylor has to do is play into what her fans want from her.” Swift can be the most famous person in the world to those who love her, while remaining out of the feeds of those who don’t.

  In her second go at pop’s peak, Swift is therefore more insulated against the forces that precipitated her downfall last time, while her songs remain heavily played on still-important legacy platforms such as pop radio. And Eras has its own promotional power: the Lover album track Cruel Summer has exploded in popularity off the back of the tour, leading Swift to push it as a single. The re-recording project means she has gone from one album every two years to two or three a year, along with deluxe editions, meaning there’s a constant drip feed of new music being uploaded to streaming services. Swift had four albums in the US Top 10 at once this summer, matching a record set by Herb Alpert in 1966.

  For aspiring stars, pop’s new economy has proved challenging. Last month, a Billboard report detailed the music industry’s struggle to mint new A-listers – managers and industry executives bemoaned the fact that the last big pop star to break was Olivia Rodrigo in 2021; one lamented that “people are just buried in content”. Younger stars such as Sabrina Carpenter and Afrobeats singer Rema may be netting significant streaming hits, but it takes a far bigger push than it used to for a star to break through to Swift level, simply because even if your feed is flooded with videos of Carpenter, it is likely that the person sitting next to you on the train is only seeing clips of Rema.

  For Swift, this is a boon. There’s just too much content online for any one person to become significantly overexposed and fewer avenues for fans or haters to air grievances that will be seen by broad swaths of the population. It’s also the reason why Healy, who has faced his fair share of controversies, has proven remarkably weatherproof, and the attempted cancellation-byassociation of Swift went nowhere.

  As Mandelbaum says, Swift’s prime mode these days is fan-service. “Even people that don’t like her begrudgingly admit that she has achieved so much through her own merits and talent and vision,” he says. But they’re not the point. “She is only in communication with the people that love her, and doesn’t need to care about the people who don’t – because there are just so many people that love her.”

  ets to the exhibits have all sold out. “The strike has also helped us attract more focus from the press,” says cocurator Michel Reilhac. “That’s because there are less of the usual things that they focus on. Fewer stars on the red carpet mean journalists look elsewhere for their stories.” For an emergent artform, press coverage is crucial. It ensures that the experimental prototypes which are unveiled on the island can at least be read about outside Venice.

  The downside is that Venice Immersive – with its XR experiments and VRChat tours – risks being tainted by fears over AI; viewed as the outrider for a potentially hazardous future. “People seem to think that XR is only about the technology and so they lump it all with AI,” says Liz Rosenthal, Reilhac’s

  co-curator. “Someone asked me yesterday, ‘Oh, are you getting lots of AI things funded now?’, which is a complete misunderstanding of what AI is. AI is just a workflow tool, like an editing or post-production tool. We have pieces here that use AI, but we’re not dependent on it. So there’s a big confusion around the issue.”

  In Reilhac’s view, the XR community – which is still finding its range and seeking an effective model of distribution – remains altogether too small to be seen as a threat to the traditional entertainment industry. “There’s hardly any market [for XR work]. There’s no money in it. And I think that’s actually a beautiful feature of the community. It’s still a bit of a utopia, based on everyone helping each other and sharing ideas, because no one’s in it for the money. So I don’t think the studios associate us with AI. And even if they did, we’re not significant enough to be a threat.”

  Elsewhere on the island I meet Paul Raphael, the co-founder of the immersive art company Felix & Paul Studios and co-creator of the mixed media animation Jim Henson’s The Storyteller: The Seven Ravens. Raphael explains that most XR creators are independent agents, non-unionised and still working on the experimental outer limits of the entertainment industry.

  “Union laws and guidelines don’t really apply in the XR world,” he says. “The fact that it’s a new medium means it’s not regulated yet. But as we go forward, it will have to be. Right now the artform is small enough and young enough, and the distribution channels aren’t there yet, which means that it hasn’t broken through to reach a mass audience. As soon as it does, the situation will change. If the unions are able to survive the strikes, there is no question in my mind that the XR industry will eventually become a part of that structure.”

  Raphael used predictive AI as a tool on The Seven Ravens in order to assist with the tracking of the exhibit’s digital animation. With Tulpamancer, though, the technology’s role is more central. Generative AI effectively mines the archive of information that it receives from each visitor. It digitally edits and illustrates your written responses and then delivers this back in the form of a dreamlike spiritual audit. “The yearning to explore distant lands beckons you, resonating deep with your being,” reads the computer print-out that I receive at the end of my own visit. “The call of Canada, Mexico, Argentina and Japan resonates alongside your family commitments and financial restraints.” I’m also assured that all the information I typed in at the start is deleted the instant the experience is complete

  Niederhauser has spent the past week in Venice, ensuring the exhibit runs smoothly and observing the reactions of those who try it. Some come out tearful and joyous. Others, though, emerge disconcerted and disturbed. Such a breadth of response has made Tulpamancer one of the hits of this year’s festival. But it also reflects our own ambivalence towards generative AI, our fraught relationship with a technology that takes its lead from both the best and worst of humanity. The future will be interesting and does not necessarily spell disaster. “AI is not the ultimate good,” Niederhauser says. “But it’s not the ultimate evil either.”

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  2023/09/10
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  Infoman

  The Guardian view on Brexit’s fantasy: waking to a nightmare foretold

  Guardian (USA) 09/9/2023

  In the ninth season of Dallas, the 1980s blockbuster TV show about Texas oil barons, the handsome young scion of the Ewing dynasty – Bobby – appeared in the shower of his ex-wife and true love Pam even though the character had been killed off a year earlier. Dumbstruck viewers had to swallow the idea that 12 months’ worth of storylines had all been a dream. But the show’s declining ratings suggested the audience missed Bobby – and waking up from a slumber offered the cleanest way to recover Dallas’s mojo. Across Britain, lots of voters must think the same might be true of Brexit, reasoning that the decision to leave the European Union is a nightmare that the country needs to wake up from.

  That might be one cause for the UK’s decision to sign up as an associate member of the EU’s £85bn Horizon research programme. Being outside the project meant UK science lost funding, collaborations, and key contact with EU universities. Getting back into the scheme – or at least most of it – was the right thing to do, because being fully outside was an exercise in self-harm. Negotiations to return were going nowhere until the Conservative party relieved itself of the delusional idea that the Irish border would be unaffected by leaving the EU, with its “Windsor framework”.

  This outbreak of realism in Rishi Sunak’s Tory party is down to selfinterest. Like Dallas’s falling ratings, the Conservatives’ poll standings are heading south. Public opinion has swung away from Brexit, with more than half the country thinking it was wrong to leave the bloc. Crucially, a chunk of 2016 leave voters have changed their minds because Brexit hasn’t delivered either on promises that it would energise the economy or on reducing immigration. Rather, leaving the EU probably made the cost of living crisis worse.

  Even Brexit’s true believers see that “global Britain” is a middleweight, rather than a heavyweight, in trade terms – and one so inexperienced that the UK came off worse when it signed a deal with the smaller economy of Australia. As voters lose faith in the government’s ability to control the UK’s borders, it is not easy to square a trade deal with India that might make it easier for citizens of that country to gain entry to the UK.

  The Tory party, however, has not changed as much as the UK. In 2019 most Conservative members were willing to countenance the destruction of their party to achieve Brexit. Mr Sunak, who was a Brexiter in 2016, is now having to clean up a mess that he helped to create. But neither the prime minister nor any of his ambitious rivals can ever admit this in public – or even perhaps to themselves, given the emotional and ideological sunk costs involved. Nigel Farage’s ability to wreak havoc in Tory ranks is another reason the party is still in favour of Brexit and won’t change its mind.

  Rejoining is probably a hard sell for the EU. Brussels gets the better end of the “trade and cooperation agreement”, as it helps goods exports but does little for services, Britain’s strength. Better, more equitable relations might be obtained in 2025 with the five-year review of the agreement. The dream of Brexit’s sunlit uplands has died. Britain has woken to a more prosaic view: that whoever wins the next election will be moving towards closer relations with Brussels, not moving further away.

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  2023/09/10
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  Infoman

  The Guardian (USA) 09/9/2023

  The days of signing on the dotted line may be numbered.

  The federal government has announced it is taking statutory declarations into the digital age, saying it will accept electronic signatures and video link witnessing from next year.

  It makes permanent a change introduced during the pandemic, when attending a justice of the peace (JP) for a statutory declaration – a practice that goes back to the 19th century – was forbidden under lockdown restrictions.

  Try our quiz:Whose scribble is that? Can you match the famous identity to the signature?

  Legislation introduced this week by the federal attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, will also allow people to digitally execute a statutory declaration using the online platform myGov and the myGovID Digital ID.

  Dreyfus says the bill is intended to keep with the changing ways of Australians.

  “This bill will respond to how Australians want and expect to engage and communicate digitally with government by providing options to make commonwealth statutory declarations facilitated by technology,” he says. “This bill is an important milestone in driving the digitisation of government services.”

  While a signature in ink has been used for hundreds of years to record someone’s agreement, consent or to verify their identity, its digitisation would leave it as a relic of the past.

  Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

  Meryl Kane is a JP at Chatswood Library, in Sydney’s lower north shore, and she believes that with digitisation, something fundamental and tangible could be lost in the process.

  “I think a signature will always hold a bit of power, but we are possibly losing something here,” she says.

  “There’s always a visceral aspect associated with signing on a dotted line,

  that just doesn’t come with pressing a button.”

  Kane doubts the move to digitise the signature would spell the end of a traditionally written one, especially considering how arduous organising a digital identity could be.

  “Particularly for the older generations, or for people where English isn’t their first language, the process of getting your digital identification is actually quite a long one and I doubt many people will do it until they actually find they need to.”

  In its announcement, the government says the move could save over $156m each year, hundreds of thousands of hours and be a productivity winner for the private sector.

  With Australians spending an estimated 9m hours each year executing and processing more than 3.8m statutory declarations, the hope is the measures will smooth out the process.

  But the state president of the New South Wales Justices Association, John Brodie, is also not as convinced, saying there are security concerns the move does not address.

  Brodie says digitisation could “debase” the authenticity and importance of documents such as statutory declarations and affidavits by opening the door to hackers and scammers. He also questions the government’s promise to implement its fraud and security arrangements.

  “Progress is great, but we all know that anything electronic is suspect to scamming, and that it can be accessed by those who want it,” Brodie says. “The acceptance of a stat dec as a proper legal document is not something we want to change. And anything modern or super modern that might undermine the integrity of that document shouldn’t even be considered.”

  Brodie says video link witnessing does not provide enough security to ensure someone is not being coerced into signing anything.

  “This provides ways to undermine the statutory declaration, and opens up ways for someone to be coerced; there just isn’t enough safety around these measures, particularly for the vulnerable.”

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  2023/09/10
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  Infoman

  What a year of King Charles has shown us about how he wants to reign

  Davies

  The Guardian (USA) 09/9/2023

  As the king spends the first anniversary of his mother’s death, and of his accession, at his Scottish highland retreat on Friday, he may reflect back on a year of historic transition not seen in 70 years.

  Suggestions that Charles, 74, sees himself as a “caretaker king”, keeping the throne warm for the new Prince of Wales, who will be the real reformer, is not a scenario recognised at Buckingham Palace.

  There have been no eye-catching reforms in his first year, and he can be fairly described as the “cautious” king. But there are clues to his aspirations in the small changes.

  He has turbo-charged royal receptions, harnessing their soft-power to the maximum, sources point out, in the knowledge he can no longer speak out publicly on subjects he remains passionate about.

  So, the “convening” king is a label it seems he will accept.

  When advised by Liz Truss’s government not to attend the Cop27 climate conference in Egypt, he instead hosted an eve of Cop27 reception for international representatives at Buckingham Palace. He found a way to remain a leader in the field of the climate crisis, albeit within the new constitutional parameters that constrain him.

  Now, “informal formality” are the bywords. Receptions are larger-scale events – such as that in February for the British east and south-east Asian communities. The nature of these receptions has changed from the late queen’s days, precisely because Charles is no longer able to become involved in certain areas, sources indicate.

  He also sees himself, as head of state, of being a symbol of continuity and stability, said sources. The political turbulence of the early days of his reign saw him no sooner having his first meeting with one prime minster than he was on to his second.

  He has made his debut as king on the international stage, addressing the German Bundestag, a first for a British monarch, and a similar honour will be accorded in France this month when he addresses their parliamentarians. He has also hosted the US president, Joe Biden, and the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa.

  But, while he would like to be seen as a unifying figure, the challenging dynamics of his own fractured family have dominated his first year. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s protracted onslaught against the royal family and institution in general, and Harry’s criticism of his father in particular, have played out across the world.

  From Charles there has been silence. It has never been an established position that nothing would be said, rather in what way would saying something make things better. So far, there has not been a day when he has thought saying something was going to make things better, the Guardian understands. His love for his younger son, though, is demonstrated in his invitation to Harry and Meghan to his coronation, although only Harry turned up and then made a swift exit back to LA.

  Another early challenge was the race row involving Lady Susan Hussey, the late queen’s lady-in-waiting, and a black female charity reception guest, Ngozi Fulani, of Sistah Space. Some royal observers were surprised at the speed and ruthlessness with which Charles’s aides dealt with the fallout. Hussey immediately resigned from the royal household for making “unacceptable and deeply regrettable comments”, and later offered an apology in person, which Fulani accepted.

  For Charles – who is very close to Hussey, godmother to William – it was a difficult situation. “One could almost argue it was dealt with too swiftly. The reaction to that was surprising, particularly from the Prince of Wales,” said Joe Little, managing editor of Majesty Magazine, noting Hussey was soon back in the royal fold.

  “I suppose it was important to be seen to be addressing the issue head on, as opposed to the way that other issues, such as bullying allegations, are being treated as private matters,” Little added, referencing bullying allegations made against, and denied by, Meghan.

  Another challenge Charles faces is the “slimmed-down” monarchy he is said to have wanted, which now looks positively skeletal. The Princess Royal may have had a point when she told Canada’s CBC News that a slimmed down monarchy “doesn’t sound like a good idea from where I’m standing”.

  With Andrew and Harry out of the picture, and the death of the late queen, what to do with all the patronages is a big question. In the official coronation photograph featuring the remaining 11 working royals, the Duke of Kent and Princess Alexandra are 87 and 86 respectively, the king, 74, the queen, 76, Princess Anne, 73, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester 79 and 77 respectively, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh 59 and 58 respectively, while the Waleses are both 41.

  “The Duke of Kent and the Gloucesters and Princess Alexandra, they can’t take on anything more. They will keep going as long as they can,” said Hugo Vickers, a royal historian. “You’ve lost Prince Andrew and Prince Harry. It’s a big issue, I think. You can see what Princess Anne means.”

  How the king will overcome this remains to be seen, but an ageing royal family could affect its popularity. While the most recent YouGov poll shows a majority (59%) think Charles is doing well, support for the institution in general fell as those questioned got younger, with 80% of the over-65s voicing their approval but only 37% of 18- to 24-year-olds.

  He will also have to contend with an increasingly vocal republican movement. While said to be genuinely pleased with the response he gets on the streets during engagements, he cannot ignore the protests and chants of “not my king”. The over-zealous policing of the coronation led to 64 arrests, some not even protesters, it later emerged. Only five people have so far been charged, and half told they will face no charges or fines.

  The necessary integration of two householdsafter the late queen’s death has inevitably led to a reduction in staff, and the king is also, reportedly, setting about reducing the number of middle managers in his employ.

  “If a whole layer of middle-management is to be removed then that’s a necessary step that maybe should have been taken some time ago. He obviously sees a need for modernisation, and it looks like he’s going through the process at the moment,” said Little.

  The monarchy is due to receive a huge pay increase, with public funding through the sovereign grant rising £86.3m this year to £126m in 2025 due to the formula based on crown estate profits, the Guardian has reported.

  Charles’s address to the nation, delivered after his mother’s death, laid out a blueprint for his reign: his solemn pledge to “uphold the constitutional principles at the heart of our nation” and acknowledgment that his new responsibilities mean it will “no longer be possible for me to give so much of my time and energies to the charities and issues for which I care so deeply”.

  “It was brilliant. I don’t think the late queen had to set out a blueprint about what she was going to do, but that is what we expect these days. And it certainly hit all the nails on the head. And he has kept to it,” said Vickers.

  It was a message “that was very much reinforced by Prince William leaping up on to the stage at the [coronation] concert and giving that Shakespearean speech, basically he was then saying: ‘I’m going to be the one talking now,’” added Vickers.

  Charles has previously insisted he knew he couldn’t meddle once king. “But saying it and doing it are two very different things, and that doesn’t mean to say that he won’t at some point interfere,” said Little. His first big personal project as monarch to be launched in the autumn is a national initiative to tackle food waste, led by Dame Martina Milburn, the chief executive of the Prince’s Trust. “And you wonder how political that might be, so that remains to be seen,” he added.

  One surprise omission in Charles’s first year has been the lack of Commonwealth activity – he is king of 14 other countries, with some debating whether to ditch him. Perhaps it is down to lack of time in a busy year, said Little. “But there hasn’t yet been the Commonwealth activity in the way you might expect there to have been.”

  By and large, it is Charles the “cautious” king we have seen so far. “He is the best prepared Prince of Wales that the UK has ever had. Clearly we are unlikely to celebrate the silver jubilee of King Charles III. But he could be king for 20 years,” said Little. “To be described as a ‘caretaker king’ for two decades is doing him a great disservice. He clearly has a lot of offer. We have yet to see some of his potential. But it’s early days.”

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  2023/09/10
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  Infoman

  The US should not normalize Modi’s autocratic and illiberal India at the G20

  Ja­son Stan­ley

  The Guardian (USA) 09/9/2023

  In December 2021, President Joe Biden hosted an event billed as a “Summit for Democracy”. Biden opened his address to the summit by describing his motivation for holding it: “in the face of sustained and alarming challenges … democracy needs champions”.

  Since that time Biden has embraced, as allies, autocrats and wouldbe autocrats all over the world, including the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, who US intelligence has said was responsible for the brutal murder of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. More recently, Biden invited Benjamin Netanyahu, who is presiding over the destruction of Israel’s democracy by targeting its judicial system, for an official visit to the United States.

  Biden is right that there is an everlarger club of backsliding democracies, with the US among them. And the American president is not the only openly hypocritical leader in this club. In fact, he is not even close to the worst offender.

  This September, India is hosting G20 leaders under the banner of “One Earth, One Family, One Future”. As a part of the transition to India’s assumption of this position, Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, has leaned heavily on these themes in promoting India as an inclusive, emerging global power.

  Yet behind these lofty ideals lies a very different, and dangerous, reality.

  Those in Modi’s ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), are hardline Hindu nationalists. Their ideology holds that India was originally a pure Hindu state, with minorities, such as India’s large Muslim population, the supposed result of colonization by outside forces.

  The hallmarks of fascism are everywhere. School textbooks are being rewritten to reinforce the fake history behind BJP’s Hindu nationalist agenda. Topics like the theory of evolution and the periodic table have been replaced with traditional Hindu theories, and academics have been silenced for calling out the BJP’s election malpractices. The government has weaponized education in the manner typical of fascist regimes such as Russia. There are other clear indications of India’s slide towards fascism. On press freedom, India ranks 161st out of 180 countries, sandwiched between Venezuela (at 159) and Russia (at 164).

  Modi and the BJP have proven themselves to be fluent hypocrites on the world stage. Under the banner of anticolonialism, the party isreplicating Britain’s colonial practices.

  In 2005 Modi, then the chief minister of Gujarat, was denied entry to the US because of his role in ethnic violence that left over 1,000 people dead, the vast majority of them Muslims. According

  to a recently declassified report from the British Foreign Office, the Hindu mobs'"systematic campaign of violence has all the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing” and “Narendra Modi is directly responsible.”

  He’s much more powerful now, but the playbook remains the same. India’s minorities face lynchings and the bulldozing of their homes, among other abuses. Ten percent of the world’s Muslims live in India, over 200 million in all; as Gregory Stanton, the founder and director of Genocide Watch, has warned in a US congressional briefing, we are seeing in India the beginning of what would be by far the largest genocide in history.

  And it’s not just Muslims who are at risk. In Manipur, over 150 people have been killed since May 2023 in a vicious ethnic conflict pitting Hindus against Christians. More broadly, since Modi took over in 2014, hate crimes against minorities have increased by 300%.

  History tells us that this is how it works. Fascism grants the dominant majority special status, targeting national minorities by threatening their equal citizenship. In 2019, India passed a Citizenship Amendment Act that granted a fast track to citizenship for non-Muslims who lack documentation as citizens. The National Registry Act, already implemented in the Indian state of Assam, is a seemingly contradictory effort to expel illegal immigrants. It demands that residents provide proof of their citizenship in India, essentially a birth certificate, or face expulsion. Yet 38% of Indian children under five lack a birth certificate.

  This tangle of laws exemplifies the blatant hypocrisy of India’s ruling party, leaving India poised to disenfranchise much of its Muslim population.

  Nor is the problem only domestic. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, India has become one of the world’s largest importers of Russian oil – essentially propping up Russia’s occupation and genocide of its peaceful neighbor. Genocidal regimes support one another, in an alliance of evil, and the rest of the world must stand against them.

  So, has the US been listening? The answer is clearly no. In June, Biden gave Modi’s visit a red-carpet treatment. Jack Kirby, a US national security official, has made light of objections to Modi, declaring that “India is a vibrant democracy. Anybody that, you know, happens to go to New Delhi can see that for themselves.” With America’s help, the G20 platforms BJP’s transparently hypocritical embrace of humanitarian and liberal ideals.

  The US public and their leaders are paying attention, at least somewhat, to Russia’s genocide in Ukraine. But the collective shrug at a potentially vast genocide in India (as well as the ongoing genocide in Sudan) raises an obvious concern: is the US public’s standard for this crime much higher when black and brown people face the threat?

  Jason Stanley is a professor of philosophy at Yale University, and the author, most recently, of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them

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  2023/09/10
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  Infoman

  Take another look at Joe Biden. His is the presidency progressives have been waiting for

  Jonathan Freed­land

  The Guardian (USA) 09/9/2023

  The tragedy of Joe Biden is that people see his age, his frailty and his ailing poll numbers and they miss the bigger story. Which is that his has been a truly consequential presidency, even a transformational one. In less than three years, he has built a record that should unify US progressives, including those on the radical left, and devised an economic model to inspire social democratic parties the world over, including here in Britain.

  Sadly for Biden, politics and government are different things: it takes more than a record of good governance to get reelected. For one thing, voters cast their ballots less as a verdict on the past than as an instruction (or hope) for the future. And the fear, shared by 76% of Americans, according to a poll this week, is that Biden, who would be 86 at the end of a second term, is simply too old to lead them there. Put aside the fact that his near certain opponent in November 2024, Donald Trump, is only three years younger. Trump has a presence and vigour, an ability to project himself, that Biden does not. And that simple fact affects – distorts – the entire way the Biden administration is seen. As one observer puts it, “the vibes are off ”.

  The challenge for Democrats is to use the 14 months between now and election day to get past that, to point out the malignancy of Trump and the danger a second Trump presidency would represent to the republic and the world – and also to make the positive case for what we might call Bidenism. Luckily, that is not a hard case to make.

  That’s because, though elected to be no more than a calm hand on the tiller, a stopgap, interim leader who might allow the country to steady itself after four years of Storm Donald, Biden has confounded that expectation. He has none of the stage presence of his old boss, Barack Obama – who never had any trouble with vibes – but he can already claim to have achieved much more.

  Top of the list is, characteristically, something that sounds boring but is of enormous significance: the Inflation Reduction Act, passed last year. That seemingly technocratic piece of legislation actually achieves two epochal goals. First, it hastens the day the US makes the break from fossil fuels – by making clean energy not only the morally superior option for both industry and consumers, but the financially superior one too.

  It does that through a massive raft of tax breaks, subsidies and incentives all designed to encourage the production of wind turbines, solar panels, ever improving battery technology, geothermal plants and the like, along with tax credits aimed at making electric cars irresistible even to those middleAmerican consumers more concerned about their wallets than the burning planet.

  The estimated cost of $386bn is huge, but that’s not a limit on how much Biden has committed to spend. On the contrary, if the demand is there for solar panels or electric vans, Biden’s law obliges the US government to keep spending. A calculation by Credit Suisse reckoned the figure could rise to $800bn, which will in turn unleash $1.7tn in private-sector spending on green technology. Small wonder that everyone from environmental activists to Goldman Sachs hailed the act as a “gamechanger” in the fight to tackle the climate emergency.

  But the second goal of the legislation is almost as significant. Biden insisted that this surge in green manufacturing would happen inside the US, thereby reviving industrial towns and cities in decline since the 1980s. It is US factories that are getting the subsidies to build all this clean tech – alongside an earlier, huge package of infrastructure spending – restoring jobs to workers who had long been written off.

  The Inflation Reduction Act is the centrepiece of Bidenomics, an approach that resurrects Democratic principles discarded in the Bill Clinton years, seemingly for ever: old-school industrial policy centred on an activist state making serious public investment in manufacturing; muscular regulation of corporations; and warm encouragement of unionised labour. (“When unions win, Americans across the board win,” says Biden.) Which is one reason why the AFL-CIO trade union, echoing Goldman Sachs, also hailed the act as a “gamechanger” for working people.

  The passage of the legislation – all the more remarkable given a Senate then split 50-50 between the parties – and its impact are set out in an outstanding new book on the Biden presidency, The Last Politician by Franklin Foer. He describes how Biden, whose hands were already full with the Covid pandemic and the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection, was not content simply to be a caretaker manager, troubleshooting crises. Instead, “he set out to transform the country through some of the biggest spending bills that have ever been proposed”, Foer told me when we spoke this week.

  The result is that Biden has “redirected the paradigm” of US economic life in a way that will affect Americans “for a generation”. While Obama and Clinton were “deferential to markets”, says Foer, Biden has reversed “the neoliberal consensus” in place since the Ronald Reagan era. He doesn’t leave corporations alone; he gets stuck in, taking on de-facto monopolies, reviving “anti-trust” policies that had long been abandoned. (“Capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism,” insists Biden. “It’s exploitation.”) “Like Reagan, Biden is resetting the economic trajectory of the nation,” adds Foer. “In fact, as a matter of substance, he is the most transformational president since Reagan.”

  Internationally, the change is not as dramatic, but Biden is credited with bringing stability after the chaos and dictator-coddling of the Trump years and, especially, for building and maintaining a western alliance in support of Ukraine as it defends itself against Russian imperialism. Others admire his handling of China: robust, without crossing the line where a cold war turns hot.

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  2023/09/10
• 
  

  Infoman

  Us open 2023 woman final

  全埸人為coco 打氣，皆因－個係美國人，身體細小，仲係黑人teenager，有信仰，有美國夢，口齒伶俐，另一個白俄羅斯人，世界排名第一，仲係高大強壯白人美女，可惜eq 甚低

  全埸人為弱者coco 打氣，令人感動

  2023/09/09
• 
  

  Infoman

  Buddy Oliver follows in chef dad’s footsteps

  Guardian 09/9/2023

  Buddy is a 12-yearold schoolboy from Essex, with a large family and a shock of blond hair. He also happens to have an extremely famous father: the TV chef Jamie Oliver. Perhaps not coincidentally, this week Buddy acquired a commission for a TV series of his own. In a programme for the BBC, it was reported, Buddy will teach other children recipes and helpful tips. Dad may be one of the country’s most famous and influential chefs, but in this case, a source told the Sun, “Buddy is the star of the show.”

  His surname, of course, will have been a factor – and Buddy is far from the first son or daughter of a TV chef to venture into the worlds of cookery or presenting. Jack Stein, the son of Rick, is the chef director overseeing menus at his father’s eponymous restaurant group, and has presented cookery shows on SBS and UKTV Food.

  Emily Roux, the daughter of the former Masterchef presenter Michel Roux and the granddaughter of Albert Roux, spent some of her own chef career working at the family’s restaurant, Le Gavroche. Luciano Pierre White and Sam Worrall Thompson, the sons of Marco and Anthony respectively, are both chefs.

  Perhaps closest to Buddy’s experience is that of Gordon Ramsay’s daughter Tilly, who like him grew up on the fringe of her father’s celebrity. In 2015, she was given her own CBBC TV show, Matilda and the Ramsay Bunch, in which the then 13-year-old Tilly cooked meals for her large and noisy family at their Los Angeles home and elsewhere.

  If some “nepo baby” accusations are inevitable, and a family leg-up no doubt offers a significant boost, sustained success in the competitive and volatile restaurant world is near impossible without talent and hard work too (Jack Stein, for instance, was voted best chef at the 2023 Food Magazine reader awards).

  And Buddy is no newcomer either to cookery or TV, having a great deal more presenting experience than Jamie did when he burst on to British TV in 1999, aged 23. Like all his siblings, Buddy has been cooking with his parents (and appearing in videos) since he was a toddler, helping his mum, Jools, rustle up “a really cool supersmoothie” or rolling out some pasta with his dad.

  Since 2020 he’s been fronting videos himself, at first hosted on Jamie’s social media channel. Cooking Buddies, his own YouTube channel, now has 133,000 subscribers. It’s that, just as much as his famous name, that is likely to have enhanced Buddy’s appeal to TV commissioners, notes Vanessa Hartley, the head of social at Tribal Worldwide, a branding and social media agency. “To me, [those social media numbers] essentially represent a baseline viewership at launch. So the BBC are going into this knowing that there is already interest – it’s almost as if a pilot had been done for them already.”

  One one key point, the family connection is extremely important, says Hartley. “Personally I think the interesting bit of this is actually Jamie’s following, [because] I’m pretty certain that Jamie Oliver posting about the show on his own channels will be tied into [the broadcaster’s] contract.” That kind of money-can’t-buy endorsement to the chef ’s many millions of followers would be any broadcaster’s dream, she says.

  None of which should detract from Buddy’s natural talent. Confident and charming, he’s definitely a chip off the old block, says Cathy Harding, the founder of Cook Stars, which provides cookery lessons in schools, for councils and privately across the UK.

  “He’s got his dad’s charisma,” she says, “and I especially love that they actually let him be a child – they leave in the little mistakes that he makes. I find that really endearing – because that’s exactly how it is in our classes – it’s certainly never perfect.”

  Having a young cook on TV to inspire other kids will be “brilliant”, agrees Helen Gubbins, a mother of two from Edinburgh who started a blog, cooking with my kids. co.uk, sharing recipes she uses with her own children at home.

  “Having someone their own age can really inspire other children to give it a go,” she says. “They can relate to it so much more than if a grownup’s making it.”

  For home cooks or wildly famous ones, “sometimes it’s important that you take a step back and let them just get on and do it”, says Gubbins. “Something might not turn out perfect, but if it’s homemade food, it’s always going to taste pretty good. And they get a lot of satisfaction too.”

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  2023/09/09
• 
  

  Infoman

  Fish Oil Failure Shines Grim Light on America’s Memory Crisis

  USA TODAY US Edition 07/9/2023 Amer­ica’s Top Mem­ory M.D. Re­veals Why Fish Oil Doesn’t Pro­tect You from Se­nior Mo­ments – and the #1 Al­ter­na­tive

  More than 16 million Americans suffer from age-associated cognitive impairment, and according to nationwide research, these numbers are only rising.

  Thankfully, anti-aging specialist and best-selling author Dr. Al Sears says there’s an easy way to banish senior moments and brain fog for good.

  It’s a safe, natural compound called DHA – one of the building blocks of your brain. It helps children grow their brains significantly bigger during development. And in adults, it protects brain cells from dying as they get older.

  For years, most people thought fish oil was the best available source of DHA…

  But industrial fish farming practices have depleted the nutritional content of nearly every fish oil you can buy.

  Today, roughly 20 million Americans are wasting their money on fish oils that hardly do anything at all.

  And since they think they are addressing the problem, fish oil’s failure has led to America’s memory crisis continuing to grow practically unchecked.

  Fortunately, Dr. Sears says, “there’s still hope for seniors. Getting more DHA can make a life-changing difference for your mental clarity, focus, and memory.”

  Dr. Sears, a highly-acclaimed, board-certified doctor— who has published more than 500 studies and written four bestselling books — says we should be able to get enough DHA in our diets… but we don’t anymore.

  “For thousands of years, fish were a great natural source of DHA. But due to industrial fish farming practices, the fish we eat and the fish oils you see at the store are no longer as nutrient-dense as they once were,” he explains.

  DHA is backed by hundreds of studies for supporting razor-sharp focus, extraordinary mental clarity, and a lightning quick memory… especially in seniors.

  So, if you’re struggling with focus, mental clarity, or memory as you get older…

  Dr. Sears recommends a different approach.

  THE SECRET TO A LASTING MEMORY

  Research has shown our paleo ancestors were able to grow bigger and smarter brains by eating foods rich in one ingredient — DHA.

  “Our hippocampus thrives off DHA, and grows because of it,” explains Dr. Sears. “Without DHA, our brains would shrink, and our memories would quickly fade.”

  A groundbreaking study from the University of Alberta confirmed this. Animals given a diet rich in DHA saw a 29% boost in their hippocampus — the part of the brain responsible for learning and memory. As a result, these animals became smarter.

  Another study on more than 1,500 seniors found that those whose brains were deficient in DHA had significantly smaller brains — a characteristic of accelerated aging and a weakened memory.

  PEOPLE’S BRAINS ARE SHRINKING AND THEY DON’T EVEN KNOW IT

  Dr. Sears uncovered that sometime during the 1990s, fish farmers stopped giving their animals a natural, DHA-rich diet and began feeding them a diet that was 70% vegetarian.

  “It became expensive for farmers to feed fish what they’d eat in the wild,” explains Dr. Sears. “But in order to produce DHA, fish need to eat a natural, marine diet, like the one they’d eat in the wild.”

  “Since fish farmers are depriving these animals of their natural diet, DHA is almost nonexistent in the oils they produce.”

  “And since more than 80% of fish oil comes from farms, it’s no wonder the country is experiencing a memory crisis. Most people’s brains are shrinking and they don’t even know it.”

  So, what can people do to improve their memory and brain function most effectively.

  Dr. Sears says, “Find a quality DHA supplement that doesn’t come from a farmed source. That will protect your brain cells and the functions they serve well into old age.”

  Dr. Sears and his team worked tirelessly for over two years developing a unique brain-boosting formula called Omega Rejuvenol.

  It’s made from the most powerful source of DHA in the ocean, squid and krill — two species that cannot be farmed.

  According to Dr. Sears, these are the purest and most potent sources of DHA in the world, because they haven’t been tampered with. “Omega Rejuvenol is sourced from the most sustainable fishery in Antarctica. You won’t find this oil in any stores.”

  MORE IMPRESSIVE RESULTS

  Already, the formula has sold more than 850,000 bottles. And for a good reason, too. Satisfied customers can’t stop raving about the memory-boosting benefits of quality-sourced DHA oil.

  “The first time I took it, I was amazed. The brain fog I struggled with for years was gone within 24 hours. The next day, I woke up with the energy and mental clarity of a new man,” says Owen R.

  “I remember what it was like before I started taking Omega Rejuvenol… the lack of focus… the dull moods… the slippery memory… but now my mind is as clear as it’s ever been,” says Estelle H.

  “My mood and focus are at an alltime high. I’ve always had trouble concentrating, and now I think I know why,” raves Bernice J. “The difference

  that Omega Rejuvenol makes couldn’t be more noticeable.”

  And 70-year-old Mark K. says, “My focus and memory are back to age-30 levels.”

  These are just a handful of the thousands of reviews Dr. Sears receives regularly thanks to his breakthrough memory formula, Omega Rejuvenol.

  WHERE TO FIND OMEGA REJUVENOL

  To secure bottles of this brain-booster, buyers should contact the Sears Health Hotline at 1-800-351-4066. “It takes time to manufacture these bottles,” says Dr. Sears. “The Hotline allows us to ship the product directly to customers who need it most.”

  Dr. Sears feels so strongly about this product he is offering a 100% money-back guarantee on every order. “Send back any used or unused bottles within 90 days and I’ll rush you a refund,” says Dr. Sears.

  The Hotline is taking orders for the next 48 hours. After that, the phone number may be shut down to allow for inventory restocking.

  Call 1-800-351-4066 to secure your limited supply of Omega Rejuvenol. Readers of this publication immediately qualify for a steep discount, but supplies are limited. To take advantage of this great offer use Promo Code

  when you call.

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  2023/09/07
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  Infoman

  Musk Borrowed $1 Billion From SpaceX

  MICAH MAID­EN­BERG AND TIM HIG­GINS

  The Wall Street Journal 06/9/2023 Loan shows how the bil­lion­aire can raise cash with­out hav­ing to sell his shares

  Elon Musk tapped SpaceX, the rocket maker he oversees as chief executive, for a $1 billion loan around the time he was acquiring the social-media company formerly known as Twitter.

  The unusual loan is the latest example of how the world’s richest man has drummed up cash from his empire of companies without having to permanently part with shares—enabling him to raise funds for his wide array of endeavors.

  SpaceX approved the loan, which was backed by some of his SpaceX stock, in October, and Musk drew all of it down the same month, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

  It couldn’t be determined why he took on the debt. He paid the loan back shortly after he borrowed the money, returning $1 billion with interest to SpaceX in November. Musk and SpaceX didn’t respond to requests for comment.

  For years, Musk has had arrangements with banks to borrow against his shares in his companies, including Tesla, the electric-car maker where he is CEO. At privately held SpaceX, the company itself has served as his lender.

  Musk is by far SpaceX’s largest shareholder, controlling a 42% stake and almost 79% of its voting power as of March, according to a SpaceX

  filing with the Federal Communications Commission. If he wants to take out a loan from SpaceX, he almost certainly can.

  The borrowing last year occurred as SpaceX made big investments in its Starship rocket program and in Starlink, a satellite-internet business. The company has raised large sums from investors to help pay for both, and Musk has urged employees to mind their spending. In late 2021, he warned that SpaceX could face bankruptcy as it plowed cash into the huge rocket and Starlink.

  The $1 billion loan temporarily shifted a significant chunk of capital for SpaceX, which is intertwined with many of the most important space missions at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Pentagon, to its top leader. SpaceX had $4.7 billion in cash and securities on hand at the end of last year, the documents showed. The loan represented 11% of the $9 billion in equity the company reported selling since 2009, according to regulatory filings.

  In November, when Musk paid back the money, he also sold almost $4 billion worth of Tesla stock, and he sold a similar amount the following month, bringing the total amount of the automaker’s stock he sold over a stretch of more than a year to around $39 billion.

  Musk has said he would be paying more than $11 billion in taxes for 2021 and he put up about $25 billion in cash as part of his $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter, now known as X, in late October.

  From the early days of SpaceX, Musk has turned to the company to help back up his other ventures. Musk has said he borrowed $20 million from SpaceX years ago to help a then-struggling Tesla, which narrowly averted collapse in late 2008.

  SpaceX tried to help a different Musk company during a period of financial difficulty: SolarCity. In 2015 and 2016, SpaceX invested $330 million in bonds issued by the solar company where Musk was chairman and the largest shareholder. The struggling company later was acquired by Tesla.

  A couple of years later, some SpaceX investors questioned why the rocket maker was diverting resources to another Musk enterprise, the Boring Co., which was experimenting with tunneling at the rocket maker’s complex. SpaceX later said Boring compensated it with some equity in the startup. Musk didn’t comment on the matter.

  Tesla didn’t become consistently profitable until the second half of 2019. The success was further rewarded by Wall Street, fueling the company’s already high market value.

  Still, for many years, Musk has been a cash-poor billionaire with much of his wealth tied up in shares in Tesla, SpaceX and other startups. His liquidity isn’t known.

  As of December 2020, he had accumulated loans from Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, totaling more than $500 million tied to his Tesla shares, according to a filing disclosing his relationships with the automaker’s lenders. The current status of those loans couldn’t be learned.

  The mixing of Musk’s personal and business activities dates back to the early days of the companies, when he was writing checks from his own account to cover bills to help a then-struggling Tesla.

  More recently, activities at Tesla have drawn scrutiny, with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and the Securities and Exchange Commission opening inquiries into its use of company funds for a project that had been described internally as a house for Musk, the Journal has reported.

  The documents viewed by the Journal show that SpaceX has a loan agreement with Musk that has been modified over the years.

  In early 2017, SpaceX struck an agreement with Musk that permitted him to borrow up to $120 million from the company, with principal and interest due either a decade later or 90 days after a demand from SpaceX. Musk tapped into that deal about a year later, when he took out $100 million, according to the documents.

  The total amount SpaceX could lend him was increased in May 2019, and Musk borrowed another $100 million the same month. A similar scenario played out the following year: The lending capacity was boosted in December 2020 to a maximum of $500 million, and Musk took out another $300 million.

  In 2021, Musk began unlocking some of his paper wealth at Tesla. At the end of that year, he repaid SpaceX the $500 million in borrowing plus interest.

  Last fall, SpaceX boosted borrowing capacity to as much as $1 billion, permitting Musk to take out the loan of that size.

  At the beginning of last year, with Tesla flourishing, Musk began making moves toward a new venture: Twitter.

  An early plan called for Musk to borrow $12.5 billion through loans backed by Tesla shares he owned that at the time were valued at more than $62.5 billion, and represented about 40% of his stake.

  The idea worried some investors. Tesla’s board and several banks had put in place rules that required him to put up more collateral were Tesla’s share price to fall. And it was falling in those days, meaning more shares were needed as collateral. Ultimately, he abandoned using Tesla shares as collateral to buy Twitter.

  In April 2023, Tesla disclosed it had further tightened rules around Musk’s using his stake in the car company to borrow money.

  Paying for the late October acquisition of Twitter further complicated Musk’s financial situation.

  The social-media company traditionally generated most of its revenue by selling ads, but it saw a pullback from advertisers worried in part about the drama around Musk’s takeover. Musk said he was forced to cut spending at the social-media company to avoid bankruptcy.

  The situation at Twitter, along with increased competition and rising interest rates, weighed on Tesla shares last year, when the stock fell 65%. Tesla’s share-price decline complicated Musk’s ability to use stock in the electric-vehicle company to raise money.

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  2023/09/06
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  Infoman

  Spotify’s $1 Billion Podcast Bet Turns Into a Serial Drama

  ANNE STEELE AND SARAH KROUSE

  The Wall Street Journal 06/9/2023 The prospect of riches led to ag­gres­sive in­vest­ments in celebrity deals

  Spotify spent more than $1 billion to build a podcasting empire. It struck splashy deals with Kim Kardashian, the Obamas and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. It paid $286 million for two podcast studios and spent $250,000 and more an episode on exclusive shows to lure new listeners.

  The bet hasn’t paid off.

  Most of its shows aren’t profitable, according to people familiar with the matter, and the company has recently cut staff and programming to slow its losses. The company, which has struggled to report consistent profits, lost €527 million, equivalent to about $565 million, in the six months ending in June, on €6.2 billion in revenue.

  No one in the business is making much money on podcasts, but Spotify, which has spent far more on the medium than its rivals, has more to lose than most. Spotify’s competitors, including Amazon, Apple and Google, tech behemoths with their own audiostreaming services, have other, more profitable businesses.

  Podcast revenue in the U.S. is expected to reach $2.3 billion this year, a 25% increase from 2022, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, an industry group, and is expected to more than double by 2025. That represents a tiny slice of the $200 billion digital-ad market.

  Spotify spent its way to the top of an industry that turned out to be less lucrative than it appeared when it began its podcast quest in 2018.

  “The size of the bet up against the size of the market just seems irrational in retrospect,” Evan Shapiro, a media consultant and producer, said of Spotify’s podcast investment. “They’re out of runway.”

  The pool of podcast listeners is growing, but the flood of shows on various streaming platforms makes it tough to break new hits. Facing competition across genres and formats, Spotify found that exclusive podcasts generally don’t draw subscribers away from its rivals. Podcast costs at the company rose €29 million in the first half of this year.

  The company, which had 220 million paid subscribers to its premium service in June, said it has more than 100 million podcast listeners on its platform, 10 times what it had in 2019. Spotify said it is on track to make its podcast business profitable in 2024.

  Under pressure from investors to meet that profitability goal, the company in June laid off 200 employees, about 2% of its workforce, and culled shows to focus on a more limited stable of original and exclusive content. It did away with its Parcast and Gimlet brands, consolidating its original work into a unit called Spotify Studios. In July, Spotify raised the price of core subscriptions by a dollar to $10.99 a month.

  Spotify has started to share more of the risk with its talent. The company recently agreed to pay comedian Trevor Noah $4 million in a deal that allows the company to collect revenue from the podcast to cover its investment, according to people familiar with the matter. After that, both sides share the take. Spotify intends to pursue similar deals, executives said.

  Sirius, iHeart, NPR and other podcast rivals have gone through their own podcast-related layoffs and budget cuts, part of a larger cost-trimming trend among media and technology companies this year.

  Chief Executive Daniel Ek has said he wants Spotify to be the world’s largest audio company, spanning audiobooks, education, sports and news.

  Podcasts are only the first step toward Spotify’s goal of evolving from a music-streaming company to an audio giant, generating $100 billion in revenue by 2030. Spotify reported €11.7 billion in revenue in 2022.

  While the company probably overpaid for some content, Ek said, the investments helped Spotify achieve its goal of becoming the top podcast platform. The company expects podcast ad revenue to grow 30% this year, ahead of Spotify’s overall revenue growth, executives have told staff in recent months.

  “We’ve been very focused on pursuing shows that drive really loyal audiences and also attract advertisers,” said Sahar Elhabashi, head of Spotify’s podcast business. “We have a very strong portfolio now which does that.”

  Spotify’s library of more than five million shows includes fiction, nonfiction and personality programming. Among its original shows are the Pulitzer Prize-winning nonfiction podcast “Stolen,” as well as “Heavyweight,” which explores people’s regrets and “Serial Killers.” It also carries thousands of podcasts from other publishers and media companies. News Corp’s Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal, has a content partnership with Spotify.

  Whether or not Spotify’s investment pays off, it has helped lift podcasting from a medium to an industry, said Donald Albright, co-founder of Tenderfoot TV, the maker of hit podcasts, and a producer of “Kim Kardashian’s The System.”

  By casting as broad a net as possible, Spotify now hopes to capture enough listeners and sell enough ads to make good on its billion-dollar bet.

  Press play

  Spotify in 2018 set its sights on podcasting after executives noticed a spike in demand for audiobooks and podcasts in Germany. Podcasts at the time were a small butgrowing medium that drew young, educated listeners, a demographic appealing to advertisers.

  The company, which began in 2006 as a music-streaming service, believed podcasts could attract more listeners from broadcast radio, then a $14-billion ad market, and help open a path to profitability. First, it had to learn how the business worked.

  Spotify signed exclusive deals with some of the biggest names in podcasting, including Joe Rogan and Alex Cooper. After acquiring Gimlet, it decided to close a profitable unit at the podcast studio— which made custom content for business—and concentrate on creating fiction and nonfiction broadcasts. Creative talent were told to pursue ambitious storytelling without worrying about the cost of their shows.

  Dawn Ostroff, formerly in charge of building Spotify’s podcast business, had talked about needing a “House of Cards,” the critically acclaimed program that established Netflix as a maker of hit shows, former employees said.

  At the time, Gimlet shows typically cost $75,000 to $250,000 an episode, including talent fees; Parcast shows ran $5,000 to $20,000 an episode, people familiar with the matter said. Spotify’s podcast studios sometimes bid against one another for show proposals, former executives said.

  Ostroff signed celebrities to pricey podcasting deals—$20 million or more each for the Obamas’ production company, Higher Ground, and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle—to mixed results. The Obamas’ production company, which made five podcasts at Spotify, signed a new deal with Amazon’s Audible last year.

  Markle’s only podcast, “Archetypes,” made its debut in August 2022 at the top of Spotify’s podcast charts but failed to sustain a large audience and wasn’t renewed for a second season.

  Global podcast studios head Julie McNamara said the company is seeking partnerships with “strong creators that have something they really want to say and the talent to say it.”

  Podcast studio executives and producers said Spotify’s benchmarks moved around. The company first looked at how many people searched for a particular podcast when they subscribed, trying to assess the biggest draws. Next, it tallied how many users listened to a show each month.

  Later, it looked at the number of listening hours for each show.

  Some company directives seemed at odds. Spotify’s decision to keep many of its original shows exclusive to the platform limited the number of listeners. At the same time, the company was pursuing greater ad revenue—which required larger audience numbers.

  Some Gimlet and Parcast executives said that limiting distribution contradicted the pitch Spotify made when acquiring the companies, that it could expand their audiences. Other executives supported exclusivity, saying it was the best way to build a loyal Spotify listenership.

  Spotify asked podcasters to try live audio with sports-talk app Locker Room, which it acquired in its 2021 purchase of Betty Labs. It added polls, videos and music to some podcast shows.

  The company launched a morning program in late 2020 that sounded like a drive-time radio program called “The Get Up.” The show was a mashup of chatty hosts, news and personalized music streaming. These and other experiments were time-consuming and often short-lived, current and former employees said.

  Investors last year said they wanted to see the company start making money, and Ek told executives to look for ways to trim costs. In June 2022, he announced plans to expand its audio programming and, within a year or two, make Spotify profitable.

  Adding up

  Spotify’s podcast revenue comes from advertising on shows rather than subscriptions on the platform.

  The company has at times struggled to sell ads even for popular podcasts such as “Science Vs,” which discusses fads and pop culture, said people familiar with the matter.

  Spotify’s advertising overall in the most recent quarter made up 13% of revenue, which the company wants to push to 20%.

  Executives have talked about becoming more like YouTube—selling ads to run with creators’ content and sharing the revenue. The company wants more creators to distribute podcasts through Spotify, an avenue to boost its revenue from ads and merchandise sales.

  The company also aims to use listener preferences, based on music choices and listening habits, to target them with ads. Advertisers can now reach particular types of listeners, rather than buying spots on specific shows, through a marketplace called Spotify Audience Network.

  Spotify said it hit a record high of ad impressions sold during the quarter that ended in June from its owned and licensed shows as well as the broader ad network.

  Executives say the company has four years of data that reveal what program formats keep listeners coming back.

  The Ringer, a podcast studio led by Bill Simmons, a star host and head of podcast innovation and monetization, has doubled the number of shows it produces to more than 50 since it was acquired by Spotify in 2020. The programs largely center on conversations instead of more costly, highly produced stories.

  Company leaders have told their staff to be more selective about original shows.

  Executives have said in meetings that deals for new podcasts should consider costs, how quickly a show can gain listeners, its likely audience size, how much the company can charge for ads and opportunities for ancillary revenue, such as merchandise sales and live tours.

  Since moving to wider distribution in March, “Science Vs” listening hours have grown more than 60%, and its audience has doubled. Buzzy topics have helped boost popularity, including episodes on the weight-loss drug Ozempic and whether antiaging face creams are a scam.

  Some laid off employees are trying to land deals to continue producing shows that Spotify canceled. Among the titles Spotify has discussed selling is “Conviction,” which was about to release a new season when it was dropped in June.

  The show’s supervising producer at one point talked with Spotify executives about bringing in a buyer to secure the rights to the program for between $50,000 and $100,000, according to people familiar with the discussions.

  Days later, Spotify set a figure in the $500,000 range.

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  2023/09/06
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  Infoman

  Netflix’s Lessons In Longevity

  JOHN AN­DER­SON Mr. An­der­son is the Jour­nal’s TV critic.

  The Wall Street Journal 30/8/2023

  Ask most people if they want to live to be 100 and the response is likely to be “Sure!” followed by “Wait a sec . . .” Questions suddenly abound: Am I going to be healthy? Am I going to be lonely? Will I be financially stable? Will I have outlived everyone I knew and loved? What author-researcher Dan Buettner set out to demonstrate in “Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones” is that the solutions to those concerns are also the keys to longevity itself.

  Call it reverse-engineering, which is what Mr. Buettner set out to do in partnership with National Geographic more than 20 years ago by examining the “secrets” of the socalled Blue Zones—areas of the world that are home to an inordinate number of centenarians and a statistically anomalous number of the aged. What is clear early on is that what Mr. Buettner “discovers” during his visits to Sardinia; Singapore; Okinawa, Japan; Ikaria, Greece; and even Loma Linda, Calif., is largely what we would expect: that much of what helps people live longer isn’t necessarily the purple Japanese sweet potatoes, or going to church every day, or having the limited stress load of a Greek shepherd. It is an Okinawan diet rich in nutrients and fiber, the walking uphill to the Sardinian church, and the community to which one belongs in Loma Linda when one is, for instance, a Seventh Day Adventist who plays pickleball.

  Mr. Buettner is a gracious, charming host, perhaps a bit overly solicitous of the adorable elderly he encounters in some locations, but cognizant that not every “secret” is translatable to Americans, who are his target audience. What works in the city-state of Singapore might not work in a nation of 330 million people. Not everyone has his own house with a garden from which he can gather fresh vegetables for the plant-based diet that Mr. Buettner says has proved essential to long life everywhere; not everyone has a family to take her in when she becomes infirm. As neuro-ophthalmologist and author Mithu Storoni tells Mr. Buettner during his visit to the Greek island of Ikaria, it is a lot easier “to control how you treat your goats so your flock is healthy” than it is to control the anxiety produced by the constant flow of grim information to which many people are exposed on a daily basis. But in a general sense, what anyone can learn from the four-part series is the importance of motion—of one’s body, as a part of a regimen or lifestyle— and the importance of chilling out.

  The origins of the “blue zones,” we are told, go back to the work of longevity researcher Gianni Pes (he appears here), who originally used a blue pen to denote spots on the globe where centenarians thrived, eventually creating small continents of blue ink that suggested something larger was afoot in isolated locales. Mr. Pes initially looked at Sardinia. Was it the altitude of the craggy, mountainous island? Seemingly not, but getting from here to there was routinely aerobic. And despite all the carbohydrates in the Sardinian diet, the consumption of sourdough bread “lowers the glycemic load of an entire meal,” as Mr. Buettner tells us.

  There are many correlating clues to a longer life across the locations in “Live to 100.” Okinawans emphasize the importance of having an

  ikigai, or reason for living; in Costa Rica the same thing is called one’s plan de

  vida. A sense of belonging is critical, as is living with family. On Ikaria, where until 1980 no commercial products were available and everything was produced on-site, islanders consumed a variety of herbal teas produced from the local flora. “What is the best tea to drink,” Mr. Buettner asks the 88-year-old Vaso Parikos. “Wine,” she says, which is a reminder that very few people have ever actually died laughing.

  Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones

  Wednesday, Netflix

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  2023/09/03
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  Infoman

  Swedish Cinema Beyond Bergman

  DAVID MER­MEL­STEIN Mr. Mer­mel­stein, the Jour­nal’s clas­si­cal mu­sic critic, also writes on film.

  The Wall Street Journal 30/8/2023 A new set col­lects four fea­tures by di­rec­tor Bo Wider­berg, who brought an el­e­gant eye to com­plex so­cial is­sues

  For most Americans, Swedish cinema from the late 1950s through the mid-1980s begins and ends with Ingmar Bergman. His revolutionary reorienting of film inward; his success at the Academy Awards, including nine nominations, three best foreign-film wins and one honorary award; the extraordinary troupe of actors he assembled to perform in his movies, many of whom became internationally famous—all this, and more, has made him such a towering figure that seemingly little attention has been left for his Nordic contemporaries.

  Some attempt to correct the record was achieved late last year when Criterion released a set of three films by Mai Zetterling. And now comes another volley, this one devoted to Bo Widerberg, with the same intent: demonstrating that Bergman’s greatness notwithstanding, Swedish cinema in the 1960s was fecund territory where more than one pioneer labored.

  “Bo Widerberg’s New Swedish Cinema” contains four features on four Blu-rays from Criterion, variously restored in 4K, 2K and high definition. Widerberg, who died at age 66 in 1997, was a successful author before he turned to filmmaking. His debut, a 30-minute short titled “The Boy and the Kite” (1962), came about in collaboration with another emerging Swedish talent, Jan Troell. Included in this collection as a supplement, it can also be streamed (as can everything in this set) on the Criterion Channel.

  The box opens with Widerberg’s first feature, “The

  Baby Carriage” (1963), shot in luminous black-and-white by Mr. Troell before his own directing career took off three years later. Like all the films gathered here, it is both written and directed by Widerberg and devotes as much focus to complex social issues as it does to the elegant film grammar that characterizes Widerberg’s work— specifically the elliptical narratives, tender characterizations, attention to quotidian pursuits, and subtle, ambiguous conclusions.

  In this one, the beguiling but naïve Britt (an utterly winning Inger Taube) allows herself to fall under the spell of two superficially appealing but woefully immature young men—a vain, would-be rockand-roller (Lars Passgård) and a bright, rich mama’s boy (Tommy Berggren, the protean male lead in three of this collection’s four films). After the former impregnates her, she hopes the latter will rise to her rescue. In the end, she bucks convention and embarks on a path of assured single-motherhood, having wised up just in time.

  Widerberg’s second feature, “Raven’s End” (1963), earned an Oscar nomination as best foreignlanguage film. It’s set in a dreary quarter of Malmö, the director’s hometown, in 1936, with ascendant fascism the background track and Jan Lindeström’s stark blackand-white cinematography further depressing the mood. Mr. Berggren plays the impassioned Anders, an aspiring Theodore Dreiser among family, friends and neighbors offering little encouragement. Yet amid the destitution and emptiness, Widerberg achieves something remarkable, expertly balancing comedy and tragedy. And never more so than in several scenes that transfixingly depict the awkward vulnerability between this determined youth and his alcoholic father (Keve Hjelm in an award-winning portrayal) and disappointed mother (a heartbreaking Emy Storm).

  “Elvira Madigan” (1967) is the set’s best-known film, based on a true story and Widerberg’s first fully color movie—with sumptuous cinematography by Jörgen Persson, who 20 years later would shoot Bille August’s Oscar-winning “Pelle the Conqueror.” But its

  A still from ‘Ådalen 31’; the film depicts labor unrest in a Swedish mill town in 1931.

  overreliance on the slow movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 (K. 467) as mood music has long diminished its reputation. Get beyond that, though, and the picture comes alive with its delicately etched rendering of two starcrossed lovers: a Swedish cavalry officer and nobleman (Mr. Berggren again, terrifically sensitive and dashing) and a circus tightrope walker (Pia Degermark in a performance that won her best actress at the Cannes Film Festival). Together, they flee to Denmark after he deserts the army. Two characters more impractical than this pair are hard to imagine, but you really feel for them in Widerberg’s sympathetic telling.

  The most overtly political movie in this quartet, “Ådalen 31” (1969), once more fuses a true story alongside Widerberg’s trademark humanity and fixation with the nominally mundane. Another Oscar nominee for best foreign-language film, it depicts life in the mill town of Ådalen in 1931, when labor unrest resulted in the killing of peaceful protesters by the army, ostensibly protecting shuttered factories. But by centering his gaze on a likable working-class family and their far more prosperous but decent neighbors, the film, once more gorgeously shot by Mr. Persson, transcends cant for art—in much the same way John Sayles’s “Matewan” did nearly two decades later.

  Widerberg’s last movie, “Love Lessons” (1995), also earned an Oscar nomination. But despite that and several nominations at Cannes over the years, he and his work remain largely, if unjustly, overlooked in this country. This most welcome set could help change that. Anything less is our loss.

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  2023/09/03
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  Infoman

  Shoppers Are Down on Rounding Up for CharityBY RACHEL WOLFE

  The Wall Street Journal 30/8/2023 As re­tail do­na­tion cam­paigns pro­lif­er­ate, some cus­tomers find them an­noy­ing and say they are less likely to give money at the cash reg­is­ter

  That request to round up your bill at the checkout counter for charity is one of the simplest ways to help nonprofits. But consumers are showing signs of fatigue as these tiny appeals for goodwill multiply.

  Shoppers aren’t worried about spending a dollar on worthy causes like PetSmart’s efforts to help shelter animals find homes or Costco’s campaigns to help sick kids. They’re tired of chain restaurants and retailers asking for money, especially as a broader array of businesses are also asking customers to tip their employees.

  Consumers also complain that they sometimes end up donating more than expected, and that their donations earn tax benefits for companies.

  Vastly more donation campaigns now include a round-up component than they did in 2020, according to a report on charity appeals in the checkout line from social impact organization Engage for Good.

  Shelly Allhands, a Seattle freelance communications professional, says she’s annoyed by businesses with lots of money asking for spare change. The round-up requests remind her of “millionaires who tell us to use paper straws while flying private jets.”

  Chris Perry of Falls Church, Va., has worked in nonprofit fundraising for over a decade. He’s worried about the fatigue he’s hearing from would-be donors, and how people are lumping charity round-ups together with tipping. The philanthropic organizations he’s worked with rely on the campaigns to fund as much as half of their efforts, he says.

  “We’re asking consumers to pay salaries, fix charities, all these things at the same time when they’re maybe struggling, too,” says Perry, citing his work overseeing donations at the Children’s Miracle Network, a collective of nonprofit children’s hospitals. He now does the same for low-income home-repair organization Rebuilding Together.

  Still, he says, “The money that comes in is substantial, and there’s a lot of flexibility in how nonprofits can use it.”

  Round-ups spread

  One reason for the campaigns’ growing popularity: They work.

  Round-up initiatives, now found everywhere from stores to movie theaters and casinos, can raise millions in weeks. Stop & Shop’s campaigns for breast-cancer research and food-security efforts garner between $1 million and $2 million in a month, says Jennifer Barr, who oversees the grocery chain’s charitable giving.

  U.S. companies raised more than $749 million from consumers at checkout in 2022, a 24% increase from 2020, according to Engage for Good.

  Yet people are growing weary of being asked, data shows.

  The number of consumers who said they donated to a charity at the register is down steeply over the past two years, according to a 1,000-person survey by corporatephilanthropy software company Accelerist. It dropped from 80% in 2021 to 59% in 2023.

  About 73% of shoppers said they feel neutral or positive about being asked for a donation at checkout as of this year, according to Accelerist, down from 85% in 2021.

  Perry says he understands consumers’ skepticism. “I wish I could stand there at the checkout on every single one and say, ‘I promise you, this is going to where you think it’s going to,’ ” he says.

  He’s never had a corporate partner donate less than 100% of the money it raises, he says. Most also donate substantial sums—often millions—themselves.

  Bad experiences

  Sometimes people who decide to give a few cents to charity end up donating more than they planned.

  Ashley Mason almost always tapped “yes” on the pin pads’ charity prompts. Then she noticed after multiple visits to Rite Aid within a week that all her receipts were for full dollar amounts, even when she hadn’t opted to round up.

  The clerk told Mason she had enrolled in automatic donations to KidCents, a program run by the Rite Aid Foundation, rather than the one-time donation she had intended.

  “No big deal,” Mason thought— until store employees told her they couldn’t change her selection. After calling the drugstore chain’s corporate office and searching

  Reddit for solutions, she says she gave up and moved her prescriptions to CVS.

  “You know how to get me to enroll and take my money, but you don’t know how to get it to stop,” says Mason, a government contractor in Stevensville, Md.

  A Rite Aid spokeswoman says KidCents donations support children in need. Customers wanting to unenroll can contact Rite Aid’s customercare team at 1-800-RITE AID, she says.

  A federal lawsuit filed last year in New York against CVS alleges the company used customer donations at checkout to fund a $10 million corporate philanthropy pledge to the American Diabetes Association. The complaint was brought by a New York state resident who donated to CVS’s instore campaign.

  A CVS spokesman said the company had filed a motion to dismiss the suit. “Obviously, upon signing, CVS didn’t assume an unconditional $10 million debt to the ADA,” CVS said in its motion. If customer donations don’t meet the $10 million threshold, CVS says it will make up the difference.

  Who gets tax benefits?

  Internal Revenue Service rules generally allow businesses to use consumer donations to earn tax write-offs, though not every company with a checkout campaign uses the tactic. Stop & Shop says it doesn’t earn any tax benefits from customer donations.

  Tax benefits apply to whichever entity makes the direct donation to the qualified public charity, IRS representative Raphael Tulino says. That means customers are eligible only when their pin pad donations go straight to a nonprofit, as is the case with PetSmart’s PetSmart Charities.

  Jesy Herron, who works in development for a Cincinnati video agency, says she appreciated the extra opportunities to give during the pandemic, and didn’t sweat the impact of a few pennies on her taxes.

  After a recent week in which she encountered more than a dozen of the requests, however, she hit a breaking point. She says she feels worse deciding not to donate while her kids are with her.

  “I need them to understand this isn’t mom being a jerk. It’s wanting to decide as a family where we donate rather than have a company decide for us,” she says.

  Instead of rounding up spare change, the family has been assembling grocery bags for local Ukrainian refugee families. She estimates they’ve spent about $750 over the past few months—and loves that she gets to see the delivery trucks drive away.

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  2023/09/03
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  Infoman

  AI Startups Face Big Reality Check As Investors Worry About Profits

  BERBER JIN

  The Wall Street Journal 31/8/2023

  Founders and venture capitalists who flocked to artificial-intelligence startups are learning that turning the chatbot buzz into successful businesses is harder than it seems.

  Almost a year into the boom ignited by the November launch of ChatGPT, some startups that epitomized the zeal for so-called generative AI are now navigating layoffs and reduced user interest. Investors are unsure whether the new crop of AI startups will be able to survive, especially as tech giants such as Microsoft and Alphabet’s Google solidify their dominance over the technology.

  There was optimism in the venture world that commercial AI applications “would materialize at light speed,” said Mark Goldberg, a partner at Index Ventures, a longtime backer of AI startups including Cohere, which is building generative AI models for businesses. Now, “there is a shallow trough of disillusionment,” he said.

  ChatGPT’s release reignited optimism in the startup world after months of industry malaise. Leading voices in Silicon Valley proclaimed that generative AI—the technology underpinning humanlike chatbots— would usher in a new technology era. Venture firms announced splashy new hires and boasted that they were devoting billions of dollars to back the still-unproven sector.

  Goldberg said the initial surge in user growth for ChatGPT—the fastest ever for a consumer app, UBS analysts said in February—led investors to overestimate the rate at which consumers would use tools powered by generative AI. Investors raced to back startups building these products before they had customers or revenue, leading to concern over a potentially overheated market.

  Instead, usage has waned from peak levels. Monthly online visitors to ChatGPT decreased by 10% in both June and July after months of growth, according to data from analytics platform Similarweb. An OpenAI spokeswoman said the Similarweb data didn’t track use of the ChatGPT app, which was launched in May.

  Midjourney, an AI tool that can create images from user descriptions, saw monthly visits decline for three consecutive months ended in July, the data show. Synthesia, a textto-video creator that raised $90 million in June, saw flat or declining website user growth for the past six months.

  Jasper, a generative AI writing tool for writers and businesses, saw declining user growth for four consecutive months ended in July. The company, which raised $125 million last fall, conducted a round of layoffs in July and cut revenue projections for this year, people familiar with the matter said.

  Synthesia Chief Executive Officer Victor Riparbelli said the company recently completed its best-ever month for sales. The chief executives of Midjourney and Jasper didn’t return requests for comment.

  Much excitement for AI remains in the tech industry. Microsoft, Google and other established companies are investing heavily and rolling out new AI products, and business is booming for Nvidia, whose chips are used to train AI models. Startup investors said the technology is still early and could one day mint a new generation of multibillion-dollar startups.

  “We’ve moved from a moment of ‘How big can this be?’ to ‘How do we make it work?’ ” said Sunil Dhaliwal, a general partner at Amplify Partners. Dhaliwal sits on the board of Runway, which builds generative AI tools for content creators, and said about half of his firm’s recent investments have been in AI startups.

  So far, the AI buzz hasn’t been enough to stem a precipitous drop in total startup funding. Overall, U.S. venture funding plummeted by almost half in the second quarter, even as investment in generative AI startups—those focused on systems that produce humanlike text, images, and computer code—increased 65% to $3.3 billion, according to PitchBook data.

  Venture investors said they are still unsure what a winning business model looks like for a startup building new products around the technology. Many young businesses have yet to prove they can retain users and develop products that existing tech companies couldn’t easily mimic.

  Training cutting-edge models can cost companies billions of dollars because of the large volumes of data they need to ingest and analyze. Investors have become hesitant to bankroll such businesses, given the uncertain path to profitability and heavy competition from wellfunded rivals such as Google and Microsoft-backed OpenAI.

  “We cannot sort of unleash AI and have no business model to pay for it,” said Frank Slootman, the chief executive of the data-storage company Snowflake, on an August earnings call. A lot of executives, he said, “have characterized their foray into language models as experimental, exploratory, and they’re sort of trying to get their arms around how big a bread box is this.”

  So far, the largest AI startups have sought much of their funding from tech giants that are able to provide computing power and other resources beneficial to training language models. Microsoft has agreed to invest more than $10 billion in OpenAI, The Wall Street Journal has reported. Its rival Anthropic, which has released a general-use chatbot, has drawn hundreds of millions of dollars in commitment from Google.

  In June, Microsoft and the chip maker Nvidia helped Inflection AI raise $1.3 billion. The startup, co-founded by the LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, recently released a personal chatbot.

  One AI startup that helped ignite the AI boom has come under scrutiny.

  In August 2022, Stability AI released a viral text-to-image generator called Stable Diffusion and soon after raised $101 million from venture capitalists. The company held a launch party at San Francisco’s Exploratorium museum last October.

  Emad Mostaque, its chief executive, has since been accused of fraud. Mostaque has denied the allegations.

  In July, Cyrus Hodes, one of Stability’s early co-founders, sued Mostaque and the company, alleging that he sold his shares in Stability for just $100 after Mostaque convinced him the company was essentially worthless. A Stability spokesperson said the suit was without merit.

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  2023/08/31