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☆ Pluto TV's cofounder just unveiled a free, ad-supported TV set. Check out the 18-page deck he used to raise funds from top media analyst Rich Greenfield and Gary Vaynerchuk.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-15 | by ( Lucia Moses | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Pluto TV cofounder Ilya Pozin has launched a new company that's trying to disrupt TV advertising. Telly is a free, ad-supported TV that's backed by Rich Greenfield, Gary Vaynerchuk, and more. Ilya Pozin, who disrupted cable with free ad-supported streamer Pluto TV, now wants to do the same for your physical TV. His company, Telly, came out of stealth mode May 15 with a new, ad-supported TV that's free to the user. Pozin said the idea for Telly grew out of Pluto, a free, ad-supported TV streaming service that he co-founded in 2013; it was acquired in 2019 by Viacom (now Paramount Global).

☆ She Wrote a Blistering Satire About Publishing. The Publishing Industry Loves It.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-12 | by ( Alexandra Alter | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

When Kuang sent the first 100 pages to Hannah Bowman, her literary agent, Bowman at first tried to dissuade her from pursuing the project, warning that nobody would want to publish it. “We did have a conversation where I said, ‘There are things in here that I am afraid could offend people you work with,’” Bowman recalled. After Kuang insisted, Bowman sent it out, and was pleasantly surprised by the enthusiastic responses. “For publishing insiders, it’s just catnip, it’s so dishy about the industry,” Bowman said. “We’re like ‘Wow, does she like us?’”For Kuang — who at 26 has built a devoted following for her deeply researched and thought provoking fantasy novels — publishing a scorched-earth satirical takedown of the publishing industry was creatively and professionally risky.

☆ Chris Wheeldon’s ‘Dangerous and Exciting’ Adventure at City Ballet
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Roslyn Sulcas | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“There is an ambiguity about non-narrative work that feels both dangerous and exciting,” he said, “especially working the way I do — going into a room with the music and allowing whatever lies beneath to emerge. Nonetheless, Wheeldon said, he had been ambivalent about using the music. “I’ve been a bit frightened of it,” he said. “In parts it’s torturously beautiful and intensely romantic, with an underlying uneasiness to the romance. Even though it has five movements, there is no definition between them, so it feels like a long poem, and structurally that’s hard.”

☆ 10 Things in Tech: AI-generated Drake songs, discounted startups, and Amazon’s upgraded Alexa
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Diamond Naga Siu | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

I'm Diamond Naga Siu, and in this turbulent economy, I definitely want stability over most other things. And my colleague Grace Mayer highlights how retail, finance, and other (seemingly more stable) industries are piquing our interest instead. A leaked document viewed by Insider revealed that Amazon wants to focus on entertainment features for Alexa. The upgrade will feature Amazon's own generative AI technology instead of using OpenAI's technology (like how Microsoft paired ChatGPT with Bing). Bell dished to my colleague Ashley Stewart on why he made the move, how he met Satya Nadella, and more.

☆ Some startups are selling at 80% discounts as investors finally come to terms with the collapse in valuations across the tech industry
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Darius Rafieyan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

As valuations drop, investors are increasingly looking to the secondary market to sell their startup shares. This scramble to cash out has led to a steep drop in prices for secondary transactions. With secondary transactions, investors can sell all or part of their stake in a VC fund in order to realize gains earlier than they otherwise would. In some cases, he says, StepStone has even acquired startup shares on the secondary market at prices 80% below their most recent funding rounds. Secondary investors came into 2023 sitting on $131 billion in dry powder, according to a survey from investment advisory firm Evercore.

☆ Ex-Bon Appétit editor Marissa Ross says the wine world ruined her. Now she's back and ready to give it hell.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-23 | by ( Anna Silman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +40 min

Her rise was tied to a period of reinvention for the wine world during which natural wine conquered millennial taste buds and became ubiquitous on menus across the US. Marissa Ross, Bon Appétit's wine editor from 2016 to 2020, often posted pictures of herself chugging straight from the bottle — a technique she called "The Ross test." "Natural wine," a nebulous term that generally refers to wine made with minimal intervention and without additives like sulfites, was tentatively entering the American wine world. Many in the wine world took the idea that you didn't have to be educated to know about wine as a personal insult. When she first told BA that she planned to cover only natural wines, Ross said, Rapoport called to try to change her mind.

☆ The divorce lawyer who's represented Johnny Depp, Kim K, and Angelina Jolie charges $1,000 an hour and says tough love is how she gets things done
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-01 | by ( Mark Ellwood | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

Laura Wasser is a divorce lawyer whose clients have included Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie. "You'd go to someone's bar mitzvah and say, 'You're Dennis Wasser's daughter,' and they'd say, 'You're at that table,' according to whether my dad had represented the mom or the dad," she said. She'd majored in rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley, and realized quickly that what she'd loved most about those studies was vital in divorce cases, as was her age and gender. She's a spokesperson for Divorce.com, the do-it-yourself split site, as its chief of divorce evolution and has hosted several podcasts, including "All's Fair with Laura Wasser" and "Divorce Sucks! With Laura Wasser," where one guest was the Kardashian momager and matriarch Kris Jenner.

☆ Billionaires like Elon Musk want to save civilization by having tons of genetically superior kids. Inside the movement to take 'control of human evolution.'
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-17 | by ( Julia Black | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +40 min

"We are the Underground Railroad of 'Gattaca' babies and people who want to do genetic stuff with their kids," Malcolm told me. Ellison, meanwhile, who has two children in their 30s, has reportedly resumed having kids — with his 31-year-old girlfriend. "The person of this subculture really sees the pathway to immortality as being through having children," Simone said. The person of this subculture really sees the pathway to immortality as being through having children. Before she met Malcolm, Simone was convinced she wanted to live her life single and child-free.

☆ 'The Fabelmans' review: Steven Spielberg spins his own super-director origin story
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-11 | by ( Review Brian Lowry | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

CNN —“The Fabelmans” allows Steven Spielberg to turn his coming-of-age memories into what amounts to a super-director origin story, recalling both his complicated family life and early love of movies and filmmaking. It’s a deeply personal chronicle from one of cinema’s greatest talents, yielding a movie that features wonderful moments within a somewhat scattered narrative. The film opens with the young Sammy Fabelman seeing his first movie, “The Greatest Show on Earth,” in 1952. “The Fabelmans” isn’t a blockbuster, but it’s a window into what influenced a director who has given us countless screen memories over his storied career. “The Fabelmans” premieres in select US theaters on November 11 and expands to wide release on November 23.

BP said it expects to pay around $2.5 billion in taxes for its British North Sea business this year, including $800 million in a windfall tax. BP, which increased its dividend by 10% in the quarter, will buy back $2.5 billion of shares after repurchasing $7.6 billion so far this year. Reuters Graphics Reuters GraphicsGAS TRADINGBP's third-quarter underlying replacement cost profit of $8.15 billion, the company's definition of net income, compared with forecasts of a $6 billion profit in a company-provided survey of analysts. BP made a profit of $3.3 billion a year earlier and a 14-year high profit of $8.45 billion in the second quarter of 2022. Refining margins are also expected to remain high due to sanctions on Russian crude oil and refined products, BP said.

☆ Schonfeld is rolling out a team focused on credit in another sign of Wall Street's rising interest in debt investing
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-31 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Everybody wants to be a lender these daysStop me if you've heard this before, but a Wall Street firm wants to invest in debt. Schonfeld Strategic Advisors, the $14 billion family-office-turned-hedge fund is building out a new group focused on credit within its macro trading business, Insider reports. A general rule on Wall Street is that firms like to build businesses around complex things. A simple process means it is easily repeatable by someone else, which means more competition, which means smaller margins, which means less profit. The SEC issued $2.2 billion in fines on public companies, including 13 fines larger than $100 million, during its 2022 fiscal year, The Wall Street Journal reports.

☆ Consultants peddling job advice have created a 'workplace industrial complex' that's making them rich — and your job more miserable
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-20 | by ( Ed Zitron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

It can be head-spinning to keep up with the sudden trends taking hold in the workplace: Workers are "quiet quitting." Old problems, new namesThe perfect example of the workplace-industrial complex in action is the recent freakout over "quiet quitting." And that's how companies end up hiring consultants who charge $10,000 to $15,000 a day to "help with quiet quitting." But in reality, the workplace-industrial complex exists as a self-propelling public-relations engine for the worst impulses of the management set. Simple answers, difficult solutionsWhat's both confusing and annoying about the state of the workplace-industrial complex is that it's helpful to no one.

☆ How viral memes did the Taliban's work of helping them rebrand
▼ + stars: | 2021-08-31 | by ( Chris Stokel-Walker | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Since the Taliban took control of Kabul on Aug. 15, memes have helped soften the Taliban's image. Widely shared clips show Taliban fighters struggling to understand how gym equipment works and riding carousel horses. One image of Taliban fighters eating ice cream shared on Twitter by journalist Sami Yousafzai received 8.4 million impressions in a little over a week. Taliban fighters gather in the outskirts of Kabul to showcase and repair captured military equipment from defeated elite Afghan units on Aug. 16, 2021. Others are categorically not: a video purporting to be Taliban fighters celebrating by dancing to music was fact-checked as a fraud.

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