529: Saudi's oil pivot, Huberman's girlfriends, and JoJo's Bizarre Hams
If you find value in this post, click the 'Heart' button to let me and the algorithm know which content to lean into <3
The snow in Tahoe last weekend was beautiful. Off to Austin this weekend for the solar eclipse. Nothing else IRL to report, really. :)
Technology
Business celebrity professor Scott Galloway has a positive take on Saudi Arabia’s ongoing quest to pivot from oil to entertainment, despite human rights, in The Mother of All Pivots.
The Kingdom’s military expenditures reached $75 billion last year, the fifth highest in the world, and more than any nation in Europe except Russia. Big military spenders either invade nations (Iraq, Ukraine) or have the world on tenterhooks guessing where they will invade (Taiwan). To believe Saudi won’t flex its power is naive.
The best way to attract the rich is to give them what they want. Which in 2023 means three things: luxury hospitality, world-class entertainment, and low taxes. The Gulf has gone all-in on all three.
Ideologies
Some friends of mine are hosting a popup residency in Healdsberg in June called Edge Esmerelda. Looks just like Vibe Camp, Zuzalu, and Vitalia - which is to say, a great place for any young mobile technologist to network with future minded folks.
The New York Magazine published a hit piece on podcast health star Andrew Huberman exposing how he managed a stable of 6+ girlfriends at once without telling them about each other.
As a polyamorous man myself, I condemn this undeniably un-ethical behavior, but I have to question whether this is worth cancelling him over. The intimacy was consensual, unlike most modern sex scandals, so the sin here was the lying.
If he lies to his partners he might lie to us about health? One should not support a man who lies in his private life to women? What is cancellable today? I guess we’ll find out in the fallout from this piece….
Memes
Reader and brother Travis sent me this: Japanese Bruno Mars fans wrote a song about him coming to Japan, and someone smart on his media team pieced together a video to go with it. What a great way to engage with fans!
Anyone alive today has seen rap videos with impressive twerking, and I’m no exception. But Cardi B’s 2019 video for Twerk has got to be the most visually overwhelming and technically impressive display of booty shaking I’ve ever seen.
Speaking of superlatives, I present to you the most impressive Steamed Hams meme I’ve ever seen - animated and voiced in the anime style of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.