Swells

Más+ by Messi is done. 23 months. Mark Anthony Brands, the team behind White Claw, confirmed it missed its objectives and is being phased out. One of the greatest footballer in history, one of the best RTD operators in the world, a clean product, Inter Miami, a World Cup at home this summer. Still not enough. Category positioning wrong. Format wrong. Legal distraction at launch. Celebrity gets you the first purchase. It doesn’t get you the habit.

🚨: Research reveals kimchi latches onto plastics in the gut and removes them through waste

I’m making a show about buildings. The concept is simple: do for the man-made world what Planet Earth did for the natural world. But, when I pitched the idea, the answer was that nobody would watch it. So I released a pilot episode on YouTube. It’s got 5.4 million views, 379k likes, and 23k comments. People are interested, and now it’s time to make the full show. Six episodes, filming in the UK, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and the USA, and releasing on a streaming service like HBO, Netflix, or Prime. Why does this show matter? First: we’re surrounded by buildings all the time. Look around yourself, right now… what do you see? Buildings are the logical conclusion of everything a society believes in. That’s the real focus of this show: not the buildings themselves, but what they say about us. Second: there’s global dissatisfaction with modern architecture. This feeling gets written about online, but nobody’s given a voice to it on film or TV. That’s what this show will be. But this isn’t just about criticising modernity. That’s easy. This is about learning from the past in order to understand and improve the present, for everybody. Third: there’s a drought of high-quality culture shows. When I spoke to film executives they said that only documentaries about sports, music, or true crime get funded. That’s a colossal missed opportunity. Galleries are always full, content about architecture goes viral online all the time, and people spend their precious holidays visiting beautiful cities. Why no shows about architecture, then? Tourists flock in their millions to see (for example) the buildings of Antoni Gaudí in Barcelona. But, if you asked those same people if they’re interested in “architecture”, they’d probably say no. To put that another way: not many people want to watch “a show about architecture”, but lots of people want to watch a show that illuminates the real world they’re living in, each and every day. What will the show be like? Six episodes, going chronologically through history and arriving at the present, each focussing on the architecture and design of a specific period: 1. Middle Ages 2. Renaissance 3. Enlightenment 4. The Nineteenth Century 5. Art Nouveau & Art Deco 6. Present Day But, in each case, the point isn’t just to learn about that era; the point is to learn about our modern world through those eras and what they’ve left behind. If you watch the pilot episode (included below) you’ll see what I mean. So the show’s not really “about” the past; it’s about the twenty-first century. That’s why it’s called The Modern World. When you think of a typical history show there are loads of interviews, stock footage, archive photos, historical recreations, and graphics. We’re doing none of that. Everything will be filmed on location, because we’re telling our story only through the real world that exists right now. And, rather than going to the most obvious places, we’ll focus on buildings that aren’t well-known but should be more famous. But that’s all big picture; what will it be like on screen? Buildings used to look different in every country, and now they look the same. Why? Because the weather is different everywhere, and buildings were always a way of dealing with that weather, using local materials. Now we have air conditioning and we ship concrete around the world, so we don’t need to design our buildings with regard to local weather or rely on local materials. Look at really old clocks and you’ll notice something: they don’t have a second hand… because it was only invented 300 years ago! Then you look at the present and you realise we’re surrounded by timers, by seconds ticking down and ticking up relentlessly. If we’re looking for a cause of our anxiety-inducing culture, that might be it. When you spend time with the sun-softened bricks and time-warped timbers of old cities you notice that synthetic materials like plastic have taken over. When we’re surrounded by things that feel temporary, how do you think it makes us feel? It’s only by seeing 19th century train stations, designed like cathedrals, that you realise tradition and technology aren’t enemies. New things don’t have to look boring: if the Victorians had designed AI data centres, they’d look like Medieval castles. In the 1920s, at the zenith of Art Deco, people believed technology would uplift humanity. That’s why they decorated their buildings with statues inspired by electricity. Only by seeing their enthusiasm can we realise our own cynicism, and perhaps begin to fix it. All of that… and much, much more. But, above all else, this show is about a way of seeing. If you want to understand any society then you need to look at what it creates, not what it says about itself. There’s a worldview in every single object; our skyscrapers are designed the same way as our phones. Learn to look at this world, to notice its details, and everything else starts to make sense. What now? I’ve been quiet online recently because I’ve been researching and working on scripts for six full-length episodes. Production begins when we’ve raised the funding. The Modern World is coming.

Texas ran a $33b surplus in 2023. Voters approved moving $1b of that into an endowment for parks, and now the state is on track to add ~1 new state park per year for a decade. You love to see it!

Every expensive lesson I’ve eaten in the last 10 years (in no particular order): > Cheap legal will cost you 10x what real legal would have. Lived this one and still cleaning it up > First hire should be senior & NOT cheap. The cheap one always costs more in cleanup, every single time. > Partnerships done on a handshake end badly. Doesn't matter how close you are to them. > Tax bill on profit hits before the cash from inventory does. You can owe more than you have in the bank and not realize it until april = fucked > Don’t rent your reputation, it costs more than letting them borrow money from you. Paid for this one in 2025, and I'll be paying for it through 2026 and 2027 and 2028. > Profit share sounds like a dream until you actually run the numbers and how long it will take to get it into the whole “sharing” part. > You can't out-earn a bad cofounder > The win that gets you on stage isn't the win that pays the bills. Learned this one over and over, and I'll probably learn it again. Stages are needed to share what is being worked on backstage. > 80% of your stress comes from 20% of your team or clients. Cut the 20% as fast as you can afford to > The right office costs you less than the wrong one > Product is always the most important thing. Marketing accelerates whatever quality and loyalty are already there. Bad product can't be saved by good marketing. EVER > Reasons, Seasons, and Lifetimes. The faster you categorize people and projects into those three buckets, the faster everything moves

We need to apologize to our ancestors.

Stop feeding squirrels corn. Squirrels need a calcium-to-phosphorus ratio of about 2:1 in their diet. Corn has the opposite. So do peanuts and sunflower seeds. When a squirrel eats mostly corn, its body pulls calcium from its bones to keep blood chemistry stable. The result is Metabolic Bone Disease: soft bones, fractures, weakness, paralysis, seizures, death. It's slow and it's painful. Wildlife rehabilitators see it constantly in young squirrels raised in yards with reliable corn feeders. Improperly stored or buried corn also grows Aspergillus mold, which produces aflatoxins. Squirrels didn't evolve with corn and don't instinctively avoid the mold. One bad cob can cause acute liver failure. If you want to feed squirrels, the right food is acorns, hickory nuts, walnuts in the shell, or apple and squash pieces.

PROPAGANDA IM PUSHING: - it’s the best time to start a business ever - have a kid. It’s hard but way cooler than having a dog - take the wonder drugs. Glp1s are cool. - walk 13,000 steps a day. It’s easy. - you can reach any successful person on earth just by posting and trying to find their email for 10 minutes - meta ads are working the best they have in 4 years - the world needs more podcasts, not less - the world needs more creators, not less - we have already reached the age of abundance - YouTube is finally a good ad channel - things are about to get even better - Tik tok shop isn’t a big sales channel, but the ability to engage thousands of motivated creators will 2x your business by sheer amount of ads - sauna and cold plunge combo is great for mental health - think more, it’s better than reading - you can’t be a millionaire overnight, but you can be a billionaire in a decade. - get married. - attention is everything. Good or bad, attention is everything. - play a physical sport once a week. It’s the only way to get friends together as we get old - do stuff now that’s high risk, it’s okay to look stupid - there is a billion dollars in your computer, and 100m in your phone - want to do cool shit? Ask. Anyone will work with you as long as you have a good plan and can deliver GO DO SOME GOOD