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"I ain't no cowboy, but I can ride."

🎶 Jason Isbell – Bury Me

Google buys Wiz for $32B.
Wild to think that Wiz did not exist 5 years ago. Israeli cyber is a great game to be in.

Apple Is Losing Over $1 Billion per Year on Streaming Service, Has 45 Million Apple TV+ Subscribers
Exhibit A: The Gorge (woof)

Also...

Hot take: Severance is boring.  

Tesla is a dumpster fire
Feels like the perfect time for a new EV carmaker to step in. Apple shouldn't have ditched their EV.

Bob Iger Says AI May Be “Most Powerful Technology That Our Company Has Ever Seen”
Bob knows everything in film making is about to change.

Happy Gilmore 2 sort of feels like the one thing the world needs most right now. Can't wait.

Nintendo Nostalgia

There’s something deeply satisfying about clicking an old Nintendo cartridge into place – it's like ASMR for kids who grew up before the internet. Sadly, that  tactile ka-chunk has been lost when gaming moved online. Today, like everything, gaming is digital, online, and endless. There are no cartridges, manual inserts, or downloads and microtransactions. It's cool to buy a game instantly, but we lost some magic in the convenience. 

Lately, I’ve been chasing that old console feeling—a specific kind of nostalgia wrapped in chunky plastic shells, from the SNES to the N64.

Neighborhood or microchip? 

I've been having some truly bizarre dreams. To be fair, the whole house is sick, and my go-to survival strategy involves unhealthy doses of NyQuil (If I ever drop a mix-tape my rapper name would be Lil' Quil). But let me tell you—whatever sorcery Dextromethorphan (DXM) is working, it’s cranking out the kind of hyper-real dreams that linger.

 

The most vivid one yet... In this dream, someone was explaining to me—very matter-of-factly—that theatres exist because they create the ideal conditions for transporting people to other dimensions via sound and visual stimuli.

Then, I'm sitting in this dark theatre and hear a male narrator introduce "the process" before these binaural sounds begin playing over the speakers. The screen is completely black, but I become transfixed, staring blankly into this black void as these tones play. Suddenly, the exact point I’m fixated on stretches, like it's being pulled away from me, and the whole room starts expanding at warp speed. I sit in this state for 10-20 minutes, almost as if I recognize some meditative benefit to it all. I then get up, walk out of this theatre setting, and into a long hallway where I encounter a staff member of whatever building I am in – they are clearly surprised that I was in the theatre – I walk down the hall further and exit through a museum and wake up completely confused.

That's it. Just needed to document this weird dream.

Three Nights at the St. Regis Punta Mita: A Study in Leisure and Decadence

There’s a point in every well-executed vacation when you start believing you might have "made it." For me, that moment happened roughly 15 minutes after stepping onto the St. Regis Punta Mita property. Someone placed a chilled margarita in my hand. Another person took my bag. A third welcomed me with a warm, but not overbearing, “Señor Jeter, welcome home.” Home? If this is home, then Denver must be Arrakis—where water is a rumor, warmth is a memory, and survival is the only goal.

I deleted Twitter (I refuse to call it X) from my phone. I found myself spending too much time going down rabbit holes. Now, I'm blissfully in the dark about most stuff. I am no longer the first to know that there is a rare bird flu outbreak in some remote jungle. I just hear about it when I hear about it. I have found that it's a good way to filter the noise – if it matters, I'll hear about it. Until then, whoooooo cares? It's like my approach with email. I don't check it. If someone needs to get ahold of me, they'll find a way (typically WhatsApp or text). It's been about a month, and I don't see myself ever reinstalling it. I think the constant connectivity to bad news takes it toll. There is something really nice about unplugging – I watched the entire Super Bowl without seeing all the Kendrick Lamar dorks rave about his boring ass performance – "NO BRO, YOU DON'T GET IT... IT WAS ALL SYMBOLISM!"

After spending a week in Spain, I have never been more excited to get home and have a proper meal. Tapas, or simply, small snacks on toothpicks, are NOT a substitute for dinner. And yet, every dinner, I found myself holding a stick instead of a fork. It felt like I walked around a really exotic Costco for a week, getting handed samples of jamón. When it wasn't ham, it was pork liver pâté, WOOF. When I touched down back in the motherland after a 20+ hour travel day, I drove straight to Chic Filet and chanted USA USA USA all the way home.

A Week in Madrid

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Hoka’s immersive Run Stop Corner Shop is opening in London
ATM-generated ‘Hokens’ is brilliant – this is EXACTLY what I was referring to in my previous 2025 predictions post:

We see the smart brands begin focusing on outside-of-the-home activations – IRL experiences to generate brand awareness and build community. I think we will see a lot more brick-and-mortar stores, pop-ups, and in-person engagement. We're going to see the smart brands focus on deploying non-digital strategies – more analog than AI – this will help stand out from all the digital noise.

Related: Severance activation in Grand Central Station is another example of an out-of-home cultural moment.