Waning appetites for the “caviar by the spoonful, washed down by champagne” lifestyle are hurting the high-end conglomerate LVMH.

The French luxury empire behind brands like Louis Vuitton and Hennessy said this week that people are spending less on its haute handbags and customers are cutting down on its upscale cognac and champagne.

Tightening LV belts

LVMH’s stock dropped over 4% on the London Stock Exchange yesterday after the company reported a sales slowdown.

• The downturn hit particularly hard in Asia (excluding Japan), where sales fell 14% last quarter compared with Q2 of 2023. Japan stuck out as a bright spot—the company said sales grew there thanks to a weaker yen, which had Chinese tourists chasing bargains at its boutiques.
• Operating profit dropped 8% in the first half of the year from the same period in 2023.

LVMH noted that more modestly priced products sold worse than upscale items, indicating that economic challenges were weighing on the middle class. The retreat from prestige purchases marks the end of the conspicuous consumption boom of 2022 and 2023 that lifted the luxury industry, and competing brands such as Burberry and Gucci are also struggling.

Publicity splurge

But its brands still have cultural power. Even if your wardrobe consists mostly of Target couture, you’ll be seeing a lot of LVMH in the coming days. The company spent over $160 million to become a major sponsor of the Paris Olympics with bespoke items from its subsidiary brands gracing the festivities.

• The Olympic torch has been portered around in a Louis Vuitton trunk.
• Athletes will be awarded medals designed by the jeweler Chaumet.
• Berluti teamed up with French fashion guru Carine Roitfeld to design the uniforms the French team will wear at the opening ceremony, which 1.5 billion people worldwide are expected to watch.

In another bold sports foray…LVMH is in talks with Formula 1 to have its luxury watch brand Tag Heuer replace Rolex as the timekeeping sponsor of the world’s most popular motorsport, which would be a major publicity coup.—SK

There’s a potential gold mine sitting on roofs across the world. One problem: No one’s figured out how to tap into it. Until now. Sky Quarry has developed a groundbreaking application that can convert asphalt shingles into sustainable oil and other resources.

Their recently acquired refinery generated $50 million in 2023, and by 2025, they plan to open a flagship extraction facility that produces up to 2,000 barrels of oil per day. To help accelerate their growth, they’ve opened up a limited-time investment opportunity ahead of their planned Nasdaq listing.

Their last funding round was oversubscribed at $18 million, making it one of the most successful crowdfundings ever. Become a Sky Quarry shareholder today before the SKYQ planned listing on Nasdaq.

Netanyahu defended the war in Gaza to (some of) Congress amid protests. As thousands protested outside the US Capitol, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress yesterday—though more than 60 Democrats chose not to attend, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris (nearly 100 interns also called in sick as a protest). Harris cited a scheduling conflict and will meet with him later in the week, as will Donald Trump. In his pugnacious speech, Netanyahu pledged to achieve “total victory” in Gaza and did not mention the status of ongoing negotiations for a cease-fire and return of hostages. He said the US and Israel must stand together and praised both Trump and President Joe Biden, while dismissing the protesters as “Iran’s useful idiots.”

Biden says he passed the torch for democracy despite “merited” second term. Speaking to the nation from the Oval Office for the first time since dropping his reelection bid and endorsing Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden said, “I revere this office. But I love my country more.” He said that he left the presidential race because it was time for fresh, younger voices. “Nothing, nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy,” he said in the 11-minute speech. “That includes personal ambition.” Biden pledged to keep fighting on issues like gun control and Supreme Court reform and praised Harris as experienced, tough, and capable.

The NBA sticks with Amazon for broadcast deal. Blowing past Warner Bros. Discovery’s attempts to play defense by invoking its matching rights to try to keep games on TNT, the basketball league said yesterday it had signed 11-year media rights deals with Amazon, Disney’s ESPN, and Comcast’s NBCUniversal worth $77 billion cumulatively. The NBA said that the last-minute offer from Warner Bros. “did not match” Amazon’s offer to put the games on Prime Video. The new deals mean the NBA will get more than twice as much in fees from broadcasters per season than it does now. But TNT fired back that the NBA can’t reject its offer and said it plans to “take appropriate action,” which is likely code for a lawsuit.

Parisians will be hard-pressed to swipe their way into a gay Olympic affair this summer: The popular gay dating app Grindr is partially disabled for the Paris Olympic Village, according to users who reported getting a “No profiles available” screen this week when they set the athlete-centric location as their search area.

Olympians can still access dating apps within the Village, the Paris 2024 organizing committee told the Daily Mail, but “for some [apps], geolocation has been deactivated by the app publisher.” Grindr hasn’t commented, but this wouldn’t be the first time it’s restricted Olympic swiping.

Why? To protect the privacy of athletes who aren’t open about their sexuality—especially those hailing from countries where homosexuality is criminalized.

• In 2016, a Daily Beast article about Grindr at the Rio Games outed some Olympic athletes, including some from what it called “notoriously homophobic” countries.
• During the Tokyo Games in 2021, TikTok users posted viral screen recordings of matches with Olympians on the app that included athletes’ faces and identifying information.

To help gay Olympians find each other without being outed, Grindr changed its privacy settings for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics to hide profiles located in or around the Village from users anywhere else in the world. At this year’s Games, only 155 of ~10,500 athletes are openly gay, per Outsports.—ML

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Dark oxygen isn’t just a great name for a Kentucky Derby-winning horse. It’s also what scientists are calling a discovery that could have implications for the critters at the bottom of the ocean and the treasure-seeking, deep-sea mining industry.

In a study published in Nature Geoscience, scientists examined large chunks of minerals called polymetallic nodules in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone of the Pacific Ocean and found they can produce oxygen in total darkness (hence: dark oxygen).

• This challenges the long-standing thinking that organisms need light to make oxygen through photosynthesis and could change how scientists view the origin of life.
• Scientists hypothesize that these nodules act as a “geobattery,” emitting electrochemical activity that separates H2O into oxygen and hydrogen.

The human world, it’s a mess

If the study’s findings hold true in further research, it may make the controversial practice of deep-sea mining, which retrieves minerals from the ocean floor (via polymetallic nodules), even more contentious since it could deplete the oxygen source that deep-sea life may depend on. (The study received funding from companies involved in mining.)

But…some see deep-sea mining as necessary since the minerals—mainly iron, manganese, lithium, cobalt, and copper—are crucial for producing green technology like solar panels and EV batteries.—CC

A whole lot of Cubans recently decided they no longer wanted to live in Cuba as the country’s economy tanked and the government suppressed dissent. Between 2022 and 2023, 10% of the country’s population emigrated, newly released official figures show. That’s 1,011,269 people—a group larger than the entire population of Austin, Texas. Experts told The Miami Herald it was the biggest migration wave out of Cuba, both before and after its revolution in 1959, reflecting growing disillusionment, especially among young people. Most of those who left ended up in the US, Canada, and Mexico, per Semafor.