Spyglass Dispatch: Meta's Pop-Up Shops • Square's Pull Back • RIP "You've Got Mail" Man • Marvel's Gambit • DC's Joker • Anthropic's Choice • Saving Star Wars

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This week has been the longest month in quite some time. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty much completely politicked out at the moment. At the same time, it's hard because nearly every story – including those in tech – has a political angle. It's basically all pure speculation – and I'm not immune – but it's also just a lot of noise and fairly exhausting. So I'm trying to zag away a bit in what I'm linking here, at least for today (though not completely – it's impossible).

I Think...

😎 Meta's Pop-Up Retail Store for Ray-Ban Meta Glasses – While it's only going to be open in LA this month and next, I'm guessing it's the start of more stores for Meta. They've partnered with electronics stores for a while to sell the Quest, as they push towards their 'Orion' AR glasses, they're going to need to have this retail muscle – especially for devices that people wear. One reason I haven't bought a pair of Ray-Ban Meta's yet: I want to try them on first. Yes, there's the online "try-on", but I want to know how various models will look and feel and I just haven't gotten around to going to a sunglass store that sells them – it's also fall going on winter, so... Regardless, Meta will want to control this experience more with wearables – and they're clearly putting a lot more thought into this than you would just for one-off pop-ups – just as their enemy Apple does. [Verge]

⬛️ Square to Invest More in Bitcoin, Shut 'Web5' Venture, Rethink Tidal – I've long loved Square. I broke the news of its very existence to the world way back when. My wife worked there. We remain shareholders. It was such an ingenious hack of technology to do something both useful and empowering – allowing anyone to accept payments, first through the headphone jack of an iPhone (!) now through more modern means. I have absolutely no idea what they've been doing in recent years. The 'Web5' stuff sounded like complete gibberish. And buying Tidal, the disastrous-since-day-one music streaming service, seemed... blockheaded at best. Feels like they should wind that down too but perhaps can't as Jay-Z remains on the board of 'Block'. Can they change the name back to Square? Even this headline from a crypto-focused publication is still using it three years after they changed the name. You could do a whole "back to Square 1" thing. Hopefully they can use this seemingly about to be a lot more crypto-friendly environment to turn things around... [CoinDesk]

📧 Elwood Edwards, Voice of AOL’s ‘You’ve Got Mail,’ dies at 74 – It's impossible to imagine now, but hearing those three words after waiting through the seemingly endless barrage of modem connection noises was bliss. "Welcome" was nice. But "you've got mail" is what sent the heart aflutter. Edwards' wife worked at the company which became AOL and volunteered his voice to Steve Case. He apparently got paid a whole $200 for the work. Despite being the voice of my youth just as much as any sports announcer, I had absolutely no idea that Edwards worked at the local NBC affiliate, WKYC, where I grew up in Cleveland. Would have been surreal to talk to him – as some lucky Uber riders once did! Seemed like a good guy. And now email is a nightmare for so many. RIP. [CNN]

♠️ Marvel is "Obsessed" with Channing Tatum's Gambit – <rant>Look, I enjoyed the bit in Deadpool & Wolverine. It was clever. But it was meant to be funny. It was a novelty poking fun at the notion that 20th Century Fox was going to do Tatum's Gambit movie and then the Disney merger killed it. And probably for good reason. It's hard to see a serious Tatum Gambit movie. And a Gambit movie needs to be a serious movie. Not like a drama, but not Deadpool. They nailed Gambit in the recent X-Men '97 show. It needs to be that character. Not a too-bulked-up Tatum making some lewd Cajun vocabulary jokes.</rant> [EW]

🃏 Barry Keoghan's ‘The Joker' Being Turned Into Max Series – On the topic of comics and movies (and playing card-loving characters?), while this is very much a rumor, I like the notion that they'd do a series to build into a potential third Batman movie from Matt Reeves. Given Keoghan's (truly haunting) appearance at the end of The Batman, everyone assumed this was a tee-up for the sequel, but it's smarter to save the best villain for the last planned film of the trilogy. Of the very few complaints about Christopher Nolan's trilogy, one would be that the second film is superior in part because of Heath Ledger's Joker vs. Tom Hardy's Bane. They've done such a masterful job with The Penguin on Max that he clearly should now be the big bad in The Batman 2, while you slowly build up The Joker – not to mention let the stench of Folie à Deux fully clear the room. (Though I also enjoy the notion of The Batman 2 – the first cameo aside – being the final film of another trilogy for Keoghan and Colin Farrell after The Killing of a Sacred Deer and The Banshees of Inisherin.) [World of Reel]

I Wrote...

Anthropic’s Golden Fork in the Road

Take Amazon’s money and deal or get scrappy?

Spyglass •M.G. Siegler

More Star Wars! No, Not Those!

Disney continues to bungle the Lucasfilm crown jewels…

Spyglass •M.G. Siegler

I Link...

• It seems like Apple is quietly working to back away from offering a 'sketch' style within Image Playground. Especially strange since there are now only two style options and they clearly need a lot more. Perhaps they viewed 'sketch' as problematic in making images that were too potentially manipulative? Just a guess; it's strange. [MacRumors]
• Threads continues to creep up on Xitter when it comes to size of the active user base. How? It's certainly not from product decisions Threads is making to court Xitter users, but instead simply by going after international markets that Xitter overlooks or lacks the resources to go after – and yes, by leveraging their other multi-billion user networks... [Information 🔒]
  • And creators seem to have no idea what the network is actually for. Some are using it because they're getting paid to do so. [Information 🔒]
• Audi's new logo for China is a Tron-ified wordmark. Okay. Audi has a great logo. Simple. Classic. I get that their cars aren't selling well in the Chinese market so they're trying something new but... yuck. Not Kia yuck. But Yuck. [Verge]
• I had no idea Apple had a "High Power" mode – essentially a way to force the computer to run faster (and hotter), but it has only been available for 'Max' model chips to do, now it's coming to 'Pro' model chips too. It sounds like it doesn't jack up performance that much, but does cause fans to kick on more often. [MacRumors]
• Given the massive haul the French Whale pulled in on Polymarket – now thought to be closer to $100M rather than the $50M previously reported – no surprise that the French are not only looking into the service, but likely banning it until they figure out what to do with it. [Bloomberg 🔒]
• My buddy Shane has been sending out newsletter dispatches in script format from his (real) adventures – in real time – in South America. Highly recommend. [InScripted]

I Quote...

"Drinking a pint of London Pride while munching Twiglets and reading about Colin Firth having a critical and box office catastrophe."

-- Hugh Grant, when asked for his idea of perfect happiness for Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire. As for the living people he most despises, "Anyone in private equity. Or tech. Or London traffic planning. Or who uses a leaf blower."