All Your Drommens Are Made, When You're Chained to the Mirror and the Razor Blade |
As we're all aware, Drommen is a low-fat Scandinavian hard cheese named for a mountaintop in the Jämtland Oviksfjallen, made with unpasteurized cow's milk and matured for at least ten months. It offers a long, mellow flavor with little acid and rustic hints, just like this newsletter. Drommen also sounds enough like the word "dreams" that I can include it in today's newsletter as your daily Cheese Pun. Right, boss? [Drommen on, Matt! —Ed.] Noel Gallagher of rock band Oasis admitted that the song the line was taken from, "What's the Story, Morning Glory?," was a "cynical song about drugs." Although why such an "admission" was necessary when it's written in the lyrics is beyond me. Nowadays, Noel says he's off the stuff, describing coke as "a sh*t drug. It's not creative, it's not very sociable. You end up locked in a bathroom with some f****** idiot who you don't like, particularly, and... saying that, I mean, I did a f****** load of it." It all sounds rather like my uncontrollable cheese pun habit. Thanks to reader Erika who wrote yesterday, "whoever is writing the newsletter lately is killing it! Loving the puns." And thanks, even, to Patricia who wrote that N2K was "MUCH better before it became 'cheesy'!" Next thing I know, I'll have to check into a hospital in Detroit with a Cheddar-induced panic attack, just like Noel Gallagher did in the '90s. To the cheddlines! Why do Oasis forego life insurance? Because they plan to Live Forever. Also because drug use plays havoc with your premiums. Facts. —Matt Davis, Need2Know Chedditor P.S. We've got a robot doing push-ups on our Instagram. Look at that form! |
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"I didn't have any experience in the corporate space before working at Visa, and I was so grateful that they understood my qualities as an athlete and allowed me to use them, with my teams, across Visa." — Matt Scott |
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1. Nvidia: Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down? |
I started writing this newsletter yesterday in the morning, U.S. time, before Nvidia had announced its earnings after the close. Since the company has become the bellwether of the AI trend that has pushed up wider market capitalizations, analysts say its earnings have become as important for U.S. markets as key economic data like the government's jobs reports. The results yesterday were seen as allowing investors to understand the health of the AI boom.
That's why this is the lead story because whatever happened with Nvidia, it was likely a yes/no moment for markets. That tends to be when you see a big move in either direction.
Before the results came out, I decided to make my prediction here. While it'd take a brave investor to short the stock before its earnings call, I had a sense that AI is in a bubble, and the market jitters following Google's disappointing results earlier in August gave me pause. There's no way Nvidia's results could live up to the pressure placed on it as 6 percent of the S&P 500, I thought. Not with everybody yelling "AI!!!" like it's the answer to every question you might have in the universe. What should I have on my toast in the morning? MAIrmaladeAI!
Like old Julius Caesar, I just had a feeling that it was going to be a "thumbs down" moment for U.S. markets. Although let's see what happens, I thought, writing about myself in the past tense, as I was looking forward. As the day progressed, the S&P slipped 0.6 percent and the Nasdaq fell too, suggesting that, in general, investors may have been bracing themselves for bad news.
Now I'm writing the rest of this story after the results came out. Would you believe, the firm topped analysts' expectations, reporting sales growth of 122% on last year. It turns out my own personal jitters were reflective of broader concerns that the company wouldn't come through, and yet, it appears once again to have positively surprised.
The results, in fact, by surprising investors, were neither yes nor no but... meh. Because they were not negative, nor really positive, because we live in a world where increasing your sales by 122% YoY is, like, not especially impressive. Read More |
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2. Why I'm Going to the Oasis Reunion Next Year... Wanna Join? |
In the annals of history, there was the time Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem for the census. And there was the time, at the age of 16, when I, along with 125,000 other people, went to the Knebworth Festival in 1996 and saw Oasis headline. Their warm-up act was The Prodigy. The ones with the crazy frontman, Keith. And indeed, I'm comparing my own personal experience to the birth of Jesus.
Our well-off mate Alex Kuness hired a coach to take a dozen of us down there from Croydon. Nobody took any photographs, because in those days you would have needed a camera to do so, and taking a camera to an Oasis concert would have made you a Sad Case™.
I had bleach-blond hair and wore Adidas. The smell of weed wafting through the arena was shocking to me at the time. I kept asking myself why the police weren't arresting people. Then I realized that at an Oasis show, weed smoke would be a good thing, as far as the police were concerned. Because as we all know, Oasis is about the drug that makes you want to fight. My old friend Heather also claimed she snogged Liam Gallagher in a pub in the early '90s although she had an active imagination but also quite liked drugs and was very pretty. So it's possible. In which case Liam and I are separated by just two degrees of snog. Because I definitely snogged Heather, too.
On Tuesday my old mate Ben — who was with me at the Knebworth show — asked me if I'd go to the reunion show at Wembley next July. I said yes, if he can get a ticket. Never mind that it's in London next July, when I plan to be living in New York City. Securing a ticket will involve our mutual mate Ron, who is a dentist. He'll be pressing "refresh" a lot on the Ticketmaster site, much as securing the tickets in 1996 involved repeatedly phoning the ticket line of us, until somebody got through without a busy signal. Meanwhile, the Gallagher brothers will each pocket $50 million from the 14 reunion dates, according to estimates.
Is it all about the money? Yes. Are Oasis, as a band, even any good? It doesn't matter. (Also: Not really.) They defined an era in many British people's adolescence when we believed the future was ours and everybody else would, presumably, go away. Which to me makes it well worth paying £100 plus airfare to see them again, even when the future now clearly belongs to other people (Russian oligarchs, mainly), Brexit has hollowed out my native land, and we'd all like to get home at a reasonable hour after the show, if at all possible, thank you, please. I still have What's the Story, Morning Glory? on vinyl, and I'll be fishing it out for a listen first thing Sunday because that's going to church where I come from. And I couldn't be prouder of it. God save the Queen King. Read More |
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| Boston Dynamics, which I did not know was owned by Hyundai, has recently unveiled its new Atlas robot. Currently in the early stages of commercializing this humanoid for factory use, Atlas has already taken the internet by storm with a viral video of it doing push-ups. Can't clap in between them, though, can he, eh? |
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3. What Did One Ramen Say to the Other? 'You're Souper!' |
Nissin Foods, creator of the original Top Ramen and Cup Noodles, has a new president and CEO, Brian Huff, who joined the company in January. He leads the U.S. division and stopped by for a chat about the price of soup. Nissin Foods was established in 1958 by Momofuku Ando, who invented the world's first instant ramen in Japan, inspired by his perhaps naïve belief that "peace will come to the world when there is enough food." In 1972, Nissin Foods USA opened its first plant in Gardena, California, introducing instant ramen to American consumers. To be honest, I'm impressed. So: Are more people buying instant ramen these days now that everything costs too much?
"We definitely have seen some growth in some of our more value-oriented products that are, you know, trading for somewhere between 50 cents and some even 35 cents a serving," Brian said. "But we're also seeing a lot of growth, in a lot of the value-add, more complex foods. Some of our 'multicultural products' that are mainly imported from around the world that are trading at a much higher level. So, I guess it depends on what ends of the economy you are, but we're certainly seeing a lot of movement in both the upper end in terms of the higher premium type items, as well as our lower value items."
The firm launched a s'mores-flavor Cup Noodle this year in an ode to camping. Why?
"We want to be approachable. In some places we're a bit, I would say, playful, and we want to try to continue to push the envelope to get people talking about ramen, get people talking about Cup Noodle and Nissin," he said. "And it certainly does that. We get millions of impressions and people that engage in the brand that haven't before."
Unique flavors lead to buying surges. An "everything bagel with cream cheese" flavor sold out, and last year there was another breakfast-flavor-inspired ramen: pancakes, maple syrup sausage and eggs. It takes three minutes to make a pot of Cup Noodle, and that's about how long it takes to pick a fantasy football team, which is why the firm has signed up George Kittle, San Francisco 49ers tight end, as a brand advocate for its fantasy football picks campaign.
"We couldn't have found a better advocate in in George Kittle," Brian said. "Just, you know, similar to our brand. He's very approachable. He's fun-loving. He is having a good time when he's playing football. And that is part of what we want our brand and our essence to be. So, we thought he would be perfect for it. And the great part is he happens to love stir-fry and he loves ramen." Watch Now |
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You Need 2 Know About This Box!
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Meet the Sunset Box, a quarterly subscription service sending home, wellness, and travel goodies straight to your doorstep, curated by editors at mag Sunset, the Western-lifestyle magazine that just so happens to be a sister company of ours. Since you clearly have good taste (you're an N2K subscriber, after all), we think you'll love this box. Use code CHEDDAR15 for 15% off your subscription. |
Note: Sadly does not contain any cheese. |
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4. Why the Paralympics Matter: Insights From a Wheelchair-Basketball Gold Medalist |
Many of my close family members live with disabilities, from Alzheimer's to autism, from major depression to slightly less major depression. So I'm stoked on the Paralympics, because they give an asset-based view of disability rather than a deficit-based view of it. They encourage us all to see people living with disabilities as whole people, with obstacles in life to overcome just like anybody. All of us are valuable, and all our struggles and victories have meaning and value. If you watch the Paralympics, you can celebrate the real victories all of us living with disabilities win every single day.
The Paralympics are live on NBC and Peacock from August 28 to September 8, and we spoke with wheelchair basketball player Matt Scott, who won a gold medal in the 2016 games, and Visa's Andrea Fairchild, who did not. Matt now works at Visa, which is a major Paralympic sponsor, as well as running an amazing Visa Champions program that recruits Paralympic athletes like Matt to its workforce.
"You learn a lot throughout an athletic journey," Matt said. "You learn the wins, the losses. You learn to dedicate yourself to a craft. And you learn to work as a team to accomplish a goal. A lot of those things I've been able to translate into the corporate space. It's really great that Visa has recognized those abilities to set my sights on a goal and continue to work as a team to accomplish them."
The Visa Champions program "launched this unique initiative to recruit and retain athletes into the corporate realm for that strong work ethic, the passion and the dedication that they bring to their craft, being able to take that and translate that into the workforce," Andrea said. "It's a two-year rotational program that we look to train and really empower former athletes into meaningful, fulfilling employment opportunities within the corporate world. It just demonstrates Visa's values of leadership, teamwork, excellence and inclusion, which are really shared, across all the athletes that we have with us."
That sounds pretty awesome, frankly. Visa made $32 billion last year, and I couldn't be more pleased that the company has decided to spend some of its enormous revenue on such a fantastic win-win initiative. Good for them. Bravo! Watch Now |
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5. Is It Going to Be Worth Upgrading to the New iPhone? |
I have an iPhone 12 Pro Max and have skipped recent updates because none of them have offered much that I could see was worth it. Also, everything is too expensive right now and the last thing I want to do is waste money on a luxury purchase, no matter how else people want to describe the latest iPhone. That said, my friend Ron the dentist has an iPhone 15 Pro Max and the pics he took of me on Monday with it were incredible. So good that I considered upgrading. I'm in a real quandary! (Maybe I should read this story we published in February?)
Anyway, on September 9, Apple will be unveiling its new iPhone, the inventively named "16," with AI-enablement. The question on my mind is: "Is this AI going to be so great that I finally, begrudgingly, have to upgrade my device?"
Coincidentally, I've noticed my existing iPhone seems to be running out of battery a little quicker than it used to, so this could be the upgrade that sends me to the T-Mobile store to ask them please, would they add an extra $50 to my bill each month?
The even bigger question, though, is whether Apple can persuade me off the fence with a phone that makes everybody say "ahhh." I suspect the AI capacities are still in their early stages and that I'm better off waiting for the 17. But I'm persuadable. How about you? On balance I do think I'm going to wait for the 17, but I'm not happy about it. I really want Apple to make me an offer I can't refuse. Honestly, if you woke up with a severed horse's head in your bed, wouldn't you upgrade your phone? Watch Now |
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| So, What Do You Think of Cheddar?
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We want to hear from you! From shows to site to this very newsletter, we'd love some feedback. |
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