🌜 Dream TV

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👋 Happy August, we say as you shake your head and say “how is it already August?” Same, same. Once the shock wears off, a reminder: the eighth month was named after Augustus, Rome’s first emperor and potentially humanity’s best-ever founder. The dude 2x’d the Roman Empire in his tenure and business was so good, he even personally owned Egypt at one point. Like, all of it. Augustus also held control of his venture all the way to his death, besting his great uncle Julius Caesar, who was ousted by his board.

🎧 On the pod: AI is dramatically changing how people search online. How will that shape the future of the web?

NEWS FLASH

(Showrunner)

🖌️ Is this the new subject of "Is this the new Netflix?" articles? Fable Studio debuted its streaming service, Showrunner, this week. Subscribers, who pay $10-$40/month for credits, will be able to generate their own animated scenes or build on existing IPs. For example, CEO Edward Saatchi suggested that a partnership with Disney could see subscribers making their own Star Wars stories, characters, and worlds. Showrunner also has its own shows users can watch or build on, even generating themselves as cartoon characters.

🎧 The latest reason being famous sounds terrible: The Panama Playlists claims to reveal the listening habits of various public figures. How? Spotify profiles and playlists are public by default, and people whose usernames are their real names would be easy to find. Some figures, including journalist Taylor Lorenz and Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey confirmed their posted playlists, while others said they were inaccurate. If the website can be believed, Vice President JD Vance listens to The Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way” while making dinner.

🚚 Where there’s a $53B takeover, there are also… toy trucks? Earlier this month, Chevron closed its mega deal to buy oil and gas giant Hess, but there’s already one part of the business headed back into the hands of the Hess family: the energy company’s famous kid-and-collector-friendly line of toy trucks, helicopters, airplanes, space shuttles, and emergency vehicles, which dates back to 1964. Though Chevron said they’d keep the toy tradition alive, the CEO of Hess, the aptly-named John Hess, took it upon himself to ensure the toys' future: he is reacquiring the fun part of his family’s business, along with trademarks tied to the Hess name.

MORE NEWS TO KNOW

St. Paul, Minnesota, suffered a hack so devastating that it’s issued a state of emergency and called in the National Guard. Wi-Fi is down in city buildings and some digital functions, including online payments and library book checkouts, are on pause.
Skechers’ new line of kids’ shoes have hidden AirTag compartments so parents can track their whereabouts. That said, AirTags aren’t designed for tracking moving targets. They use Bluetooth to connect to other devices but lack built-in GPS.
‘Shroom for growth: Canadian startup 4AG Robotics secured $29m to expand its autonomous mushroom-harvesting robots that pick, trim, pack, and generally make life easier for mushroom farmers. The tech re-maps every mushroom on the farm every 30-90 minutes, tracking growth rates to determine the exact right picking time.

R/OPPORTUNITY

10 Subreddits with Hidden Opportunities_1200x628_Opt2A

Reddit: Where startup concepts hide in plain sight

These 10 poppin’ Subreddits are filled to the brim with people who love complaining about problems that need solving... which means they’re wellsprings of ideas for all you entrepreneurs.

Start scanning r/Freelance, r/Frugal, r/Homegym, and seven other forums for gems.

Or just steal one of the shining ideas we cheffed up ourselves. That’s nice, too.

Find ideas on Reddit

THE BIG IDEA

A TV set featuring an image of a ladder extending to the moon.

This AI device lets you watch your dreams as lo-fi movies

We, as beings who dream, have all been there — you wake from a vivid dream and scramble to jot down the details before they fade from your memory forever.

Or maybe it vanishes before you have a chance to write it down, leaving you with the mere impression of a feeling grounded in nothing. Bummer.

Well, thanks to Dutch design studio Modem’s new Dream Recorder, a AI-powered “portal to your subconscious” that turns dreams into short movies, that no longer needs to be the case.

How it works

For an AI-enabled device, it’s actually quite simple.

To use it, you simply press the record button and narrate your dream aloud in your preferred language. The device then generates a short reel based on your description in a preset animation style of your choosing, which you can later rewatch and reflect upon to better understand your subconscious mind.

That’s it — no app, no notifications, nothing.

The bedside device reproduces dreams as low-res videos to mimic the way we remember dreams, and, like your own memory, doesn’t store them forever, saving just a week’s worth at a time.
Unlike dream journal apps, Modem says it doesn’t just document your subconscious visions but “translates” them.
Each dream costs ~1-14 cents, depending on the AI service you use to render them, per Fast Company.

The coolest thing about Dream Recorder, though, isn’t its functionality but the philosophy behind it.

Not your regular AI company

Designed without any hard lines (it looks a bit like a cloud) and with limited connectivity, it’s meant to fade into the background and provide a sense of calm.

And like Modem’s other projects, it’s fully open-source, meaning Modem doesn’t actually sell the device but has shared the code and hardware documentation on GitHub, so anyone can 3D-print the body, buy the other little bits, and assemble it themselves.

The goal, Modem co-founder Astin le Clerq told Dezeen, is to “democratise access to these technologies and offer a tangible alternative to the dominant, corporate-led vision of AI.”

In a landscape dominated by profit-driven tech giants, Modem might be the AI company we need — and yet, it’s intentionally set an operational “end date” of 2030 for itself.

🔗

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Have you noticed videos on TikTok and YouTube getting a little more cinematic? It’s a thing. Learn why some creators are leaning into it, trending toward more stylized, higher-production-quality work.

NEWSWORTHY NUMBER

Price of four wild-caught, flash-frozen Pacific cod fillets, courtesy of David Protein.

David Protein typically makes protein bars in flavors like chocolate chip cookie dough, cinnamon roll, and blueberry pie. Those are all sold out online and only available in stores, but you can still buy the fish online or in New York City’s Happier Grocery. Obviously, one of these things is not like the other, so, uh, why?

CEO Peter Rahal told The Wall Street Journal that the company started selling boiled cod after contemplating what would have a better protein-to-calorie ratio than any of its bars. Fish is high in protein and lower in calories when boiled as opposed to sauteed in butter or oil. It’s also a cheeky way to respond to critics who say their bars are processed (most foods are).

“It’s not a gimmick — it is a gimmick, but we’re actually seriously selling cod. Time will tell if the market likes it or not,” he said.

AROUND THE WEB

📅 On this day: In 1961, the first Six Flags amusement park opened in Texas.

😴 How to: get through the day after a sleepless night.

🗞️ Newsletter: GTM Vault offers go-to-market frameworks, AI-native playbooks, a GTM podcast, and a strategy course. Subscribe here.

🤖 Helpful: Hiring a world-class data analyst sounds nice, but if you don’t have that kind of cash, these free AI prompts, engineered to turn data into revenue, have you covered.

🐠 Haha: Draw a fish.

🦆 Aww: Public transit.

QUOTE OF NOTE

Gotta give Kim credit, she's always at the forefront of identfiying new things for women to be insecure about and profiting off them.

Kim Kardashian’s Skims brand just dropped its latest item: shapewear for your face.

The Seamless Sculpt Face Wrap — bandage-like headgear that promises to snatch your chin, jaw, and neck, and which Kardashian called an everyday “must-have” — launched Tuesday and immediately got the internet talking, with reactions ranging from intrigue to skepticism and, as one Redditor’s take exemplifies, lots of criticism.

Still, despite its mixed reception, the gimmicky product has already sold out — meaning there are a lot of goofy-looking people walking around $48 poorer.

SHOWER THOUGHT

Superman must have to go to sleep every night hearing the cries of people begging for his help. SOURCE

Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah, Sara Friedman, and Singdhi Sokpo.
Editing by: Ben “Playlist is all Raffi all the time” Berkley.

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