Yankees Turn to "Torpedo Bats," the Internet Goes Full Studio Ghibli

Plus: fake movie trailers, AI models, and "vibe coding"

Welcome to Small Talk, an email I serve out every Monday morning exclusively to our Breakfast Club members in NYC and Charleston. The premise is simple: my top of mind topics for the week’s worth of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners ahead anytime some chatter is required. From now on, I’ll be sharing it with subscribers of The Supersonic as well. Enjoy, and crib topics as necessary.

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Ok, onto this week’s Small Talk topics …

For consideration …

• "Torpedo Bats" are legal
  How ‘bout them Yankees? Or, more specifically, them bats? The Bronx Bombers dinged 15 homers in their first three games of the season, tying an MLB record. All three games were against the Milwaukee Brewers, and nine of those homers happened on Saturday — a franchise record. The Yankees starting lineup is stellar, to be sure, but a big part of their success can be attributed to a new kind of bat. Developed by an MIT physicist, the “Torpedo Bat,” as it’s been dubbed, is a field-legal bat (no longer than 42 inches, no thicker than 2.61 inches, solid wood, cup at tip no deeper than 1 inch) that moves the sweet spot further down, meaning more wood and thus more mass where hitters are more likely to make contact with the ball. Look to see a lot more teams using them, and a lot more dingers, this season.
  

• Why Hollywood loves fake movie trailers
  Hollywood could use some innovation. A new Deloitte survey finds that 56 percent of Gen Z and 43 percent of millennials view creator content on social media as more relevant, relatable, and compelling than big budget streaming and movies. If that’s the case, no one told Sean Manning, Simon & Schuster’s new publisher, who says he wants to turn the 100-year-old publishing house into the A24 of books. That said, and to his credit, the guy is talking about brand loyalty rather than movies, and his tactics—like the supermarket sweep-inspired “Bookstore Blitz”—are more TikTok than big screen. Anyway, back to Hollywood. As with everything, we must acknowledge the looming specter of AI, which could swing its scythe at any moment. But beyond films, from the scripts to the moving images themselves, one of the weirdest ways AI is affecting the industry is via fake trailers — some so convincing they’ve even duped French National Television. Even weirder? While many decry that this is all a race to the bottom, citing copyright infringement and topics like “sex-upped” images of female characters, the big studios are embracing these fake trailers — reaping ad revenue from YouTube and riding the early buzz.
  

• Those Studio Ghibli memes
  AI was undoubtedly all over your social feeds late last week, most notably on X, where users had a field day generating Studio Ghibli-style portraits of themselves. The “work” comes courtesy of ChatGPT’s latest update, which can Ghiblify any photo, and the Internet, of course, quickly polarized on the topic. Detractors were quick to quote Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki, who, in a 2016 interview, called AI “an insult to life itself.” Such opinions didn’t stop one user, who replicated the trailer for The Fellowship of the Ring in the inimitable style of the acclaimed, Academy Award-winning Japanese animation studio. Elsewhere in all things AI, Bloomberg has had to issue “dozens of corrections to AI-generated news summaries,” H&M has cloned the likeness of 30 models—with their permission, of course (the files are IN the computer!)—and, according to some teachers, AI is eroding students' ability to think critically. And then there’s “vibe coding,” the act of a layperson with no coding experience or knowledge using AI to code ideas they have for apps and other things. Some folks are bullish, while experts assure us that “it’s not going to replace programmers.”

Quicker hits …

• Rise of the "vibe restaurant."

• Tinder and Sami Miró partner to help singles upcycle their ex's old clothes.

• Chicago icon Alinea finally arrives in NYC.

• Wait, are male-female relationships actually a deviation and not the norm?

• Our phones could be the reason we're not having more kids.

Enjoy your week.

BL

Ben Leventhal
Founder + CEO
Blackbird