Schwep!
Chalamet zoom · net nerding · whatsapp romance · new news ·
Some weeks it feels like there is a lot going on, and the goodness of thought and creation flows all around. Here’s a swirl of content, creativity, and curation.
Schwep!: That word, that insufferable zoom call, A24, and Timothy Chalamet.
Lore: A new platform for fans and their internet obsessions.
▶️ Curated/Cuts: Collector pain with KFC, Whatsapp India’s short film, Bodkin show titles.
Into The Machine: A fine conversation on where AI is taking us
Equator: a new magazine looking for global perspectives in a post-American world.
➕ non-stop Simpsons; AI is no tool; robot pregnancies; AI’s curating pop culture.
☝🏽Busy? Lazy? Multitasky? Click play above & let me read this to you, or on Youtube.
A24’s brilliant Zoom with Chalamet
Schwep! Remember that word, cause it’s going to populate them memes, I reckon!
Why?
Courtesy a ‘leaked’ Zoom call between the marketing team atA24 and Timothy Chalamet, discussing his upcoming film ‘Marty Supreme’.
This is so meta, so real, so weirdly captivating.
It has been fruitionised like no fruition has frutionised recently. I have no notes.
Please join this Zoom meeting, aka ‘Timothee_Chalamet_internal_brand_marketing_meeting_MartySupreme_11.08.2025.mp4’
”I wake up every morning, I think culmination, integration, like all of us, and fruition, fruitionizing, which is not a word, obviously, but fruitionizing the release of this movie, like really making sure it comes out in a great way.”
Lore
“Early internet rabbit holes taught me how magical it felt to not just consume culture but to contribute to it.”
The internet has always been about rabbit holes. As students, fans, nerds, writers or a hundred other profiles, there has always been something incredible about diving into something that sparks our intellect or love or joy. Whether by chance or design- finding our passions, stumbling onto new ones, then slipping into a spiral of curiosity.
Zehra Naqvi sure agrees. She is set to launch a service called Lore, which will enable just this- a search platform to research and discover ‘internet obsessions’. Lore is meant to provide tools Zehra wishes had existed “when fandom felt like home before the internet became fractured and joyless.”
Lore is built for depth, not speed, they say. The ambition is to be a platform that adapts to our interests, and helps deepen them- will be fascinating to see how.
A ‘personalised graph of obsessions’ is teased, with monthly reports on where users obsessions are at any given time. “Imagine a place where the things you love are explored, celebrated, and brought to life with context and care—whether it’s a favorite Broadway musical, a conspiracy theory, or the lore behind your favorite athlete’s career.”
They released a nice little film for it too. Directed by Joel Yoon CD Evan Santiago · No Storage Productions ·
The platforms fans flock to weren’t built for the kind of deep cultural exploration modern fans crave.
Google gives you surface-level summaries.
ChatGPT hallucinates.
TikTok is algorithmically limiting.
Reddit is chaotic and disorganized.
Twitter is toxic.
Discord is inaccessible and impossible to search.Fans are forced to duct-tape their obsessions across platforms, manually piecing together timelines and context. Lore fixes that.
🎬 Curated/Cuts.
1. Complete The Set: KFC
You know those cute collectibles that fast food companies throw into the box to complete the nutritious meal? And the set which you can somehow not fully complete because its a ‘mystery box’, so you have 9 pink unicorns but not even one purple mermaid?
Or something like that?
Even if you are not a ‘collector’ of such valuables, you could enjoy this spot from KFC in Thailand, drawing upon some self-aware humour, absurdity and controlled craft to connect with that collector soul.
Director: Bruno Bossi · Production Taprod ·
Creative: BANANAS · Creatives: Justin Gomes Pat Cholavit Sean Harrison Safaraaz Sindhi
2. Bodkin Titles
Bodkin, the enjoyable and amusing crime show set in the eponymous Irish town, has some equally lovely show titles. They are both charming and clever- appealing aesthetically, and belonging narratively.
Also, every episode had its own customisation- little nods to plotlines and themes unveiled in the episode. Each image starts as one thing, and becomes something else entirely. All can be seen here.
Titles have suffered from the rising belief that they form part of the ‘friction’ that viewers must be divested of- so it is always nice to see some well crafted ones.
Creative Director: Hazel Baird Design Studio: Elastic Design and Animation: Roughcollie
3. Whatsapp India : Baatan hi Baatan mein
Some feel Whatsapp hardly needs to advertise in India, given how widespread it is. But the messaging service is always looking to bring more into the fold. This latest is targeted to the segments of rural India where literacy is still a stumbling block. Whatsapp’s Voice and Video Notes break down the (pretty real) barriers to texting.
This is a short film, embracing story over form- a 9 minute vignette of nascent love.
They also have traveling cinemas heading from village to village, organising screenings- which I find pretty cool.
Director: Amit Sharma · Chrome Pictures · Agency: Fundamental · Neeraj Kanitkar · Pallavi Chakravarti · Gauri Burma ·
Meta: Vyom Prashant · Natasha Kapoor ·
Zero Degree News
I wrote last week of the fragmentation of how news is reported and consumed, and the growth of the role of creators versus institutions.
And here is The Equator, a new magazine of politics, culture and art. Beyond the widespread lack of faith in ‘mainstream’ outlets, the team behind Equator wants to challenge existing and perpetuated notions of global events, seen largely through a Western lens. “In a post-American era, the task of a new magazine is to engage the rich variety of this historical moment on its own terms, without compulsively asking ‘What does it mean for the US?’” After some initial missives, they launched proper in October, and the first batch of articles are now out.
The founders include Pankaj Mishra, Mohsin Hamid, Nesrine Malik,
, and Suzy Hansen, with editing by former Guardian long reads creator Jonathan Shainin. They wrote, in an impassioned “What We Stand For” section,Equator is our collective response to a crisis that is as much spiritual and intellectual as it is political and economic. It is a venture that aims to create a more cosmopolitan home for thought and art than the one assigned to them by provincial Western periodicals. It also seeks to restore dignity to the concept of truth, and create a public space where the values of justice, solidarity and compassion can flourish.
This was a little film by Yto Barrada for their launch.
Across the globe, audiences are abandoning familiar sources of meaning, searching desperately for new stories to help make sense of the world. They seek not just information but transformation—fresh ways of seeing that can illuminate the darkness of our present and reveal futures worth fighting for.
We founded Equator to answer this longing.
In a time when so many of us grapple with how we interface with the world around us- disappointment with mainstream media, lack of trust in our feeds, crumbling global edifices- I found in this offering a possibility of hope, integrity and a worldview worth sharing. As its first wave of articles release, in the coming weeks and months we can see how it lives up to this ambition, and promise.
Playlist: into the machine
“we’re the chimpanzees trying to speculate about what the AI could or couldn’t create. I think we should come with a level of humility about this that we’re currently not coming up with.”
Tristan Harris has long been a articulate and thoughtful voice on how technology can be shaped for a better world. He founded the
, and you might known him earlier from The Social Dillemma, the documentary that strived to pull the curtains from the machinations behind social media platforms.Tristan and the CHT team have their own very worthy podcast, Your Undivided Attention. On this, I have consistently found clear-headed, well intentioned discussions around the attention economy, social media, AI and wider trends in tech, governance, ethics and humanity.
But today is a shoutout to another podcast that had Tristan on as a guest. On “Into the Machine”,
explores how tech is rewiring what it means to be human, and what we should hold on to.In this episode, he and Tristan have a clear-headed, critical yet positive discussion about AI- risk scenarios, what we can expect AI labs and legislators to do in the face of AGI, and what can be done right now to ensure these systems stay maximally beneficial to humanity.
“The main thing that’s crystal clear, that people need to get- we are progressing in making these models way more powerful, at an exponential rate. We are not making exponential progress in the controllability or alignability of these models.
In fact, we demonstrably, because of the evidence that Anthropic has courageously published, we know that we still don’t know how to prevent self-awareness or prevent deception or these kinds of things.”
Listen to it for a reasoned, reasonable and sincere discussion, shorn of any intent to have loud takeaways or Instagrammable quotes.
➕
‘The Simpsons’ now has a dedicated channel on Disney+, streaming every episode ever, in order, non stop.
“Stop calling AI a tool. To do so is to participate in the project of rendering the body *obsolete.” Jeffrey Anthony consistently writes sharply and clearly on AI in our world.
A Chinese tech company is building a humanoid robot that can get pregnant and give birth. Yup.
Curation: a look at AI’s role in pop culture “AI is reshaping not just what we consume, but how we understand it. We must ask ourselves: Is culture too important to leave to AI-driven curation?“
If you enjoy The Colour Bar, maybe help fuel the next one!
Oh look, December is round the corner- so expect a break or three, and some lookbacks!