You know what the early 2000’s was good for?

Getting LCD screens installed all around your car of course.

Pimp My Ride was a TV show that allowed you to dream:

• What would it be like to have a cotton candy machine in my car?

• What would it be like to fit a yoga studio in the back trunk?

• What if I had my very own CAT scan machine in the back of the car?

And although the cars they modified weren’t exactly practical, you couldn’t help but hope that they put Lambo doors on every car they ever worked on in the show. That said, if you read this AMA, you’ll realize right away the whole show was only ever about getting people to watch, not fix up old cars. Surprise, surprise.

You know what else is a surprise? The resurgence of Mark Zuckerberg as this cool, with it millennial billionaire who’s just like one of us. Kind of…okay not really.

But the man is finally showing the world what you could do with F-U money. I mean no one really wants a van. But everyone wants a Porsche. So why not go to West Coast Customs (home of Pimp My Ride) and get them to make you a Porsche van.

Mark’s wife Priscilla wanted a family car but I suspect he didn’t want to get a van so he had West Coast Customs extend a Porsche Cayenne, equip it with sliding van doors, and then just for fun, get his own matching Porsche GT3 Touring.

This reminds me of the time I bought my wife and I matching hoodies at Muji.

This week's issue is a 5 minute read:

💰️ A tennis legend hangs up the racquet

🎵 The app I built is famous now

🎴 J Cole explains himself

Rafa Retires After 23 Years

The 90’s had Sampras and Agassi.  Then this guy from Switzerland showed up with his hair tied and a head band and absolutely destroyed Pistol Pete and went on to begin a reign of dominance, with an asterisk.  That asterisk being Rafael Nadal, this crazy athletic Spanish lefty who essentially started owning the French Open the second he started playing in it, winning the frikken tournament the first time he played in it.

And then winning The French Open 13 more times!

Tennis in the 2000’s was a lot of Federer vs Nadal with sprinkling of Djokovic here and there.  However, with Nadal announcing yesterday that 2024 will be his last season of professional tennis, we’re now left with one third of this century’s tennis dominance.  

Truthfully, I was always a Federer guy.  Roger just had a way of playing with grace that you couldn’t stop.  Rafa was all speed and all power but stylistically, to me, Nadal always lacked the grace that Federer, and even Novak to some degree, exuded on the court.  

Although, Nadal retires with winning 22 grand slam tournaments.  So I guess the guy wasn’t that bad at tennis.  And he did give us some epic matches with Federer, including what a lot of tennis aficionados consider THE GREATEST TENNIS MATCH OF ALL TIME.

I was about to go on a tangent about not liking his Nike brand either but I’ll stop there.  And I’ll leave you with:

Danny Green announced his retirement after 15 seasons in the NBA as well yesterday.  

The App That Never Was - Then Apple Did It

STORY TIME.

So a few years ago I joined a startup that had built an app for the Fitbit that used a bit of AI to predict when you might be sick based on the benchmarks it learned about you.  At the time, the idea of using AI to predict if you were going to get sick was extremely novel - I think it’s safe to say it’s STILL a novel concept tbh.

Our goal was to get the app in the hands of Apple Watch users and essentially take over the world.  No for real, Apple had never seen anything like what we had built before and they were ready to do a North American roll out with us.  I had created this whole PDF look book that showed the kinds of ads we could run.  

Apple marketing in North America was all jazzed up, but they needed to see the app.

Where was the app, you ask?  Well, it was built, and then it wasn’t, then it worked some mornings, then it didn’t, and then it needed to be redesigned, and then it didn’t.  The whole thing was a disaster.  I still remember seeing the emails from Apple asking when the app would be ready and just putting my head in my hands because lord knows if it was ever going to be released.

Well what ever happened to the app?  I’m here to tell you about Vitals, Apple’s app that uses AI to track your benchmarks on the Apple Watch and predict if you’re getting sick.

Users in Vitals’ beta are actually reporting that they’re experiencing sickness after the app displays outliers in their data, or effectively data points that were trending outside of their normal health benchmarks.  

The app is available on the Apple Watch series 8 and higher models as long as you’re running watchOS 11.  OK I’m done, that was actually more painful to write than I thought - that legit could’ve been us and our tech...UGH. 

A ‘J Cole’ Update To Drake v Kendrick

ICYMI: Kendrick had started the whole beef with Drake from a verse on a Future song, referencing Drake’s line from First Person Shooter:

In which Kendrick responded on Like That with: 

At the time J Cole was considered to be included as part of the diss and so he was actually the first to respond to the Kendrick diss with 7 Minute Drill.  But within days, J Cole removed the song from streaming services and said it was a misstep in releasing it to the world.  

The internet thought J Cole was either scared or Kendrick knew something about Cole that he didn’t want being released to the public.  

At any rate, now you’re all caught up.  This week J Cole released Port Antonio which seemingly explains why he bowed out of the beef early on.  Essentially, he figured he would lose valuable relationships, including the one he has with Drake, and so that’s why he dropped out so early.  

But Cole does say that he wouldn’t have lost the beef.  I mean, I guess you have to say that if you’re considering yourself top 3 of your generation.  

Chat - would J Cole have done any better than Drake in the beef?