The acquisition of theScore fortifies Penn National’s digital media & gaming strategy, creating a complete one-stop entertainment destination. theScore is the third most popular sports media app in North America & number one in Canada. Adding theScore’s fully integrated media & betting platform & cutting-edge technology will further strengthen Penn National’s existing ecosystem & ability to seamlessly serve its customers. Pairing theScore with Barstool Sports provides Penn National with two of North America’s most powerful & unique sports media assets, with the capabilities to generate best-in-class engagement & enhanced customer acquisition & retention across its media & gaming properties.

TheScore’s sports betting app launched in 2019, available in Indiana, Iowa, Colorado & New Jersey & will soon launch in Ontario. Under Penn’s ownership, theScore will continue operating out of Canada, where it is the most-visited sports app. In April, theScore became the first Canadian betting partner of the PGA Tour.

In January 2020, Penn bought a 36% stake in Barstool Sports for $163 million, helping the media company launch its mobile Barstool Sportsbook. That app has operated using B2B sports betting software Kambi, but it will now transition to run on theScore’s in-house betting technology.

“theScore has developed a state-of-the-art player account management system & is finalizing the development of an in-house managed risk & trading service platform. This should lead to significant savings in third party platform costs & allow us to broaden our product offerings,” Penn National CEO Jay Snowden said in a statement.

“We’re excited to be creating this powerful new entertainment flywheel that will provide us with multiple growth channels that transcend our current business verticals,” said Jay Snowden, President & CEO of Penn National Gaming. “We look forward to entering the Canadian gaming market, which represents a compelling new opportunity, & are proud to have John Levy & his family & their entire team bring their best-in-class technology, unique perspective & skill sets to our Penn National family,” concluded Mr. Snowden.

John Levy, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of theScore, commented, “It is a truly exciting time to join Penn National & collaborate with their team to build a highly innovative & first-of-its-kind sports media & gaming company. There is natural alignment between the two companies, & we are perfectly positioned to capitalize on the growing entertainment opportunities across mobile sports media, sports betting & online casino. We believe the combined company is well-positioned to continue growing our business across North America, including the expected opening of sports betting & iGaming in Ontario later this year.”

theScore has developed a state-of-the-art player account management system & is finalizing the development of an in-house managed risk & trading service platform. This should lead to significant savings in third party platform costs & allow us to broaden our product offerings, providing the missing piece for operating at what we expect to be industry leading margins.

In addition to the synergies, Snowden pointed out that Penn National will be gaining access to theScore's deep pool of product & engineering talent. It will also be able to use its data-driven user analytics. That should help drive Penn National's customer acquisition, engagement, retention strategies, & cash flows.

theScore could add meaningfully to profits

Penn National Gaming anticipates the acquisition will add to its adjusted earnings before interest taxes, depreciation, & amortization after its second year as part of Penn. Those EBITDA benefits are expected to increase to $200 million per year in the medium term & $500 million in the longer term. To put those figures into context, Penn reported an adjusted EBITDA of $800 million in the first six months of fiscal 2021.

If it works out as estimated, the acquisition could provide meaningful upside to Penn's EBITDA in the long term. 

Moreover, acquiring theScore brings gaming technology in-house, allowing better control of product development, reducing costs, & improving customer experience. It will also remove the need to pay third-party technology & service providers, partly explaining the estimated improvement in EBITDA over time.

Sports betting starts in Connecticut as other states also look to push forward to bring in revenue to meet budget demands. Online sports betting & online gaming officially launched yesterday in Connecticut. Retail sports betting in Louisiana is slated to commence in the coming weeks & online sports betting in the first half of 2022. Meanwhile, there is a push in Illinois for dropping the in-person registration requirement. Sports betting legislation efforts in Maryland & Massachusetts are going slower & appear unlikely until 2022. Meanwhile, legal fighting is keeping a deal in Florida with the Seminole Indian Tribe on pause.

Jay Snowden, President & Chief Executive Officer, commented: “Penn National kicked off the year with record results in Q1 2021 from our land-based business & the launch of our online Barstool Sportsbook in Michigan & Illinois. In addition, we fully integrated our mychoice player loyalty program across all our retail & digital offerings, which bolsters Penn National’s ecosystem & further expands our competitive advantage.

Equally exciting was our inclusion in the S&P 500 in March, which underscores the investment community’s confidence in our digital transformation & our position as the nation’s largest regional gaming operator. This milestone is a testament to the hard work, determination & commitment of all our team members at the property & corporate levels as well as our valued partners at Barstool Sports.”

Expansion of Sportsbook Footprint & Media Strategy

Mr. Snowden continued, “We remain focused on garnering top-three gaming revenue market share for the Barstool Sportsbook & driving best in class profitability. Since launching our product just over seven months ago, we have registered more than 400,000 customers & generated over $660 million & $61 million in handle & gaming revenue, respectively.”

Penn National plans for the online Barstool Sportsbook is live in eight states by football season & in at least 10 states before the end of the year. In March, the company launched the Barstool Sportsbook in Illinois, ahead of the 2021 NCAA Basketball Tournament. The initial results for the first 30 days of operations exceeded expectations, with better first-time deposit conversions relative to what the company had generated in Pennsylvania or Michigan. During this period, Penn National registered over 54,700 new customers & generated total handle & gaming revenue of $67.7 million & $6.5 million, respectively.

Barstool’s promotion of Penn National’s retail sportsbooks has driven significant awareness & visitation to its land-based properties, highlighting the unique benefits of the company’s fully integrated media & omni-channel strategy.

Penn National claims overall it has seen very strong results at properties that have opened Barstool-branded retail sportsbooks, & it plans to open/rebrand six more retail sportsbooks by the end of 2021. The company expects to add more third-party content to its Barstool-branded iCasino product later this year. Further, the recently announced acquisition of HitPoint Studios will be the centerpiece of the newly formed Penn Game Studios allowing it to create customized Barstool-themed & casino branded content that Penn National believes will lead to even greater cross-sell opportunities.

Penn National’s diversified regional gaming footprint includes 41 properties across 19 states. Penn National continues to evolve into an omni-channel provider of retail & online gaming, live racing & sports betting entertainment. The Company's properties feature approximately 50,000 gaming machines, 1,300 table games & 8,800 hotel rooms, & operate under various well-known brands, including Hollywood, Ameristar, & L'Auberge. Its wholly-owned interactive division, Penn Interactive, operates retail sports betting across the Company's portfolio, as well as online social casino, bingo, & iCasino products.

In February 2020, Penn National entered into a strategic partnership with Barstool Sports, whereby Barstool will exclusively promote the Company's land-based & online casinos & sports betting products, including the Barstool Sportsbook mobile app, to its national audience.

The merger between Penn National Gaming (NASDAQ:PENN) & Score Media & Gaming (NASDAQ:SCR) closed on October 19

Sports Betting/iGaming Play › Penn National Gaming (NASDAQ:PENN)

As some traditional luxury automakers release electric vehicles amid promises that range, charging, & performance will all improve in a few years, Lucid › LCID › is launching its brand & already beating the top numbers from Tesla & any others.

The 2022 Lucid Air, which went into production last week & begins deliveries in late October, boasts an EPA range of up to 520 miles, & in the Dream Edition Performance version I drove, an output of up to 1,111 hp, a 0-60 mph time of 2.5 seconds, & a quarter-mile time of just 9.9 seconds. & on a 350-kw DC fast-charge connector the 112-kwh battery pack can recover up to 20 miles a minute, or up to 300 miles in 20 minutes.

Based on a very brief first drive last week, I can report that it feels just as quick as it teases—supercar-quick not just at American freeway speeds but well beyond. 

But it’s not just a numbers game, & we’ve all seen plenty of YouTube EV acceleration videos. For a car that arrives, in its Dream Edition version, at $169,000, it had best charm buyers in other ways as well. Mission accomplished. Around the brilliant engineering put into dramatically downsizing the propulsion system & focusing on efficiency, Lucid has built a true driver’s car. 

After less than 30 minutes of actual drive time split between me & a driving partner, plus about an hour in & around the car, that’s the biggest surprise. The Air doesn’t withhold some of the inherent sensations of driving enjoyment. From chassis to interface, Lucid has been just as relentless in getting the whole car right as it has in perfecting the power & energy pieces to hit the magic numbers. & it shows. 

Leading-edge aero, but a presence unlike any other

The Lucid Air has one of the best coefficients of drag in the industry, at just 0.21, & yet as a sedan it doesn’t have the telltale “kammback” design or look like it’s sacrificed its proportions for the sake of aero. That’s quite the triumph for this beautiful design, from Lucid VP Derek Jenkins, who also penned the current ND-generation Mazda MX-5 Miata & contributed to the Mazda CX-9 that helped solidify the look of Mazda’s crossovers. 

Although the Air can be a chameleon in pictures, in person it has a presence unlike any other vehicle. The thin, wide themes that apply to the nose &, inside, the dash, look aircraft-inspired & bring out the low-&-wide look of the car, while the thick rear pillar, & the French curve arches ahead of it & around the rear window, form a memorable signature.

At 195.9 inches long, 76.3 inches wide, & 55.5 inches high, & riding on a 116.5-inch wheelbase, the Lucid Air is within an inch of the Tesla Model S in most of its critical dimensions—except for height, where it’s 1.4 inches lower. Although the back seat requires some to duck their heads when getting in, that’s the only exception to the impression that the Air feels quite a bit roomier inside than the Model S, especially in back. The trunk is spacious, with a flexible cover that can conceal a deep well at the rear. You can fold the split rear seatbacks forward for larger items, or use the pass-through. In addition, there’s a frunk—not just a token space for a handbag, but what’s claimed as the largest frunk of any electric car. Numbers are forthcoming.

With downsized drive components, more space for people

Lucid has applied its persistent engineering approach toward downsizing all the critical electric-drive components. The shockingly small motors are not much larger than motors that I’ve seen used as part of a far less powerful hybrid system. They’re packaged elegantly with their gearbox & inverter.

Getting into the Air for the first time, it’s impossible not to focus on what’s above. The available Glass Canopy roof spans from the base of the windshield all the way to a crossmember behind the heads of those in the front seat, & it’s interrupted only by the rearview mirror module & sunshades.

The use of soft, porous materials elsewhere in the cabin balances out the sound quality & ambience for all the glass above—although in the back seat we noticed some pavement “patter” at the rear wheels. 

That’s something you might not notice if you’re enjoying the Air’s 21-speaker immersive audio with Dolby Atmos. The infotainment system is compatible with Apple CarPlay & Android Auto, while voice commands are via a native installation of Amazon Alexa.

The front seats in our test car provided plenty of support & adjustments, with built-in massage & cooling backing up that all-day comfort. An optional Executive Rear Seating package will add more recline & long leg rests, much like what you’d encounter on a first-class plane seat. 

Tuned for the driver as much as the passengers

But really, you’ll want to be the one driving. The Air has a five-link strut suspension in front, with an integral-link setup in back. The five-link setup, one of the late-stage engineering changes to the Air, along with the mechanically variable steering rack, constitutes an analog solution to counter the digital overload of the propulsion. The layout effectively purges torque steer & helps assure predictability, with weight transfer staying the same whether in regenerative braking or foundation (friction) braking. 

The Air lacks an air suspension like there is in the Model S. It just has solenoid-controlled semi-active dampers on all four wheels. The hysteresis, or lag, from an air-spring setup would have meant too many compromises in the damping that would affect ride & handling, according to Zach Walker, engineering manager for chassis mechanical. 

It has a confident, easygoing feel in straight-ahead driving. Given a few chances to attack some exit ramps, I found the Air’s ride & handling to be isolating yet tidy & responsive, with a certain playfulness in the way its 5,050 pounds transfer front to back. We can’t wait to get this model out on a track. 

The Air uses all four wheels for regenerative braking, & it can torque-vector during regen, so it makes the most of it given the road surface. Like Tesla, Lucid doesn’t like the idea of brake-blending. When you use the brake pedal, you’re using the pads; lift off the accelerator & you’re in regen. It’s as simple as that, & it makes everything more predictable & easier to tune, as Lucid sees it.

Pirelli tires, specially developed with Lucid for the Air, carry a high-load (HL) rating & were engineered for grip as well as low rolling resistance & minimizing rolling noise. Our test car was equipped with them in their larger 21-inch size—HL 245/35R21 99 Y XL in front & HL 265/35R21 103 Y XL in back. 

Modes cover preferences, not party tricks

Through three drive modes: Smooth, Swift, & Sprint, Lucid tweaks the available power from the propulsion system, accelerator responsiveness, steering boost, & suspension firmness & behavior. Regenerative braking is offered in two settings for each of these drive modes & it provides 0.12g or to 0.3g of resistance. 

Separately, you can opt to turn on or off idle creep (what it does when you lift off the brake), or have the car roll or hold after a stop. Drive modes are also decoupled from stability control, & there’s a mode—probably best left for the track—to turn off the stability systems but keep rear-wheel torque vectoring. 

On that track, you won’t find a launch mode, per se—or a drift mode or track mode. To get peak launch times you need to be in Swift mode, with more than a half battery charge, & the system will do a bit of anticipatory pre-conditioning. 

Lucid, like Tesla, will provide periodic over-the-air updates that could extend to improving performance, efficiency, & range. 

The Air’s screen interfaces, which are quick & lag-free, feel a bit like they split the difference between Tesla minimalism & Mercedes-Benz’s Hyperscreen that essentially occupies the entire dash. Altogether they’re elegant, use crisp fonts with light lettering on a dark background, & position pertinent info up top. There’s a physical gear selector. You pull the shift lever down to engage drive, up to engage reverse, & press in for park, just like in a Mercedes-Benz. Functions like drive modes, charging, setting navigation destinations, & other in-depth settings that you might need only when parked sit farther down in the line of sight, in a Pilot Panel that retracts into the dash when you want.

The Air also has Dream Drive, Lucid’s limited hands-free driver-assist system, with functionality like Navigate on Autopilot in the works. It includes up to 32 sensors, with camera, radar, & ultrasonic sensors, as well as Lidar. At this point, it tells the driver to take charge after 15 seconds of hands-free driving, but it trains a camera on the driver & allows an extended period of hands-off drive as long as the driver stays focused. Details here are still being finalized.

Never mind this business of only dual motors & 1,111 hp. A tri-motor model that’s maybe a year out has CEO Peter Rawlinson giddy with anticipation. 

We can’t wait for more time in the Air. There was never any reason to doubt that Rawlinson & his team would come up with one of the quickest & most efficient EVs yet. That it’s such a strong entry as a luxury sedan & driver’s car caught me by surprise. For a company that has big plans & more models in the works, that’s a very good sign. 

Entices with the numbers & charms with the driving experience

On Friday, Oct. 1, Align Technology announced that its senior leadership team will be reporting its third quarter of 2021 financial results on Wednesday, Oct. 27, after the close of the markets. ALGN has outperformed earnings expectations on all four of its most recent earnings reports.

Hedge fund sentiment towards Align Technology changed recently. Heading into the third quarter of 2021, a total of 57 of the hedge funds held long positions in this stock, a change of 16% from one quarter earlier. There were a total of 41 hedge funds with a bullish position in ALGN a year ago. With the smart money's sentiment swirling, there exists an 'upper' tier of key hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes significantly or already accumulated large positions.

Align stock has increased nearly 107% year-over-year, with underlying support at the 120-day moving average capturing its pullback from its Sept. 23 all-time high of $737.45. The stock is off 1.5% at $652.41 today, but still boasts a 22% lead for the year.

For Q3 of 2020, Align Technology beat analysts’ estimates by a margin of $1.61, reporting an EPS of $2.25. For Q4 of 2020, Align's EPS increased to $2.61, beating expectations by a margin of $0.47. For Q1 of 2021, ALGN posted a decrease in earnings, dropping to $2.49 per share. The medical device company still beat estimates by a margin of $0.47. For Q2 of 2021, Align Technology reported an EPS of $3.04 and beat expectations by a margin of $0.51. Analysts have ALGN's EPS coming in at $2.60 for the upcoming earnings report.

Align stock's estimated forward price-earnings indicates an expected increase in earnings, which is in line with the medical device company’s growth over the past year. Since fiscal 2017, Align Technology's revenues have increased 136% and its net income is up 202%. Overall, Align Technology’s strong growth rate has served as a catalyst to push its valuation up so high. 

Align Technology › ALGN › is a global medical device company and manufacturer of clear aligners used in orthodontics. ALGN manufactures the aligners in Juarez, Mexico & its scanners in Israel & China. Align designs, manufactures, & offers its Invisalign system of clear aligners, iTero intraoral scanners & services, & exocad CAD/CAM software. ALGN has also helped dentists treat approximately 10.9 million patients with their Invisalign system.

ALGN has outperformed the market in the last year with a return of ↑ 109.8%, while the SPY ETF gained ↑ 31.3%. In the last 3 month period, ALGN beat the market returning ↑ 9.6%, while SPY returned ↑ 1.1%. However, in the most recent 2 weeks ALGN has underperformed the stock market by returning -5.5%, while SPY returned -3.5%.

Hedge fund sentiment towards Align Technology changed recently.

Align Technology Beats Earnings Estimates

Lucid Group › LCID › drove its first customer-quality Lucid Air electric sedans off the assembly line on 28-Sep at its AMP-1 factory in Arizona. The company expects customer deliveries for the most expensive Dream edition to begin in late October & ramp up thereafter.

Lucid is launching its brand & already beating the top numbers from Tesla & any others.

Investors in electric vehicle company Lucid Motors have been waiting for this moment for a number of years. On 28-Sep the company announced that the first customer-quality Lucid Air sedan rolled off the production line at its facility in Arizona. With deliveries only a few weeks away, it is now time for the company to deliver on growth prospects that have been years in the making.

When the company first announced the planned construction of its Casa Grande factory, the hope was that cars would be coming off the line in early 2019. Financial problems led to some delays, & the pandemic certainly did not help. Earlier this year, there were hopes that deliveries would start in Q3, but that timeline eventually was pushed back.

The Air Sedan starts at $77,400 before EV incentives, & maximum range versions can go over 500 miles on a charge, easily beating the Tesla Model S. The Dream Edition variant will start at a whopping $169,000, but due to strong demand, Lucid has upped its production run to 520 vehicles. On Tuesday, the company also revealed that it now has over 13,000 reservations for the Air, up from more than 11,000 just two months earlier. Lucid will also have an SUV coming in 2023 as it looks to increase its presence in the EV space.

Lucid rolls first EV off assembly line & begin deliveries in late October

Blackstone Secured Lending Fund › BXSL › a business development company externally managed by Blackstone Credit BDC Advisors LLC, today filed a registration statement with the Securities & Exchange Commission › the SEC › relating to a proposed initial public offering of its common shares.

BofA Securities, Inc., Citigroup Global Markets Inc., Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC & Wells Fargo Securities, LLC are acting as joint book-running managers for the offering.

Blackstone Secured Lending Fund › BXSL › is a specialty finance company that invests primarily in the debt of private U.S. companies that focuses primarily on making originated senior secured, floating rate loans to private U.S. companies, specifically small & middle market companies.

BXSL is externally managed by Blackstone Credit BDC Advisors LLC, an investment adviser within Blackstone Credit.

Blackstone hired two Wall Street veterans as partners & promoted another executive to work in its Blackstone Credit unit as fresh demand from institutional & retail investors made it the private equity firm's fastest-growing segment. 

In Las Vegas, skill combined with luck is the best way to come out ahead. That’s how private equity firm Blackstone hit the jackpot with a $5.7 billion deal to sell the Cosmopolitan casino. It caught a break when it bought the business seven years ago & is applying its know-how with some slick shuffling.

A day after it unveiled plans to operate The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, MGM Resorts International said it closed a sale-leaseback of two other towering hotels on the Strip — Aria, Vdara with the Cosmo’s seller, Blackstone, no less.

Blackstone Inc. › BX › together with its subsidiaries, is one of the world's leading investment firms with approximately $684 billion in assets, including its credit, real-estate & hedge fund businesses under management as of June 30, 2021.

Blackstone Secured Lending Fund is expected to list its common shares on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol › BXSL

Blackstone Secured Lending Fund Files Registration Statement for IPO

The number of bullish hedge fund bets rose by 8 lately. Align Technology › ALGN › was in 57 hedge funds' portfolios at the end of the second quarter of 2021. The bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. In the financial world there are a lot of methods stock traders employ to size up stocks. A duo of the most innovative methods are hedge fund & insider trading interest. Historically, those who follow the best picks of the best money managers can trounce their index-focused peers by a significant amount. 

Heading into the third quarter of 2021, a total of 57 of the hedge funds held long positions in this stock, a change of 16% from one quarter earlier. There were a total of 41 hedge funds with a bullish position in ALGN a year ago. With the smart money's sentiment swirling, there exists an "upper tier" of key hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes significantly or already accumulated large positions.

Gabriel Plotkin's Melvin Capital Management has the most valuable position in Align Technology › ALGN › worth close to $386.2 million, amounting to 2.2% of its total 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Brian Bares of Bares Capital Management, with a $378.8 million position; 6.7% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Some other members of the smart money that hold long positions comprise Ken Fisher's Fisher Asset Management, Andreas Halvorsen's Viking Global & Gabriel Plotkin's Melvin Capital Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Bares Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Align Technology, around 6.74% of its 13F portfolio. Iron Triangle Partners is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 4.09 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ALGN.

As aggregate interest increased, some big names have jumped into Align Technology headfirst. Melvin Capital Management, managed by Gabriel Plotkin, created the biggest call position in Align Technology. Melvin Capital Management had $213.9 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Benjamin A. Smith's Laurion Capital Management also made a $43.6 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new ALGN investors: Leon Shaulov's Maplelane Capital, Larry Chen and Terry Zhang's Tairen Capital, and Andrew Dalrymple and Barry McCorkell's Aubrey Capital Management.

Overall hedge fund sentiment score for ALGN is 90. Stocks with higher number of hedge fund positions relative to other stocks as well as relative to their historical range receive a higher sentiment score. 

ALGN has outperformed the market in the last year with a return of +109.8%, while the SPY ETF gained +31.3%. In the last 3 month period, ALGN beat the market returning +9.6%, while SPY returned +1.1%. However, in the most recent 2 weeks ALGN has underperformed the stock market by returning -5.5%, while SPY returned -3.5%.

Hedge Funds Bullish On Align Technology Is At Its All Time High

Ray-Ban Stories are the first product to come out of a multi-year partnership between Facebook & EssilorLuxottica. Facebook › $FB › is working on a long-term project — an augmented reality metaverse. The seriousness of its ambitions is reflected in its headcount. Nearly 10,000 people are working in its group developing augmented & virtual reality devices, or nearly one-fifth of Facebook’s total global workforce. Facebook took the first step on this road in 2014 with the acquisition of VR headset maker Oculus, & they are three generations into commercial versions of that. The latest is the Oculus Quest 2, the first mass market VR headset that did not have to be tethered to another device like a PC or gaming console.

VR remains a niche product for gaming, & besides the price, there are other barriers to adoption even in gaming. But that is not Facebook’s endgame. Their endgame is something that Apple › $AAPL › is also working on — a pair of AR glasses, as light & fashionable as Ray-Ban Wayfarers › OTCPK › $ESLOF › that will replace the touchscreen smartphone as people’s main device by the end of the decade.

Facebook is coming at this project from three directions

The Oculus headset, which is big and bulky, & is about as powerful as a top end Android smartphone. The new Facebook/Ray-Ban Stories glasses. These are much more light & fashionable, but have few features, & are a smartphone accessory. On the software side, Facebook has begun previewing their version of the metaverse, first for CBS This Morning in August. The end goal is a device that brings that all together, dispensing with the compromises of the two current devices, creating a new experience, and the first entirely new user interface since the graphical user interface was invented in the 1970s.

VR, or virtual reality, is a system that feeds the user an entirely computer-generated environment via a headset and usually a glove or other handset for control. Everything the user sees and hears is computer-generated. The best current example is Facebook's Oculus Quest 2 headset.

AR, or augmented reality, mixes computer-generated elements with the real world. This can be a heads-up display, or computer-generated objects that are situated in a real world environment and move with it. The example that many will be familiar with is Pokemon Go.

You will also hear of “mixed reality” or, tortuously, “augmented virtuality,” but they are offshoots of these two main categories.

You can think of the metaverse as a massively multiplayer game, except it includes all social activities: meetings, conferences, education, live events, and of course gaming. As such it subsumes gaming, webcasts, video meetings, distance learning, & just about any activity where two or more people are together virtually.

These “smart glasses” are a pricey smartphone accessory, but it is best to think of them as a transitional device. They have camera, speakers and microphone, along with a touch interface on one of the arms for limited control. More control comes via Facebook Assistant voice control, which will be a key part of the eventual interface. Facebook’s aim here is too get people used to the idea of wearing a computer on their faces, & learn about use-cases.

The glasses are primarily Ray-Ban branded. I think this is a recognition of two hurdles here for Facebook.

For a device worn on the face, fashion is crucial, & Ray-Ban is the fashion brand. Facebook has lost a lot of trust regrading privacy, & that is one of the key hurdles to adoption. On the user end of privacy, Facebook is taking a relatively hands-off stance. You need a Facebook account to use them, but it collects a fraction of the data that the Facebook app does, & the data it does collect by default is entirely related to operation of the device. Users can choose to send more data, but again it is not the usual Facebook highly invasive stuff; it is more general data about how customers are using the device. This is a transitional device that is more about Facebook learning about how users want to use a face computer.

Trickier than user privacy is the privacy of everyone around the user. The Facebook page on Stories privacy highlights the challenge:

Are there going to be some ugly headlines coming out of this? Yes there will. Relying on users for 100% compliance is a losing bet. But Facebook has seen years of ugly headlines, including a week of relentlessly promoted “Facebook Files” articles in the Wall Street Journal just recently. They have very thick skins at this point, and they have a very big fish to fry here — the future of computing.

Facebook imagines this will be a much broader thing than just meetings, think free-to-use courses online that teach everything from language to technology, an open-source project needs a contributors, a community charity that needs a volunteer fundraiser, a co-worker who needs coaching on a new presentation, a story that needs to be told. Facebook, the service we now know, will be entirely subsumed by the metaverse.

Facebook realizes that there are a lot of scary dystopian elements to this, and in combination with all that lost trust, this can derail the whole thing. They have recently allocated $50 million to research ways in which to alleviate these issues. Facebook is working with experts in government, industry & academia to think through issues and opportunities in the metaverse.

Here are a few key areas where we’ll work with others to anticipate the risks and get it right:

Economic opportunity: how we can give people more choice, encourage competition and maintain a thriving digital economy

Privacy: how we can minimize the amount of data that’s used, build technology to enable privacy-protective data uses & give people transparency and control over their data

Safety and integrity: how we can keep people safe online & give them tools to take action or get help if they see something they’re not comfortable with

Equity & inclusion: how we can make sure these technologies are designed inclusively and in a way that’s accessible

—Andrew Bosworth, VP, Facebook Reality Labs and Nick Clegg, VP, Global Affairs, September 27, 2021

Facebook and Apple are the two primary companies working on this in my mind. There are others playing in this space for sure, but those two companies have the clearest idea of what the end product looks like, something we will not see in stores for years.

The device is a pair of AR glasses that many believe will eventually replace the touchscreen smartphone as people’s main device.

Each computing platform becomes more ubiquitously accessible and natural for us to interact with. While I expect phones to still be our primary devices through most of this decade, at some point in the 2020s, we will get breakthrough augmented reality glasses that will redefine our relationship with technology...

Even though some of the early devices seem clunky, I think these will be the most human & social technology platforms anyone has built yet.—Mark Zuckerberg, January 9, 2020

The big idea here is that we spend all this time looking at two-dimensional screens as a representation of reality, which dissociates us from the world around us. AR combines the real world with computer-generated elements & brings the virtual world of our phones & the real world together.

This is not just a new device, but a new human interface, the first invented since the graphical user interface was invented in the late 1970s. Multitouch replaced the mouse with a finger, but the 2D representation of a desktop has remained. A key part of the new interface will be using voice control to replace the mouse or finger.

In augmented reality, you're going to really need a pair of glasses that look like normal looking glasses in order for that to hit a mainstream acceptance. & that, I think, is going to be one of the hardest technical challenges of the decade. It's basically fitting a supercomputer in the frame of glasses.—Mark Zuckerberg, April 28, 2021

On the hardware side, Facebook is now coming at it from two directions. The Oculus Quest 2 is a standalone device built around Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform, as most Android smartphones are. It has limited AR features, more geared towards letting developers play around with it. It’s successor, which we should see within a few months, will have more AR features, now for end users.

The Quest 2 weighs about a pound, & any vigorous use will make your face sweat because of the light seal. They look awkward, & cannot be used for long periods. It is primarily a niche product for gaming.

The other direction is the Ray-Ban Stories glasses, with far less hardware & features. They look very much like a regular pair of classic Wayfarers, except with camera hardware where the hinge rivets usually go. The strategy here is twofold. In the first place, Facebook loves data, & as I alluded to, the important data they are getting off these devices is not personal — it is usage data. They want to learn how people use these devices so they can tailor future development around that. The Quest has an installed base of about two million. This is a relatively small user base, but a very large test group.

Secondly, they want to meet in the middle, dispensing with the problems with both devices. The product they envision will look like Ray-Ban Stories, and also be a far more featured version of the Quest — less a niche VR device and more geared towards being an all day device that displaces the touchscreen smartphone sometime towards the end of the decade.

This is more or less where Facebook & Apple split in their approach. Facebook’s ambitions here are even broader than Apple’s because they are also building a metaverse. Apple is looking to transition the iPhone experience to a new device & interface. This will involve a lot of metaverse-like features, such as the soon-to-be-released SharePlay shared-experience interface. But they are not working on a full-blown virtual world like Facebook and others.

A study shows existential crisis becomes popular among the cultural elite. Lucky ₃₃ assures you this will be an ongoing struggle & the fear of running into difficulties is decisive. A recount of a good heist that came away with 34.541,10 Euros has the OWENSCORP partygoers on the edge of their seats.

I have great hostility towards the specialization of Rick Owens & Michele Lamy & Luca Ruggeri which procures diluted meanderings that assign a social importance to the quality of being defined by circumstantial exhibitionism. It would just be another way of specialists to make more money & publicity for themselves by means of subjugation & institutionalization of unhealthy partnerships & making room for others. By any observation, it is evident. 

The best tool for understanding corporate sentiment is the human mind. The following article can help everyone & their mother conduct OWENSCORP sentiment analysis—but it’s up to the them to synthesize the information they find.

Later, after maximum solemnity, a candle is lit & instructions are doled out for completing mundane crafting projects at the Rick Owens atelier. More promotional clips are doled out. 'A Pack of Cigarettes with a Gypsy & Dick Owens in It' & 'Michele Lamy Comes to Life & Bums a Smoke' weave in & out of the art world arbitrarily while being informed by menial gossip accompanied by dubiously loose analytic associations & phraseological archetypes by underage feed followers.

An active day in the studio would find Michele Lamy & Rick Owens repositioning the furniture. Inspiration dips & their efforts go into arranging shoe boxes into ziggurats. Predictably the designer needs therapy. Rick Owens' depression is manifest in public displays of ‘private creativity’ — he likes to ‘pee on himself — I-D Magazine, May, 2002. Issue 220, The Spectator Issue. Rick Owens always finds himself coaxed into immodest exhibitionism for maudlin trinkets of ‘authenticity.’ May this be some feedback worthy of being chosen to form a critical evaluation of the inertia of relative prominence of Rick Owens.

This is said with the caveat that — in the future — all of these public forces will be irrelevant — & that which is written will be a record — not a force. For this — it can be said that Lucky ₃₃ will try to think at the level both required & repulsed by their insane selfishness & crimes in a world in which a public intellectual with uncompromising severity had been obviously suffering. 

He gives himself a lot of work to do & asserts that this disaster-oriented short story has to do with ignominy — the criterion — now inflamed. Forced into exile, he found a way to love displacement & to find philosophic comfort in the vertigo of the open possibilities of OWENSCORP & in the way it stimulates novel comparisons to his situation, thus to some extent it is scornful. Rick Owens partygoers are not out to recognize facts & OWENSCORP doesn't approach the beauty of Cruvoir’s shipwrecked situation in a way that is sensible. In the meantime may we all consider more cliché reactions to the OWENSCORP production to receive attention only by superficial novelty. In the meantime Lucky ₃₃ is working fiendishly on this anthology. It starts with a big dick & balls — debate & controversy.

A vocational martyr uses the words of one of his personae ... a well modulated voice, with a bottom-heavy tone recalling an ability to sound sane about insane circumstances & an insane company refusing to refund a minute amount relative to their revenue, because moral weight underlies his bottom-heaviness & his first concern is to remain calm & reasonable before the fear of running into difficulties for OWENSCORP is critical & a spectacle not to be dispensed with. CRUVOIR demands a refund for the deposit of 34.541,10 Euros paid to OWENSCORP for the production that CRUVOIR never received, before overlaid sensory information inevitably makes up some portion of Lucky's mind about what he should do with a set of shibboleth & his big cock that goes whipping through @rickowensonline & LA & NY & Paris & points beyond ... anywhere there is space. It has to be so & it always will be so, under Lucky's astute management, which is essentially what this disaster-oriented short story is all about, read in the very first verse. A specific use case.

May this be some feedback worthy of being chosen to form a critical evaluation of the inertia of relative prominence of Rick Owens & Michele Lamy & Luca Ruggeri & OWENSCORP

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