Good morning! Whether you're hitting the slopes, scouring the sales, or indulging in a classic cherry pie, we hope you enjoy this Presidents' Day weekend. Today we’re exploring:
America’s pork industry is enduring some of its leanest months in modern history, with pork demand falling just as supply surges.
The fat’s been trimmed
Ironically, part of the problem is that the industry has become almost too efficient, with pork production up 25% over the past 20 years, per reporting from the WSJ. But there’s simply not enough people eating pork to keep up with the increased supply: consumption is estimated to have fallen 9% over the same time frame, leaving farmers with a surplus that's sent profits plummeting.
Indeed, according to estimates from Iowa State University, the average American farmer faced a loss of approximately $32 for every hog sold last year, in stark contrast with profits seen in the 2010s.
Chopped
Efforts to reinvigorate pork consumption have stumbled. Long-standing advertising campaigns rebranding pork as "the other white meat", aiming to capture some of the seemingly-endless appetite for chicken, haven’t worked in recent years. Pork’s higher price point, its tough texture when overcooked, and an increased awareness of the intelligence of pigs and pig farming practices, haven’t helped demand — particularly in younger consumers, who are eating less of the meat than previous generations.
Having seemingly lost the battle against chicken, the pork industry is seeing some of its problems as a marketing issue, which they're trying to resolve by pitching pork as an alternative to beef, with giants like Tyson Foods launching marinated “pork griller steaks”.
Related reading: China is facing a similar pork predicament.
Portal combat
OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, yesterday announced new generative video model Sora, capable of transforming short text descriptions into intricately detailed, high-definition clips — just weeks after Google unveiled Lumiere, a very similar text-to-video AI product of its own.
Sora, taken from the Japanese for "sky", will generate 60-second films of anything from snowy cityscapes to alpine dog-podcasters using short, snappy prompts. Like Lumiere, OpenAI's latest creation uses space-time diffusion tech, but combines it with the transformer network used to train GPT-4.
While the quality and length of Sora’s sample videos seemingly supersede that of Lumiere and other rivals, neither OpenAI nor Google have provided much information about launch dates or what a typical output might look like — but, at the current pace of advances in AI technology, it’s easy to imagine big strides on both sides pretty soon.
Video manipulation
From today, OpenAI is ‘red teaming’ Sora — assessing critical risk areas for susceptibility to misinformation, bias, and hateful, violent, or sexual content — prior to public release, opening access to a few researchers, visual artists, and video creators for testing.
As OpenAI grapples with its new product's potential for misuse, fears surrounding AI continue to spread: a recent report from the World Economic Forum found that 53% of respondents considered AI-generated misinformation and disinformation among the threats most likely to present a global material crisis in 2024, second only to extreme weather (66%). And, with 2024 set to be a record election year, AI’s ability to create hyper-realistic falsified footage may well open Pandora’s ballot box on a global scale.
Higher plane
Airbus flew further ahead of Boeing last year for commercial aircraft deliveries, reporting 735 plane shipments and receiving a record 2,094 net orders; its closest rival in the air space, on the other hand, delivered just 528 units, with the plane-maker still suffering from a string of incidents involving its flagship Max models — not least the recent mid-air cabin panel blow out in January.
To compound Boeing’s woes, Airbus also forecast 800 deliveries in 2024: almost certainly enough to see it retain the top manufacturer spot for the 6th consecutive year, after the fatal 737 Max crashes of 2018 and 2019 saw the Boeing jets grounded worldwide for 20 months and orders wane.
Turbulence
Even though the European aviation giant is extending its lead over its American counterpart, the skies haven’t been completely clear for Airbus either. Indeed, CEO Guillaume Faury described the company’s supply chain as a “world of bottlenecks”, suggesting that Airbus might struggle making headway on its mounting backlog of ~8,600 commercial aircraft orders for some time.
• Berkshire Hathaway trimmed its Apple investment last year, selling 10 million shares in the fourth quarter — but its remaining stake is still worth ~$174 billion.
• Greece has become the 1st Orthodox Christian nation and the 16th EU country to legalize same-sex marriage.
• When I Get Home: Sir Paul McCartney has been reunited with his bass guitar some 51 years after it was stolen from the back of a van.
• Nearly 1 in 5 Americans believes that Taylor Swift is part of a conspiracy to re-elect Joe Biden.
• Mickey picket: Around 1,700 employees in Disneyland’s characters and parades department are seeking to unionize.
• Land of the falsetto, home of the vibrato: The Pudding's latest project dissects National Anthem performances — and how "diva" each singer gets during their renditions.
Deep dive: YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson (AKA MrBeast) was hailed as the “most-watched person in the world” in a new TIME magazine cover story — learn more about the 25-year-old and his ever-expanding empire by revisiting the first ever Chartr Sunday send here.
