Crypto News: Welcome to Pity City, may I take your bonus?

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"Stealth wealth" is all the rage.
The "war on woke" is getting petty.
"Sustainable aviation" is a hoax.
The chip challenge is "unprecedented."

When you hear the word "economic indicator," chances are your mind jumps to GDP or CPI. But there are plenty of other ways to spot a recession: Lipstick. Diaper rashes. Strippers, even.

One of my favorite indicators is food. A TikTok I watched the other day plots the economy purely through gastronomic trend waves. Let me walk you through it: Back in 2021, everyone and their mother was making charcuterie boards with triple-cream brie and cave-aged cheddar. The cheese cost a fortune, but there was stimulus money in the bank. In 2022, things turned a little bit sketchy with the butter board. "We have now stepped down from a $40 situation to a solid $4 situation with some accoutrements. It's not quite giving poverty, but it was definitely poverty-adjacent," the TikToker @prettyrabid notes. But in 2023 things have clearly gone further downhill: There's cottage cheese ice cream. Tinned fish. We even have designer ice cubes, which, for the uninitiated, look like this:

Photographer: Julia Gartland for The New York Times. Stylist: Lauren LaPenna

So we literally went from cheese, to butter to frozen water in less than two years. Unless we start turning other elements into food trends like some sort of culinary Avatar — air? fire? earth??— this is the lowest society can go.

All around us, we are seeing similar downshifts. Take fashion, for instance. Just last year,"bright pink pantsuits were everywhere — flushing red-carpet celebs, TV news anchors and wedding guests alike," Andrea Felsted writes. Now? We're fawning over "well-cut basics, such as blazers, pencil skirts and tailored pants." It's not a coincidence that everyone wants to look like Shiv Roy and Gwyneth Paltrow:

Our obsession with "quiet luxury" benefits brands like Khaite, Loewe and The Row, all of which are known for extremely well-tailored and neutral closet staples. "In times of anxiety, everyone wants to look and feel like they have old money," Andrea writes.

In the workplace, too, the vibe has shifted. When pandemic fears subsided, offices tried to lure workers back with benefits like in-house massage therapists, fitness centers and free cold brew. But lately, companies have started to chip away at those offerings in the face of economic uncertainty. Google is now BYOS (Bring Your Own Stapler). Apple is cutting down on travel spending. One Indian startup went so far to dilute the soap in its bathrooms. But perhaps worst of all is the threat of not getting a bonus, which Sarah Green Carmichael says is "tone-deaf, especially considering that in the three-quarters of companies that dispense bonuses, the word 'bonus' describes not an unexpected windfall, but a core portion of employee compensation." If you haven't seen the viral video of MillerKnoll CEO Andi Owen tell her employees — all of whom are worried about their bonuses — "you can visit Pity City, but you can't live there," I suggest you watch it. All around us, patience is wearing thin. The designer ice cubes, the pantsuits, the watered-down soap — it's a cry for help. All we want is an expensive charcuterie plate — and if we can't get it, we'll stay in Pity City as long as we like.

The funny thing about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis threatening to erect a prison next to Disney is that there's already a jail *inside* the Magic Kingdom. Kim Gordon — co-founder of Sonic Youth — admitted that in the 70s, she had to spend a night in a Mickey Mouse slammer after some Disney cops caught her smoking a joint in the theme park. DeSantis's quip was likely an ineffective attempt at dad humor. How did he want to people to react? Ooooh, a big scary prison! Time to clutch my pearls and say goodbye to Donald Duck forever! No. Plenty of people would still go to Disney even if Cinderella Castle was converted into Alcatraz Island.

Beth Kowitt says DeSantis — who ironically got married at Disney himself — is "increasingly coming across as petty and vindictive," which provides the conglomerate with an opportunity to "rewrite the narrative on its corporate values and ethics." The theme park has little hope of capturing the 2024 hopeful's hardcore supporters in the wake of his "war on woke." So it's shifted gears. There's a Pride Nite in California's Disneyland next month. And in September, the Orlando park will play host to a massive LGBTQ+ workplace summit. By going all-in, CEO Bob Iger is projecting Disney's purported values and making a savvy business decision at the same time. "If you're going to wade into politics — by choice or by force — you better be prepared for the backlash and to stand your ground on whatever position you take," Beth writes. That's a lesson that Bud Light has learned the hard way. Read the whole thing.

With so many eco-friendly products out there — water bottles, puffer jackets, furniture, banana coffins — it's easy to forget that not everything has gone green yet. Take airplanes, for instance. For years, customers have been hankering for cleaner emissions. You'd think that by now, airline CEOs would have done something about it. But they literally can't: The Advertising Standards Authority recently declared that claims of "sustainable aviation" are false because there's simply "no initiatives or commercially viable technologies in operation within the aviation industry" that fit that bill. David Fickling says any promises that the sector has made to lower its carbon footprint should be taken with a grain of salt because there's simply not enough SAF — a jet kerosene substitute made from biomass and used cooking oil — to go around:

Predicting the future isn't always easy (unless you're Taylor Swift, of course). And for the global microchip industry, the stakes couldn't be higher. "The already complex cycle is getting trickier to predict," Anjani Trivedi writes, arguing that the industry should pay close attention to a number of blind spots. For instance, what if China — which currently buys over 25% of chipmaking gear — ends up making its own products to shut out Japan? Or how might demand shift if consumers cut back on tech gear? Given all the new variables, the answers to these questions are anything but certain.