| This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, an opulent sampling of Bloomberg Opinion's opinions. Sign up here. Before we figure out the economics of coiffure, let's talk about art. Look at the image below. Edward Hopper, right? It's not quite a fair question since the credit for the illustration is right there. But, several months ago, my friend and noted illustrator Edel Rodriguez did a Google search for works by the influential American painter — and this artificially generated image was the first one the search engine put in front of him. Rodriguez — whose autobiographical graphic novel Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey has been winning awards — was scandalized. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing — and someone just slightly familiar with Hopper's style could have concluded it was genuine. The broader issue is fraught because it's getting harder and harder even for experts to tell real from cybernetically-crafted. Parmy Olson examines the controversy in her latest column and, with Elaine He, produced a further test of your AIQ. Can you handle the truth? Some folks want simple things for the holidays: peace on earth, for example, or less airtime for Mariah Carey's perpetual Christmas carol (I've reconciled myself to coexistence). But if James Dyson and his eponymous vacuum-cleaner-making company want to hang on to an unexpected piece of market dominance, they may have to consider upping the popular Dyson Airwrap to $1,000. That's what Andrea Felsted proposes in her latest column: a move up the luxe ladder so that an unexpected kingpin of the beauty market can hold off encroaching rivals.  Introduced in 2018, the versatile drying, curling, hair-smoothing Airwrap (which does it all without huge amounts of heat) has been key to this success story. Andrea says the debut was opportune: "Soft curls had replaced super-straight locks, while pandemic lockdowns and the explosion of TikTok tutorials gave the Airwrap cult status. Earlier this year, Dyson said that haircare now accounted for 30% of its US business, and it saw this arm as its fastest-growing." In a recent survey of TikTok views, it dramatically outdistanced rivals like Revlon's Hair Dryer Brush and the Shark FlexStyle. Andrea, who is quick to point out when prices are going down (as in diamonds and watches), is advising a price upgrade: The company should combine luxe strategies with its vaunted proprietary technology to fend off the likes of SharkNinja Operating LLC (which Dyson is already suing for patent infringement). Luxury, she writes, "confers status on the owner, and generates feelings of pleasure and belonging." A lot more than price is involved, of course: Dyson stores have to be upgraded to provide a members-only atmosphere, for example. You don't want to buy an Airwrap at the Hoover counter. Could it work? I'm not the one to ask. With each passing day, I have less and less hair. But, during my last trip to New York, I did pay $29 for a hot dog in a bun at a restaurant of the Upper East Side of Manhattan. And, you know what, it tasted really good. My colleagues John Authers, Beth Kowitt, Niall Ferguson and Andreas Kluth have written assessments of the late Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's legendary No. 2, and Henry Kissinger, the controversial and influential American statesman, focusing on behind-the-scenes influence as well as unexpected contributions. Often, history takes a while before settling on the significance of a momentous life — in simplistic terms, on its greatness or its error. That is certainly the case with Kissinger. Adrian Wooldridge recently considered the legacy of Napoleon Bonaparte, which is again being debated as Ridley Scott's $200 million biopic is screened around the world. It won't be the last time we'll be considering the meaning of the Corsican: Stephen Spielberg is reportedly working on a project that will revive a script written by Stanley Kubrick as a seven-part series for HBO. Abel Gance's 1927 silent classic — which pioneered many cinematic techniques — had also been planned as the first of several films on his life. Men have an almost predictable way of approaching Napoleon's life: revolution, politics, military campaigns, grandeur. One of the more intriguing treatments is the 2021 biography by the British historian Ruth Scurr, Napoleon: A Life in Gardens and Shadows. She looks at his life through a horticultural prism, beginning with the plot of land at his military boarding school in which he grew flowers and vegetables, to the travails of the family's unsuccessful commercial olive grove to his quarrels with his wife, Josephine, over gardening philosophies (she liked the more natural English style; he preferred the formal French approach) to the plants he tended during his final exile in St. Helena. There's blood and guts in Scurr's telling, too — but the garden meme is always present. Napoleon's realization of the nature of revolution comes with the grotesque massacre of Louis XVI's Swiss guards in the Tuileries palace garden in 1792. And then there's the Battle of Waterloo, which was decided in bloody, hand-to-hand combat in the walled garden of Hougoumont in June 1815. In Candide, Voltaire said we must cultivate our own gardens. But sometimes it is the bloody gardener who is the problem. Napoleon imposed his superstructure on all he surveyed. And, as we survey the debris left by would-be conquerors and realpolitik arbiters of the world, we know how such visions can lead to Waterloo — be it in Europe, the Americas or some jungle trail in Southeast Asia. "For the first time in the history of UBS Group AG's annual study of billionaires, new billionaires accumulated more wealth through inheritance than entrepreneurship: Some $151 billion was inherited by 53 heirs in the year to April 6, versus the $141 billion in fortunes of 84 new self-made billionaires. … The main goals of second-generation billionaires are to enable their descendants to benefit from the same wealth — a priority of first-generation billionaires too — and to continue and grow what forebears had achieved." — Chris Hughes in "Billionaire Heirs Have a How-to-Spend-It Problem."  "To help gauge airline health, the industry has a slew of abbreviations. Among the most cited is revenue passenger kilometers (RPK) that multiplies the number of fare-paying commuters by the distance each person flew. … We need to track a different metric: return-to-normal. This metric tells us current seat availability as a percentage of the figure for the same period in 2019, before the pandemic. … Across Asia, airlines are running at an average of just 70% RTN for the year through September... This means that even if airlines were running at a 100% load factor — full capacity — they're still operating 30% lower than before the pandemic." — Tim Culpan in "Airlines Are Watching One Number, and Willing It to Rise." Chronicle of a COP28 foretold. — Lara Williams Cold war in bad climate. — Minxin Pei A Farfetch headache. — Andrea Felsted Remote work will transform Europe. — Rachel Sanderson Hard times for the shadow bankers. — Marcus Ashworth What's rotten may be good for you. — Howard Chua-Eoan The Pentagon needs a new military-industrial complex. — Adrian Wooldridge I'll leave it to Gearoid Reidy in Tokyo for a full analysis of the latest return of the king of the monsters. As a long-time fan, I just want to use this space to mark the theatrical debut of Godzilla Minus One, a remake of the 1954 original with its black-and-white meditation on nuclear catastrophe. (Yes, Godzilla will be 70 next year). There are almost 40 different movie iterations of Gojira — which is what the Japanese call him. Apple TV is now in on the action too. I wrote a Time magazine cover story in 1998 on Godzilla when Hollywood tried to transform him into a velociraptor-like kaiju (a version that skeptical Godzilla lovers refer to by the godless diminutive "Zilla"). Here's a photo from back then of me and the most famous Asian movie star (that is, until Bruce Lee and Michelle Yeoh came along). He's still the biggest (though his height changes from film to film).  The king and I, in 1998 Photograph by Mario Ruiz/Time magazine There's divergence between Japan's vision of its monstrous anti-hero and Hollywood's. But comparing them is part of the cross-cultural enjoyment. If you can't find me today, I'm off trying to find a screening — or watching a repeat of one of Gojira's classics. Thanks for sticking with me to the end. You are the salt of the earth.  "Of course you can't live on bread alone. Good butter is essential." Illustration by Howard Chua-Eoan/Bloomberg Notes: Please send oleaginous praise (but not margarine) and feedback to Howard Chua-Eoan at hchuaeoan@bloomberg.net. Sign up here and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook. | 
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