Bitcoin News Australia

To understand all the creatures in Pandora, the fictional world of Avatar: The Way of Water, you need a glossary. There are titanotheres, hexapedes, direhorses, and more.

But as far as the movie industry is concerned, according to the Los Angeles Times, the only question regarding animals and Avatar that matters is simple: Will The Way of Water be a tortoise or a hare?

Most blockbusters are hares

They open with huge box offices and fade.

Marvel’s blockbusters average a box office drop of ~57% between the first and second weekends. Spider-Man: No Way Home, which had the highest-grossing debut weekend in history, plummeted 68% its second weekend.

Director James Cameron has typically been an exception to this rule:

• Titanic opened with ~$53m and followed with $71m.
• Avatar opened with $77m and followed with $75.6m.

The Way of Water brought in $434.5m globally last weekend

According to EntTelligence, an analytics platform, the timing of the film’s gross potentially sets it up for tortoise status:

• 53% of The Way of Water’s box office haul came from its preview night and opening day. EntTelligence claims that any share lower than 70% — the average for superhero flicks — portends a greater chance for sustained success.

The stakes are high. Americans didn’t flock to theaters over Thanksgiving, typically a major box office weekend, and theater owners badly need a hit. Plus, Cameron has said The Way of Water must make $2B+ to turn a profit.

BTW: If you see Avatar and feel sad afterwards, don’t freak out. You might just have post-Avatar depression.

“Please don’t scroll past this one-minute read.”

If you go to Wikipedia this month, you may be served a mildly urgent-sounding appeal for money that begins something like that.

With 16B monthly visits, most people scroll past these notes without blinking twice. Yet, interestingly, their wording was recently the subject of intense debate among Wikipedia’s volunteer contributors.

Many felt the message’s original language, which supposedly gave off the impression that Wikipedia was on the verge of utter financial doom, was unethical given the reality of Wikipedia’s strong financial situation, per Slate.

• The messages are crafted by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, which, in the fiscal year 2022 alone, has raised $165.2m across ~13m+ donations.
• Between 2004 and 2020, the assets on its balance sheet grew from $57k to $180m.

In the end, the foundation and contributors were able to find common ground. In part, one of the notes now reads, “If you can comfortably afford it this year, please join the readers who donate.”

“You’ve been a drunken sailor the last two years,” ProfitWell founder Patrick Campbell tweeted in November. “We all have.”

In a bull market, almost everyone eats — but with B2B SaaS industry revenue slowing like it’s ‘08, many companies are preparing for a recession.

In a recent article, we broke down Patrick’s playbook for trimming a budding business during tough times. He points to minimizing fixable churn and upselling existing customers.

If we’re speaking your language, you should join Trends, where thousands of certified builders share big wins and best practices.

There’s also a weekly newsletter to keep you sharp on everything startup.

As kids, we filled our fountain cups with flavors to create overly sugary, kinda gross Frankenstein sodas. Coca-Cola evolved that technique in 2009 with its Freestyle machines.

These babies not only dispense 100+ flavors, but also send crucial data back to Coke, per Food Dive.

Freestyle machines…

… were designed by Italian car designer Pininfarina, and use the same microdispensing tech used to deliver drug dosages.

There are 50k+ Freestyles in use across restaurants, movie theaters, stores, and amusement parks, pouring 11m+ drinks daily.

Using the machine’s touchscreen or an app, customers select a base drink (e.g., Sprite, Coke, Barq’s). Then, they can add other flavors, such as vanilla, orange, or raspberry. Some machines even offer exclusive blends, like SeaWorld Orlando’s “South Pole Chill.”

For customers — and the businesses that hope to attract them — the ability to experiment is the draw.

For Coke…

… it’s the data it receives, including what, where, and when each drink was poured.

Coke uses that data to influence its R&D and distribution.

For example, if a flavor combo is particularly popular — like Sprite Cherry or Coke with Orange Vanilla — Coke might offer it in bottles or cans so its fans can drink it at home or work.

Unsurprisingly, PepsiCo released a competing machine, the Pepsi Spire, in 2014.

BTW: In 2018, Serious Eats tried 127 flavors, finding some surprisingly good and others repulsive.

🍏 On this day: In 1996, Apple announced it would buy NeXT, the computer company Steve Jobs founded after Apple fired him in 1985. Jobs also returned as an advisor to CEO Gil Amelio.

🤖 That’s interesting: A fascinating essay on what it’s like pretending to be a bot pretending to be a person.

📚 Useful: A searchable digital library of media history.

✏️ From our blog: 90% of startups fail, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. The Hustle blog did a deep dive on business failure so you can learn what not to do.

🐷 Aww: And now, a little pig gets a bath.