👋 May you be equally as full of hearty holiday favorites and festive sweet treats as 2024 was full of abject chaos. To its credit, it never pretended like it wouldn’t exhaust us? The year kicked off with that Boeing 737 Max 9 shedding an emergency exit door mid-flight, after all.
Best dumpster fire of the year goes to Willy’s Chocolate Experience, an unlicensed event in Glasgow, Scotland, that promised — via misspelled AI-generated ads — a world of pure imagination and instead delivered a laughably lackluster experience with a nonsensical script that frightened children. The viral scandal led to several choice memes and was a boon for actress Kirsty Paterson, who revised her role of Sad Oompa Loompa in an LA parody of the debacle. Event creator Billy Coull was later found guilty of abusive behavior after repeatedly sexually harassing a woman via text. He blamed his behavior, in part, on the media attention surrounding his event.
It was an odd year for animals: Thirteen wild sharks off the coast of Rio de Janeiro tested positive for cocaine, a pigeon spent eight months detained by Indian officials before it was cleared of being a Chinese spy, and Chicagoans made a spectacle out of a hole shaped like a rat. But no animal story was stranger than Charlotte, a stingray at the Aquarium & Shark Lab by Team ECCO in North Carolina, who became a media sensation when it was announced she’d become pregnant despite no access to male stingrays. Charlotte even boosted local tourism — until it was revealed she was never pregnant, but had a “rare reproductive disease.” Charlotte died in May.
Kenza Layli won the first AI beauty pageant. The completely AI-generated Moroccan influencer bested nine other bots in a contest held by Fanvue, a platform for human and AI creators. Her creator, Myriam Bessa, won $5k, platform support, and a publicist for Layli. Some have expressed concern that AI beauty pageants, like human beauty pageants, simply reinforce unrealistic beauty standards, but AI influencers aren’t new — and 46% of Gen Zers said they’d be more interested in a brand that worked with them.
What else?
A TikToker learned that the croissant lamp she got from Temu was made from a real, resin-covered pastry when ants swarmed it. She tasted it for proof, yet is somehow still alive and well.
Speaking of TikTok, one 2024 trend involved “raw dogging” plane rides. That entailed sitting in silence — no entertainment, snacks, or naps — during entire flights. Very demure, very mindful, very boring.
A video “portal” connecting NYC to Dublin drew 500m+ people over five days who came to interact with strangers across the pond. Then it got shut down due to inappropriate behavior, including a US OnlyFans model who flashed her breasts. Guess who also showed up when the portal moved from NYC to Philly? She’s consistent, at least.
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How much VC funding AI-related startups received in 2024, as of November. Not only was AI the year’s highest-funded sector, it accounted for 33% of all investments, compared to 28% in 2023 and just 13% in 2022, the year OpenAI’s ChatGPT debuted.
Over 40 AI startups reached deals of $100m+ and six raised $1B+ — including OpenAI and Elon Musk’s xAI, which both raised $6B+.
The high spending indicates AI companies and the investors who back them are not slowing down, and we expect the buzziest thing in tech in 2024 to continue to dominate headlines in 2025.
NOTEWORTHY NEWSMAKERS
The newsmakers who couldn’t stay out of this year’s headlines even if they tried
Some people — and machines — had a very busy year:
Robots: We fear we’ve reached the inflection point where bots are lumped in with humans in a roundup list. Whether living on a computer, reaching with a singular mechanical arm, or walking around in a humanoid body — the bots have grown smarter, more capable, and are popping up basically everywhere. They are giving massages at luxury hotels, waiting tables, assembling meals, working in factories — and, apparently, making friends with Kim Kardashian? It’s been a weird year.
Baseball players: You know who had a really good 2024? Professional athletes. Especially our friends over on the baseball field. Juan Soto managed to beat out Shohei Ohtani’s 10-year, $700m contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Soto landed a 15-year, $765m contract with the New York Mets, setting a new record in sports history. Sure, us regular folk can’t even imagine making that kind of pay, but surely we could take home a souvenir from one of these greats? Think again: Ohtani’s 50th home run baseball sold at auction for a record-breaking $4.39m.
Elon Musk: If you rolled your eyes at the sight of his name yet again, that’s kind of proof he belongs on this list. Musk, who is busy with X, SpaceX, and Tesla, also had quite a litigious year. He’s sued OpenAI — multiple times, most recently to stop it from becoming a for-profit — and his social media company, X, has sued California over an AI law targeting deepfakes and advertisers over a massive boycott. And another one of the world’s richest men, Bernard Arnault, is suing X for allegedly running his publications’ content without payment. Plus, a Delaware court just reaffirmed its ruling that Tesla must revoke Musk’s ~$56B pay package from 2018.
Looking ahead at 2025, we can expect to see more of these folks:
Astronauts: There’s a lot going on in outer space, and brave travelers will have a growing number of reasons to venture out of this planet. From inflatable space stations and extraterrestrial business parks to antigravity drug development and interstellar veggie farms, we’ll need to keep our eyes on the sky in 2025.
Billionaires building utopias: Didn’t think this would become so common, but it has. Neom, California Forever, Snailbrook, and Telosa — projects headed by billionaires like Elon Musk and Marc Lore, as well as Saudi Arabia’s crown prince — have not yet materialized. Let’s see if they’ll be up and running sometime next year.
Digital twins: In 2025 you might see more of… yourself? Digital twins — an AI avatar that represents you in a virtual environment — might start sitting in on our meetings or even saving your life with groundbreaking medical treatments.
SHOWER THOUGHT
Despite being red and green, watermelons are never associated with Christmas.SOURCE
Today’s email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Sara Friedman. Editing by: Ben “A penny for year thoughts” Berkley.
