Dez Reads. You Can’t Pay Escrow in Vibes.

This week, we’re talking about four things Americans take seriously: branding, Bay Area real estate, email etiquette, and blondes.

Our very own Anne Marie Malecha kicks us off with a story about a publication name change rollout that quite literally went rolling down K street before legal approval. Nothing says “launch strategy” like rolling a mobile billboard past the White House for a brand a federal judge has just put in time‑out. 

Meanwhile, Sam Jefferies tells us in San Franciso, Anthropic stock has become the chicest new currency in real estate — at least until someone remembers escrow companies accept wires, not Series F fantasies.

William Kim gives us a dose of U.S.A pride for the home turf World Cup while pardoning the coach for sending bad news via email. And Madeline Nagler brings us back in time with a different sense of American pride to wish the blonde icon, Marilyn Monroe, a happy centennial birthday.

Thanks, as always, for reading along with us.

Here we go.

What’s in a Name?

Washington Post. Judge blocks NOTUS from renaming itself the Star after trademark complaint.

A federal judge this week blocked NOTUS (News of the United States), the political news outlet backed by Politico co-founder Robert Allbritton, from rebranding as The Star. The court sided with the recently revived Washington Star, which holds the trademark and is publishing under it.

NOTUS struggled to gain widespread name recognition beyond the beltway, so a rebrand makes sense. Outside of D.C., politico vernacular like SCOTUS, POTUS, FLOTUS, feels a bit like trying to make fetch happen. 

To NOTUS’s credit, they tried to buy the mark earlier this spring, but walked away when talks stalled, and moved ahead with the rollout anyway. And rollout, they did.

Trademark fights aren’t usually that interesting, but this one caught my attention… literally. Last week I saw a mobile billboard rolling through downtown D.C., two blocks from the White House, announcing The Star was coming soon.

I love a bold marketing campaign, as much, if not more than most, but sequencing matters. You lock the name, then you put it in lights.

– Anne Marie Malecha

Bay Area Opulence is about to IPO.

Wired. What’s Worth More Than Cash in San Francisco Real Estate? Anthropic Stock.

For a while there, it felt like the stories of San Francisco madness had ended. Gone were the days of opulence, replaced by tales of the “doomloop” and life in a post-tech boom world. This felt satisfying for many.

HBO’s Silicon Valley rose up as the satire sticks to beating the tech industry. It was funny because it was well written, well cast, and most of all, mostly true. But as the Covid pandemic drove remote workers out of Bay Area and San Francisco struggled with a downtown suddenly emptied of workers, some of the glee went out of punching.

The rise of OpenAI, Anthropic, and others seems to have changed that. This week’s WIRED piece felt like a return to the good old, bad old days of Bay Area opulence, and the pillorying that came with it.

Is it true? Can you really swap stock for a home in Palo Alto? The short answer is: not really. As one real estate agent stated this week, “escrow companies are not able to deal in securities, especially in ones that aren’t publicly traded.”

Still, it made for great copy. And even if that’s not worth as much as Anthropic Stock, or Merin County real estate, it’s valuable to the rest of us.

– Sam Jefferies

Ctrl+Alt+Cut (from the team.)

The Guardian. Missing a World Cup, over email? Pochettino defends communication style with tough decisions behind him.

The World Cup is less than 10 days away, and we should all be excited about hosting arguably the most important sporting event in the world. But it seems like the media is unfortunately more focused on throwing shade at the US Men’s National Team than supporting them.

During a recent press conference announcing his final team selection, head coach Mauricio Pochettino was grilled for apparently sending his rejection messages to unselected players via email. The usual way has been to always call the players to inform them about the outcome.

Pochettino didn’t help himself in this controversy, calling all the chatter about this “bullshit.” But aside from his profanity, I have to agree. Some national teams around the world don’t even notify players who don’t make the cut. Heck, even normal people like us don’t even get rejection emails from the jobs we apply to.

All this drama about the coach’s communication style is distracting us from what’s really important: a World Cup on U.S. soil, with one of the most talented American squads ever assembled. Pochettino’s job is to pick the best possible team, not to be an emotional support coach. Now it’s time for us to do ours: get loud and show the world what we are made of. USA! USA! USA!

– William Kim

Hollywood’s Permanent Blonde.

CBS News. Marilyn Monroe at 100.

Some women refuse to die. Cleopatra before her, Princess Diana after, and Marilyn Monroe, who turned 100 this year, immortal not despite her era but because she was so wildly out of step with it. She was a woman ahead of her time: inclusive, liberal, a forward thinker who invented the very look the world still imitates: the platinum glamour, the iconic blonde, all of it hers.

Her greatest role was the dumb one. She was an actress and comedienne so gifted, so committed, that the world still mistakes the character for the woman. She wasn’t, of course. Marilyn was a voracious reader, an advocate for women’s safety in Hollywood, one of the first women to found her own production company. A sex symbol who quietly suffered endometriosis. An ally who lifted the voices of Black artists. A publicity genius who understood fame before anyone gave women credit for understanding anything.

She has been my idol since I was six, lugging my Some Like It Hot DVD to playdates while my friends looked on, baffled. Twenty biographies later, her own My Story among them, I finally understand the pull. We share reproductive struggles, mental health battles, an outspokenness, and the same dissonance between who we are and who people assume us to be. I even ended up with a cat named Marilyn, a stray who came in already bearing the name, spotted by my grandmother volunteering at the ASPCA, who knew it was a sign.

She made up for a lack of power with an abundance of influence, cunning, and perspective. On her centennial, let her remind every woman what we can accomplish against the patriarchy without surrendering our femininity.

– Madeline Nagler