The Aussie line in K-Pop — idols who were born and/or raised in Australia — is flourishing. It’s a brutally competitive industry, so it’s exciting to see so many Aussies not just debuting but also achieving great success in the Korean music industry — and frequently, by extension, other global music markets like America and the UK and yes, sometimes even Australia! We need to celebrate them more, so here’s a start…

One recurring feature in this newsletter is that I occasionally introduce you to folks from my inventor portrait project. I’ve mostly been sharing them chronologically, but the truth is that I recently skipped a couple. They just didn’t have stories that were strong enough for their own newsletter. So today I’m going to tell you about the next inventor on the list, and then I will back-fill with two inventors that I skipped to bring us back on track.

The winner of the annual Grand prix de la baguette de tradition française de la Ville de Paris - aka the best baguette in Paris competition - has just been announced. Au Levain des Pyrénées boulangerie (44 rue des Pyrénées, 75020), led by baker Tharshan Selvarajah, has produced the winning baguette in 2023. For this accomplishment, the bakery wins a small cash prize, a contract to supply the Élysée palace (the president) for the coming year, and the sort of bragging rights that usually lead to lines out the door.

I am a big aficionado of memes, both for their humor and the fact they drive home a point succinctly and visually. I collect them and use them in my teaching at UNC as well as often in communications. In this edition of the newsletter, I’ve collected a number of memes about AI, some of which I created. While some (many?) are a little dark, I hope you enjoy them and share with others if you think they will enjoy as well.

If the films of 2023 create an overarching narrative, it might be one in which the tried and true became the tired and suspect, making room for the new and novel. But that doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny in a year in which the second-most financially successful film was The Super Mario Bros. Movie and even “disappointments” like The Little Mermaid (live-action remix edition) and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania made a lot of money.