👋 Hello curious people,
Here are this week’s headlines:
Pleasure isn’t found in the obvious. It happens when something unsettles you just enough to see the familiar in an entirely new way.
The race to rewire our brain continues, as AI stumbles, ancient mushrooms heal, and Meta wants us all in glasses.
Three immersive exhibits exploring identity through movement, style and those memorable late night scents of the city.
3 Great Marketing Moves
This week we see brands stepping into a range of unexpected places, from making AI mainstream to sofas shaped like sausage rolls to music that hacks toxic feeds.Whether for being too sexy, too critical, or just too loud, art that challenges power often ends up being edited.
Enjoy the read.
Angelique
Why Messing With Your Mind Is Good For You
The best pleasures are the ones that throw you off balance. They catch you mid-routine, mid-sip, mid-scroll, and suddenly you’re jolted awake.
I remember standing in a six-stooled Tokyo bar once, handed a cocktail that looked like it had been designed by a child with a chemistry set. Neon foam, fizzing dust, a colour not found in nature. I nearly laughed until I tasted it. And just like that, nonsense became a lasting revelation.
That’s exactly what I wanted to do to you (and me) when I dove deep into our intelligence platform FuturePossible® to extract a collection of sparks that remind me why we don’t track trends, we track pleasure.
Because needs don’t change: comfort, connection, indulgence. They’ve been with us forever. But the ways we pursue them? That’s what I love exploring.
Rituals slip their skins, flavours find new disguises, and formats twist into unfamiliar shapes, while technology sprints ahead and science lifts us higher, all in service of the same eternal chase for pleasure.
Every generation finds its own way to scratch the itch of being human. And sometimes the best way to understand where culture is heading is to watch how it plays with pleasure.
So I put it all together in The Pleasure Zine and here are five sparks from it that do exactly that…
Unlikely Fusions
Burger cocktails. Pickle toothpaste. Fizzy guacamole. The hits are no longer the safe bets, they’re the misfits that make your senses stutter before they delight.
Loads of Fun
Singapore’s Hangout Laundry is part laundrette, part rave. Even chores are being hacked into playgrounds for belonging; proof that routine is just raw material for reinvention.
Extreme Expression
From absurd boots to mosh-pit diapers, impracticality is the new spectacle. Pleasure thrives on theatre, because sometimes excess feels more honest than restraint.
Air Fare
Butter made from carbon. Protein pulled from thin air. Water harvested from humidity. The atmosphere itself is becoming a pantry, using alchemy for daily sustenance.
Hot Chocolate
From oat and carob-based alternatives to lab-grown indulgence, chocolate is being rewritten. Same craving, different code, because pleasure never retires, it just evolves.
An Ode to Pleasure
Pleasure is culture’s engine. It’s the hidden current beneath every remix, every ritual, every ridiculous invention. It’s why we turn air into butter, why we rewire chocolate, why we dance in laundromats.
Trends come and go, but pleasure never stops moving. It messes with our minds until the ordinary feels impossible again.
Track pleasure, and you’re not just following culture. You’re riding the very force that makes it move.
The signals you’re seeing?
👉 These six sparks are just a taste. The full Pleasure Zine has 42, each one designed to mess with your mind (in a good way).
Sign up to Future Possible® now and get your free copy, so you can stay inspired and map your next moves for only £95/year.
Wait, What?!: Sci-fi Tech Hitting the Real World
A new study showcases that humans beat AI at “generalisation,” taking lessons from one situation and flexing them into something new. That’s why doctors spot rare cases, drivers handle freak weather, and leaders navigate crises: AI crunches data, but our brains still win at surprises.
In a follow-up of a 2020 trial, two-thirds of patients treated with psilocybin therapy were still in full remission from depression five years later. It’s a small study, but this might be a big breakthrough.
Meta’s new Ray-Ban and Oakley glasses pack AI, video calls and wristband controls, aiming to make smart specs mainstream. But at $799 and larger than the previous style, do they have too much tech and not enough style?
The Cata-Lyst:
3 Mind-Expanding Finds We’re Tuning Into
Style, sweat, and city smells, these exhibits will get under your skin to explore how we move, sense, and express who we are.
V&A / Kate Moss / Vogue
Marie Antoinette, Forever a Mood
The V&A’s new exhibition celebrates the queen who turned fashion into a form of power. With over 250 years of design, film, and fantasy on display, it explores how one of history’s most controversial style icons continues to shape aesthetics, identity, and self-expression today. Royal rebellion never looked so relevant.
Somerset House / Wayne McGregor
Dance, Data, and the Human Body
This new Somerset House exhibition (opens in October) celebrates choreographer Wayne McGregor’s radical take on movement, merging dance with AI, film, sound, and sculpture. It’s a multi-sensory deep dive into what the body can do, and where it might go next.
Roshan Jacob / Time Out
Sculpture You Can Smell
In Red Hook, artist Tom Fruin and fragrance studio Joya have bottled NYC’s late-night chaos. Inspired by wristbands, street trash, and sweaty dance floors, this multi-sensory artwork doesn’t just glow, it smells like the city after dark.
3 Great Marketing Moves
These campaigns show brands stepping into new and unexpected spaces to play, provoke and protect the audience.
From Bakes to Bean Bags
Greggs makes the leap from bakery to living room with a homeware collab that turns pastry fandom into lifestyle branding. Cushions shaped like Steak Bakes and a bean bag the size of an XL Sausage Roll cement Greggs as a cult brand you can literally live with.
Humanising AI
Claude and the agency Mother make AI more human with the “Keep Thinking” campaign. It flips existential dread into optimism, positioning AI as a partner for problem-solving across every part of life.
Reprogramming the Algorithm
Swedish insurer Länsförsäkringar takes responsibility for digital safety as seriously as physical safety. With Detoxify, they created songs that hack social algorithms, swapping toxic body ideals for uplifting content to show teenagers that they can be in control of their feed.
Erased but Never Forgotten
This piqued my interest last week and was a very enjoyable trip down history lane. From Michelangelo’s censored frescoes to Banksy’s ghostly mural outside the Royal Courts of Justice, this BBC piece dives into the centuries-long tug-of-war between artists and authority.
Whether it’s for being too sexy, too critical, or just too loud, art that challenges power often ends up being edited, or erased altogether. But as the piece shows, censorship doesn’t always silence. Sometimes, it immortalises.
See you next week 🔮 👽 🎩 🪄