Something For the Weekend #51
Sureel AI, Lost in Translation, and 18th Century Graffiti: selections from the weird and wonderful for the week ending June 12, 2026
Welcome to SFTW!
I’m having a great week (see #1 below for details) and looking forward to a peaceful weekend after a long haul to the finish line.
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Now, on with the show!
Top 5 this week from the Daily Active User:
If you’ve been reading this newsletter, you know that Sureel AI is a project I deeply believe in and have submerged myself into for the last two years. Writing about Sureel AI was the kickoff point for the Daily Active User, with posts like:
The AI threat to artists, labels, and everyone in between that keeps me up at night (October 9, 2024)
Attribution Share Is the New Market Share, and It’s Way Bigger (October 29, 2024)
You don’t need petitions, you need APIs (December 2, 2024)
Can Publishers Flip the Split on AI’s $42 Billion Licensing Opportunity? (December 6, 2024)
Creation Without Creators (January 17, 2025)
Why pay creators when you can just make them? (April 7, 2025)
The AI Opt-Out Paradox: Unlocking Valuable Data For Creators (July 1, 2025)
What Streaming Can Teach Us About the AI Future of Music (July 8, 2025)
The AI future could be bright—we just have to ask for it (August 7, 2025)
Selling our artists by the prompt (August 18, 2025)
How the music industry can take back control (August 28, 2025)
Bullshit Tools: A Theory (October 14, 2025)
The Music We Should Save Is the Music AI Needs the Most (October 30, 2025)
Our future in the black box, if we choose it (December 9, 2025)
Music from other people’s music (January 13, 2026)
2026 Predictions from Lark42: Music AI Edition (January 22, 2026)
Simply put, Sureel (I’m co-president) is the technology the team built to let creators—music and otherwise—protect, control, and monetize their work as AI companies reach for it as training data. Sureel gives every work its own AI DNA, breaking it into its component parts and tracing exactly how AI models use them. So for the first time, an artist, songwriter, record label, or publisher can see which bits of which songs shape what the AI makes, and get paid for the influence their work actually has. Creators can opt in and license on their own terms, or opt out and have that choice enforced. Sitting underneath it all is a layer of IP provenance, audit, and compliance reporting, plus name, image, and likeness attribution. It’s exactly the kind of AI project designed to help the very people this stuff could otherwise exploit.
And this week, the news I’ve been bursting to share: Warner Music Group has announced an agreement to acquire the company. What I love most is that Sureel will keep running as a standalone platform serving the whole music and AI ecosystem, so our technology stays open to all rights holders, Warner or not. No matter how you feel about AI, it’s here. I firmly believe artists can see real benefit from training, as long as the licensing is fair. If they’d rather opt out, we can power that too, in a way that petitions, legal letters, and lawsuits simply cannot. The press release is here, and I couldn’t be more proud of founder and CEO Tamay and the entire team. It feels wonderful to have a thesis I’ve held for so long finally validated by a company like Warner Music Group. Much more to follow. I’m grateful indeed.
I’m always partial to a bit of Bill Murray and can quote many of the things he’s said from numerous viewings of his epic films. But today it is to the majestic Lost In Translation that I turn. I saw it on the big screen when it first came out, and there’s not a bad moment in it. The soundtrack pairs so perfectly with the visuals, which would enchant even those most skeptical of life in a big city like Tokyo. The entire film is both hilarious and touching. Shot with a small crew in under a month, mostly in a hotel in Shibuya, it is definitely understated—the aforementioned Murray has even said it’s his favorite of all his films. The ending is terrific, leaving us with a mystery. If it's been a while, it’s worth revisiting for sure. Also, “What kind of restaurant makes you cook your own food?”
There is little I love more than a late-night ramble around London, when all the shops and pubs are closed, the square mile of the city is quiet, and the streets are empty. I have been walking the area for years—perhaps to visit Samuel Johnson’s house on Gough Square. One night, I was hunting down on the riverbed of the ebbed-tide Thames, by St. Paul’s Cathedral, with my friend Brian. We walked up with our finds to rest on the steps outside the thirty-foot-high west door. It was there that I snapped the above picture of 18th-century graffiti, some of which (though now faded and unclear in this picture) date from 1759 to the 1790s. A separate cluster inside the cupola of the southwest tower is dated 1788. There’s a photo set of them here from Symbols & Secrets, of which I knew nothing until writing this. Love it! Elizabeth Ives, 1760, seems to be the only truly legible one, and year after year as I’ve gone back, the markings have grown fainter. So if you find yourself in that neck of the woods, day or night—but especially at night—don’t miss this tiny bit of magic.
Mokkiri-zake:
Where heartbreak is, beauty intrudes. Wondrously. - How to Be Old - New York Times - Roger Rosenblatt
My new age friends call that state of being pronoia, the opposite of paranoia. Instead of believing everyone is out to get you, you believe everyone is out to help you. Strangers are working behind your back to keep you going, prop you up, and get you on your path. The story of your life becomes one huge elaborate conspiracy to lift you up. But to be helped you have to join the conspiracy yourself; you have to accept the gifts. - How Will the Miracle Happen Today? - kk.org - Kevin Kelly
The three most powerful motives are curiosity, delight, and the desire to do something impressive. Sometimes they converge, and that combination is the most powerful of all. - How to Do Great Work - paulgraham.com - Paul Graham
Internet addicts are not overdose candidates. Their heavy use is instead a slow poison, one whose cumulative toll is cognitive and moral. - Limbic Capitalism Has Been Driving Addiction for Hundreds of Years - afterbabel.com - via Jon Haidt
The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich. - In Praise of Idleness - Harper’s Magazine - Bertrand Russell via Wyatt Williams
“What gets measured gets managed” is often misattributed to Peter Drucker, the father of modern management theory. The full quote, from business journalist Simon Caulkin, is a warning not a promise. “What gets measured gets managed—even when it’s pointless to measure and manage it, and even if it harms the purpose of the organization to do so.” In other words, our mania for measurement can obscure what matters most. - Optimization - profgmedia.com - Scott Galloway