đ Hello, and also eww. Progresso launched Soup Drops, a chicken noodle soup-flavored hard candy, complete with an upsetting tagline: âSoup you can suck on.â The abomination quickly sold out, but hope springs eternal for those who seek to fritter away their hard-earned money: more will drop throughout January â which is apparently National Soup Month.
đ§ On the pod:The UK wants to become an AI leader. Does it stand any chance?
NEWS FLASH
đȘ« Pour one out for some weird-looking cars: Canoo is the latest EV startup to go belly-up, joining brethren like Fisker and Lordstown Motors in the electric graveyard. The company squandered $600m in funding from a 2020 IPO, despite buzzy deals with the US Army, NASA, Walmart, and USPS. Canoo announced Friday it would immediately cease operations â a good call considering it (yikes) owes $164m+ to its creditors, far more than its remaining assets are worth.
đŠ Itâs raining on Amazonâs drone parade: The megacompany temporarily grounded the Prime Air delivery drones itâs testing in Texas and Arizona. Amazon pointed to software updates â definitely not last monthâs previously unreported crash at a testing facility where two drones were downed in a light rain â as the âprimary reason.â
đ Haggis, anyone? Scotlandâs Macsween of Edinburgh is testing a version of the dish â made from minced sheep or calf offal and other ingredients boiled in a sheepâs stomach â that could be sold in the US, where itâs been banned since 1971 over its use of sheep lung. Macsween estimates it loses ~$2.4m in potential sales annually due to the ban. Its alternative version subs lung for heart, and is due to launch in January 2026.
MORE NEWS TO KNOW
Fourteen hours: After years of drama over a TikTok ban, it was finally enacted Sunday â for less time than itâd take you to drive from Boise to Albuquerque. The app was back online for US users by Monday.
Walmart opened the first two buildings on its new 350-acre campus in Bentonville, Arkansas, which will house ~15k employees and include restaurants, a hotel, an amphitheater, and, apparently, window-washing drones.
Colossal Biosciences,on a mission to raise the woolly mammoth from the dead and boop the snout of a Tasmanian tiger,raised a $200m round at a $10.2B valuation.
THE BIG IDEA
Fly me to the moon, without disturbing an important historical site
Environmentalists say we must protect the Earth because itâs the only one we have, but the same is true for our celestial little brother, the moon.
So itâs fitting, if unexpected, that the World Monuments Fund has officially recognized the Moon as an at-risk cultural heritage site.
Space has been busy lately
Everyone with a billion dollars has been eager to go to space, and that hasnât been going too smoothly.
A much-hyped, long-awaited Blue Origin launch was recently delayed multiple times due to weather.
A SpaceX rocket dramatically exploded last week, showering Turks and Caicos with debris.
Still, the setbacks aren’t about to slow the push to expand humanity’s presence in the great void. There’s too much money to be made to get hung up on tiny details like rockets exploding: Market researchers project the space tourism industry will expand 40x by 2033.
And that’s where the WMF’s worries come in: it doesnât want future moon tourists crashing into the Apollo 11 landing site, just like it doesnât want someone knocking over the moai heads on Easter Island.
Whatâs the plan?
There are existing international agreements about protecting space stuff, but nobody seems to care much.
The cool-sounding Artemis Accords, for example, are nonbinding and therefore mostly useless.
The WMF knows this seems like a problem for the future, per The New York Times, but thatâs why itâs worth advocacy now, before it becomes an issue.
Also, itâs just smart PR to come out as pro-moon. Who doesnât love the moon?
It regulates the tides, gives vampires something to wax poetic about, and stands as an ideally permanent reminder of what mankind is capable of.
Unraveling the scandal that rocked Harvard: What really happened when the worldâs most prestigious business school uncovered Francesca Ginoâs fraudulent research?
If youâre the kind of person who gets excited about using AI to increase email conversions by 82%, this is about that.
DATA POINT
Curd is the word: The days of getting teased for having cottage cheese in your lunch box are long gone, friends.
Itâs officially a trending snack: US cottage cheese sales have increased 50%+ over the last five years, according to Circana data obtained by The Wall Street Journal. In 2023, sales grew 16%; in 2024, they spiked another 17%.
Why the sudden obsession with lumpy dairy? TikTok, most likely. Gen Z has viewed thousands of videos of creators blending, mixing, and dipping cottage cheese for healthy, protein-packed snacks.
And while dairy behemoth Daisy Brand is leading the category, smaller brands are making their marks.
Good Culture, the fastest-growing cottage cheese brand, planned for 35% revenue growth in both 2023 and 2024, but instead saw sales rise 80% and 70%, respectively.
AROUND THE WEB
đ On this day: In 2009, Toyota beat out General Motors as the worldâs biggest carmaker when GM announced it had sold 8.36m vehicles in 2008, compared to Toyotaâs 8.97m.
