🐟 Rest in Pisces

👋 Glad you’re here and not in a watery, coral-filled grave — but more on that in a moment. First, there’s trouble on the docks, which is remarkably not the title of a Hardy Boys book.

🎧 On the pod: Why the “expensive fast food” era will never end.

NEWS FLASH

An aerial view of dockworkers standing outside of the Port of Houston Authority.

🚢 Hope you don’t need anything from overseas: Thousands of American dockworkers went on strike yesterday, slowing down activity at dozens of US ports. The current offer on the table is far off from the longshoremen union’s demands — a 77% raise for its ~45k members over six years. The immediate impacts won’t sour the mood for the average consumer yet, but if the walkout persists, a rippling supply chain crisis could boost prices and limit retail stock over the holidays.

🎷 Cue the jazz music and don your flapper dresses: UBS, one of the world’s largest private banks, is also seemingly its most optimistic — the Swiss institution’s head of asset allocation for the Americas published a note saying the US is currently (by the bank’s criteria at least) experiencing “a Roaring ’20s economy.” That’s all very nice and good until you think about how the Roaring ’20s ended.

🎧 Sonos wants you to know how very sorry it is: Following its disastrously buggy app release in May, Sonos CEO Patrick Spence revealed a plan to restore consumer trust, including new updates every two to four weeks, hiring a “quality ombudsperson” to route concerns between employees and management, building a customer advisory board, and extending manufacturer warranties.

MORE NEWS TO KNOW

PepsiCo will acquire Mexican-inspired food company Siete Foods for $1.2B. It’s the latest in a recent dealmaking boom in the packaged food biz, as high demand for snacks (understandably) continues.
Big day for paywalls: CNN is limiting free articles on CNN.com, requiring a $30 annual digital subscription for unlimited site access. Similarly, Thomson Reuters paywalled its content behind a $1 weekly subscription.
Impulse, a space startup led by former SpaceX rocket specialist Tom Mueller, raised $150m to build orbital transfer vehicles, AKA “space tugs,” which would ferry satellites and rocket payloads around in space.

BUSINESS ON THE BRAIN?

Text: Climb inside the minds of your customers

An introduction to marketing psychology

Honestly, it’s all about feelings — since breaking them down behind the scenes is how you tell stories with stopping power.

This free ebook bundles up the basics of marketing psychology to explain some of the chief concepts that trigger people to purchase.

The art + science of persuasion:

Building a “fanocracy” (like Microsoft and REI)
Understanding basic human needs
Using 14 principles of human behavior…

… like priming, anchoring, clustering, and other habit-based heuristics.

Marketing Psychology 101

THE BIG IDEA

Three tombstones poke out of a coral reef.

The sustainable way to sleep with the fishes

“Buried at sea” typically refers to having your remains dispersed in the ocean, but Neptune Memorial Reef in Biscayne Bay, Florida, takes it a step further by adding cremated remains to a man-made reef.

The reef opened in 2007, and is ultimately expected to span 16 acres and accommodate 250k+ people, per ClickOrlando.

Notable residents currently include chef Julia Child and scuba legend Bert Kilbride.

The reef…

… takes inspiration from the legend of Atlantis.

One can pay to have their ashes scattered in the area or purchase a “placement” — columns, arches, and sea life sculptures made from a mix of cement and cremated remains, adorned with metal plaques. Loved ones can watch this occur by attending a “mixing ceremony.”

At 40 feet deep, it’s accessible to divers, and the company claims many people have received scuba certification to visit loved ones laid to rest here.

Why build this?

Traditional cemeteries are unsustainable. They:

Take up a lot of space.
Can pollute groundwater and soil.

Increased flooding due to climate change can also submerge graves and, worse, cause coffins and caskets to wash away.

The death industry is increasingly offering more environmentally friendly and long-term solutions, like biodegradable coffins and urns made from fungi that help decompose bodies into compost for new life.

Man-made reefs are good for marine life — coral can grow on them and smaller creatures can use them to hide from predators.

BTW: Here’s a fun fact to tell all your friends this Halloween. Many people refer to Neptune Memorial Reef as an underwater cemetery, but a site that houses only cremated remains is called a columbarium.

🔗

NEWSWORTHY NUMBER

Average lifespan of a plastic bag before it’s discarded, per California Sen. Catherine Blakespear, author of California’s new plastic bag ban. The state banned single-use plastic bags in 2014 in an attempt to curb waste, but found that it only increased as grocers began charging customers 10 cents for a thicker plastic bag that customers could reuse, but didn’t — hence the bags’ short lifespan. Worse, plastic bags are often difficult to recycle. So, starting Jan. 1, 2026, California shoppers must bring their own bag or pay at least 10 cents for a paper one.

AROUND THE WEB

🇬🇳 On this day: In 1958, Guinea, once a French colony, declared its independence and named Sekou Toure as its leader.

🧀 That’s interesting: You’ll never guess where the world’s oldest cheese was found.

🎹 That’s cool: Learn how to play the songs on your Spotify playlist.

📅 Game: Guess which historical event occurred first.

🐕 Aww: When you don’t wanna go home.

HOT TAKES

Spending eternity on a reef at the bottom of an ocean is yet another burial option in the ever-creative deathcare industry.

We’re curious: What’s your ideal final resting place?

Let us know

And come back tomorrow to see the results.

SHOWER THOUGHT

When you look up at the stars, you might be making inadvertent eye contact with an alien who’s also looking up at the stars. SOURCE

Today’s email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Sara Friedman.
Editing by: Ben “Reef-stricken” Berkley.

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