Researchers in the UK have developed StarCrete, a durable new building material designed for use on Mars. The primary ingredient? Potato starch. We’d be interested in touring the testing facility for… reasons.
In today’s email:
Weight loss injections: Why they’re here to stay.
The “jock tax” is not just for athletes.
Adobe: Of course it’s doing an AI thing.
Around the Web: A doomsday seed vault, machine learning vs. deep learning, finding fellow questers, and more cool internet finds.
🎧 On the go? Listen to today’s podcast for the story of the Texas family business that invented ballpark nachos and, ~50 years later, still controls a substantial chunk of the market.
The big idea
The weight loss injection craze is just getting started
Drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro are already hot on social media. Production is only now ramping up.
2023-03-22T00:00:00Z
Ben Berkley
Ah, the romance of American pharmaceuticals — drug meets populace, populace meets drug, drug gets scarce and expensive, populace pursues drug across borders, Big Pharma steps in and assures everyone lives happily ever after. So beautiful.
The current public paramours are injectable diabetes treatments like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro — appetite suppressants that have been touted on social media as “miracle” weight loss drugs.
And we mean touted a lot: #Ozempic-tagged TikTok videos have amassed 600m+ views, perMIT Technology Review.
Are the drugs safe and effective? Not our lane. (Though we’ll note: Wegovy is currently the only one approved by the FDA for weight management.)
Supply is now better aligned with demand
The availability of the drugs from makers Novo Nordisk (Ozempic, Wegovy) and Eli Lilly (Mounjaro) has recently increased after lengthy shortages.
Without hard-to-get insurance approval, a monthly supply of these drugs hovers around ~$1k in the US. High costs and waning supply led to a recent run on cheaper Canadian and Mexican pharmacies, perBusiness Insider.
In British Columbia, 9% of Rx fills for Ozempic were for Americans in 2022, 22x higher than the average rate across all other drugs.
This market is about to get flooded
Analysts project the fervor will continue: PerNBC News, annual sales for this class of drugs are expected to set records, far surpassing arthritis treatment Humira’s all-timer $20.7B year in 2021.
To prepare for anticipated demand, Novo Nordisk has invested $2.58B in expanding production capacity for their diabetes drug unit; Eli Lilly’s tab for similar expansion is up to $1.7B.
Eli Lilly’s cheery outlook is best told through this 2022 back pat: its CEO got an eye-popping $48.9m in shares on top of his core $21.4m pay.
Masochism: Internet punching bag Ticketmaster recently posted a job listing for a director of social, highlighting bravery as a required trait. Per LinkedIn, at least 163 applicants have taken the plunge so far.
SNIPPETS
Bard’s here: US and UK users can sign up to test Google’s Bard AI. Google warned it may give “inaccurate or inappropriate” responses, but there’s a “Google It” feature for fact-checking.
Also: Google suspended Chinese shopping app Pinduoduo from its Play Store after finding malware in some versions of the app. Pinduoduo rejected the claim.
Again? In another showing of “people love failure swag,” Credit Suisse-branded hats, bags, and tiny gold bars are up for resale.
TikTok announced it now has 150m+ monthly active users in the US, where it could be banned. CEO Shou Zi Chew will testify before Congress on Thursday.
Bad Bunny’s ex Carliz De La Cruz Hernández is suing the musician for $40m, alleging he used her voice on two songs without permission. The songs have ~1B streams on YouTube and Spotify combined.
Update: Ousted Miyoko’s Creamery founder Miyoko Schinner is countersuing the plant-based brand, alleging gender discrimination and the misuse of her name and likeness.
Slightly less unaffordable: Last month, US existing housing prices saw their first YoY dip in 11 years. The median price dropped from $363.7k to $363k. The tears are still not happy ones.
Hire better: Hiring top talent can be hard, especially for smaller businesses. If a recruitment team is out of the question, a hiring committee might be the answer.
Chart
Zachary Crockett
Why athletes (and some remote workers) owe a ‘jock tax’
2023-03-22T00:00:00Z
If you file your taxes through TurboTax or a similar service, you’ve likely been asked if you performed work in more than one state.
Given that it’s the 21st century, there’s a decent chance you did.
But a state’s department of revenue is unlikely to notice that you spent a couple hours answering emails and taking Zoom meetings while skiing in the Poconos.
Unless you’re a professional athlete
Their burden is known as the “jock tax.” Professional athletes owe a portion of their salary to most states and cities they visit — even for a single day.
Unlike, say, nurse practitioners or graphic designers, jurisdictions know exactly when athletes are in town. They know how much they make. And they know how to go after them.
For years, the jock tax has flown under the radar, known mostly to hardcore sports fans and accountants. Nobody, after all, really cares if millionaires have to file complicated tax returns.
But the jock tax matters.
Hardly anyone truly benefits from the tax, and one day in the future, even if you’re not an athlete, you may have to pay it.
Let’s, as a group, stop fumbling the basic communications.
If you can articulate thoughts and emotions with clarity… Shit’s powerful. Anybody lacking (or a little bit nasty) should check out our guide on communicating with poise in the workplace.
Why increasing mindfulness goes gangbusters:
You minimize unnecessary friction
You sound more confident and collected
You get faster responses to emails
Them’s the perks to proper talkin’. Here’s more on speaking the language.
Adobe announced a suite of generative AI features that let users create and modify images.
2023-03-22T00:00:00Z
Juliet Bennett Ryla
Adobe, much like every tech company, is getting into AI — and it actually looks pretty cool.
Adobe Firefly is a forthcoming suite of generative AI models with an array of potential uses.
For now, users can sign up for stand-alone beta versions of its image and stylized text generators, but all tools will eventually be integrated into Adobe’s apps.
How they work
The text generator lets users manipulate text; a demo features letters that look like they’re made of melting chocolate and toasted bread.
The image generator, like DALL-E or Midjourney, returns images based on text prompts. But:
Generated images can be manipulated using Adobe’s other editing tools. Check out this demo from UI/UX designer Jesse Showalter.
Artists will be able to use AI tools to create variations of their work.
Perhaps most importantly…
… Adobe said its tools won’t scrape the web to steal artists’ styles.
Image generators that do threaten artists’ livelihoods and can lead to copyright issues. Getty Images has banned AI-generated art for that reason.
Adobe said its models are trained on images that are public domain, licensed for training, or in the Adobe Stock library.
“We can generate high quality content and not random brands’ and others’ IP because our model has never seen that brand content or trademark,” Alexandru Costin, VP of generative AI and Sensei at Adobe, told The Verge.
AROUND THE WEB
💡 On this day: In 1960, Arthur Leonard Schawlow and Charles Hard Townes secured the first patent for a laser. It was assigned to Bell Telephone Laboratories.
🧠 Video: “Machine learning” and “deep learning” are two terms you may have heard a lot lately, but what do they really mean?
🌿 That’s interesting: Take a virtual tour of the “doomsday seed vault,” a Norwegian archive of seeds meant to protect biodiversity in the event of a catastrophe.
🗡️ Cure boredom: Want to play some “D&D” but lack your own Hellfire Club? Book a spot in an online RPG run by a professional game master.
Today’s email was brought to you by Jacob Cohen and Juliet Bennett Rylah. Editing by: Ben “Highly detailed llama wearing dark sunglasses’ enthusiast” Berkley.
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