👋 There’s no place like home, but you might need some millions to get there. The ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz sold at auction on Saturday for $28m. The bid was the largest sum ever spent at auction for a piece of entertainment memorabilia, beating out Marilyn Monroe’s subway dress, which sold for $5.52m in 2011.
🎧 On the pod:How AI is intersecting with religion.
NEWS FLASH
📦 You know how returns feel like getting free money? It doesn’t feel that way for retailers. Returns in 2024 are projected to make up ~17% of all merchandise sales — totaling $890B. That’s up from last year’s return rate of ~15%, or $743B in returned goods. Returns are an especially glaring problem around the holidays, when shopping peaks and the return rate jumps an estimated 17% above the annual rate. Plus, the returns aren’t always innocent: 69% of customers admit to “wardrobing,” or buying an item to wear to one event and returning it after — a 39% increase from 2023.
🏠 A controversial company closes its doors: EasyKnock’s business model allowed struggling homeowners to sell their home to the company and become its renters — a move known as a “sale-leaseback.” Last week, EasyKnock announced it had closed. The news comes amid numerous lawsuits, investigations from state attorneys general, and an FTC warning about the “risky” financial maneuver. An NPR investigation also found that few customers were ever able to repurchase their homes and some were ultimately evicted.
📰 Can AI interpret bias?Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong apparently thinks so. He announced plans to add an AI-powered “bias meter” to news articles in January. It would involve a button a reader could hit to get “both sides” of a story. The newspaper’s union wasn’t pleased, stating that all reporters already adhere to ethics guidelines in their work, and that Soon-Shiong’s comments suggest the staff “harbors bias, without offering evidence or examples.”
MORE NEWS TO KNOW
Notre Damereopened in Paris this weekend more than five years after a fire ripped through its roof. Around 340k donors contributed ~$900m to the restoration, and the cathedral expects to greet up to 15m visitors a year.
A federal appeals court upheld a law banning TikTok nationwide unless parent company ByteDance sells it. The court claimed that China-based ByteDance represents a national security threat and gives TikTok until Jan. 19 to be sold off or face a nationwide ban.
ThredUp offloaded 91% of its stake in Remix — a European resale platform it acquired in 2021 for $28m+ as an entrance to the European market — for ~$1.
MONETIZATION STATION
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The little-known business behind the light bulb and the iPhone
You know Thomas Edison and Steve Jobs — but have you heard of Wendell Weeks?
Probably not. He’s the CEO of Corning Inc., the 173-year-old New York glass company that has long supplied the glass for some of the world’s most famous inventions, perFortune.
Corning Glass Works filled a $311.97 order on Nov. 17, 1880, for a customer named Thomas Edison who was looking to tinker with a new invention: the lightbulb.
In 2007, another big name in tech contacted Corning: Steve Jobs cold-called Weeks looking for glass that wouldn’t break or scratch easily for a new phone concept called the iPhone.
Within six months, Corning created Gorilla Glass. It has since generated $20B+ in revenue and is used on 8B+ devices (and recently faced antitrust actions for its dominance).
Corning created kitchen brand Pyrex, the glass used in telescopes, the glass tubes that powered the earliest TVs, and heat-resistant spacecraft windows.
And in the 1990s, the company invented optical fiber to power the internet, which drove Corning’s valuation to just shy of $100B in 2000. When the internet bubble burst, the company’s stock price crashed from $100 to $1.
But the company recovered, and has since reached a market cap of $41B, generating $13B in revenue in 2023 and seeing a ~50% stock price increase since January.
AI is the clear bet
What’s making the company’s stock surge 173 years after its founding? You guessed it: AI.
Corning is once again building optical cables, this time for the AI generation. It sealed a multimillion-dollar deal with Lumen Technologies to reserve 10% of its global fiber capacity to power data centers for the next two years.
The company’s optical fiber business now accounts for 30% of its revenue, and companies like Microsoft are turning to Corning for denser fibers that can keep up with the demands of generative AI.
While optical fibers are important — we do, obviously, like the internet — the 50k+ objects in the Corning Museum of Glass are even more fun to look at.
TGI Fridays has been having a hard time. Where did it all go wrong, and can the chain be salvaged?
Looking for a one-stop shop for actionable marketing tutorials and powerful strategies? Look no further — the How to HubSpot YouTube channel has your back.
NEWSWORTHY NUMBER
The combined age of newlyweds Marjorie Fiterman, 102, and Bernie Littman, 100, now the oldest married couple on record. Both were married to their previous partners for 60+ years, yet found love once more after meeting at a costume party at a Philadelphia senior living community. They have been together for nine years.
Littman says his secret to longevity is remaining curious, reading, and staying current with the news, but we prefer Fiterman’s: drinking buttermilk.
AROUND THE WEB
💉 On this day: In 1979, scientists declared smallpox eradicated.
✏️ That’s cool: A short film made from 10.9k+ Post-It notes.
🎧 Chill out: with this lo-fi beats radio that lets you add effects to popular channels.
❤️🔥 That’s interesting:The Puddinginvestigates whether love songs are on the decline.
