đ Happy Friday, you made it. If this week felt like a struggle, it could be because your brain is wired to look for distractions. Research from the London School of Economics suggests that putting your smartphone out of reach wonât actually lessen your dillydallying at work. While study participants did look at their phones when they were placed far away, they filled that extra time with leisure activities on their computers. Where thereâs a will, thereâs a way.
đ§ On the pod:AIâs unlikely partnership with fast food.
đĄ Bring your business to life
Itâs the last day to enter The Hustleâs Big Break pitch competition.
No business plan required: Just record a 60-second pitch, send it our way by the end of the day, and you could win $5k in cash (and more) to help get it off the ground.
đ° Zhang Yiming, founder of TikTok parent ByteDance Ltd., became Chinaâs richest person on Wednesday thanks to his $57.5B fortune, overtaking Zhong Shanshan, founder of bottled water and beverage company Nongfu Spring, and Tencent Holdings co-founder Ma Huateng. While these lists tend to fluctuate, this week marks the first time Yiming has ever taken the top spot. Itâs also a weird one for TikTok, which has until Saturday to find a buyer lest it face a US ban.
đ· Serial entrepreneur Ryan Reynoldsâ Maximum Effort has a new venture: Ugly Estates, a wine brand, created in partnership with wine and spirits company Gallo, that swaps âthe pretentious bottleâ with the more accessible box. Ads promise 33% more wine than a standard bottle and feature Ugly Estatesâ spokesdog, Peggy the Hairless Pug, who played Deadpoolâs dog, Dogpool, in Deadpool & Wolverine. Reynolds has successfully launched or repped a number of brands, including Aviation Gin, which Diageo acquired in 2020 in a deal worth up to $610m.
đ€ AI goes to college: American Universityâs business school is launching an Institute for Applied Artificial Intelligence. Business students will learn to use AI for tasks like consumer research, writing financial statements, reading balance sheets, and more. The institute, which already has 15 faculty members and will be hiring more, is the latest way American is embracing AI. The university partnered with AI startup Perplexity last month to give its business school students access to Perplexity Enterprise Pro. and is piloting a new educational product. Cue the âback in my dayâ remarks.
MORE NEWS TO KNOW
Automattic, parent company of WordPress and Tumblr, is laying off 16% of its staff in a restructuring that CEO Matt Mullenweg claims will allow it to be âmore agileâ and âfocus on product quality.â
Want 12 inches of nachos? Cool â Subway launched $5 Doritos Footlong Nachos for a limited time. It joins the footlong cookies, churros, and pretzels offered on the Sidekicks menu, the chainâs response to younger customers who prefer snacking to a main meal.
To celebrate 50 years of Microsoft, Bill Gates published the companyâs original source code to his blog. While its $2.7T market cap is impressive, we think that the tech giant should go down in history as the creator of one of the most important characters of our time: Clippy.
YOUR PERSONAL PLAY
Your voice is your most prized asset
Youâve been putting off being a thought leader for, how long now? Make yourself a household name â and use this 30-day brand launch plan to break in beautifully.
Everybodyâs into microplastics these days â or at least theyâre really into us, having been found in food, water, and even newborns.
We donât know exactly what microplastics do to our bodies, but itâs probably something, and that can be scary.
Meet Clarify Clinics
A London startup is hoping to assuage microplastic fears by offering to clean your blood, and all it costs is two hours⊠plus nearly $13k. PerWired:
Patients are hooked up to a machine that filters microplastics from the plasma in your blood before cycling blood back into your body. Itâs like a Brita filter for Dracula!
Some patients believe it helps with conditions like chronic fatigue or long covid.
CEO Yael Cohen says she gets better sleep post-treatment (and her Oura ring apparently proves it).
Cleaning blood can be necessary when someone is exposed to a lot of harmful pollution, but (beyond the ever-helpful placebo effect) nobody knows if thereâs an actual benefit to doing it electively.
Itâs like the Kim Kardashian-endorsed full-body scans that potentially do nothing.
Similarly, hospitals saw an increase in elective surgeries post-covid, either because of pent-up demand or because theyâre desperate for some kind of fix.
Theyâre basically selling peace of mind, which isnât worthless â but is it worth $13k?
âA badge of honorâ
Thatâs what Cohen says Clarifyâs blood treatment is, and thatâs the key here.
Even if cleaning your blood has no immediate, practical benefit, wouldnât you rather have clean blood than plastic-filled blood that might cause some unspecified health issue in the future?
And wouldnât you be jealous if someone told you their blood was cleaner than your blood?
What biz will blow up in five years? Could be longevity products for dogs, natural fiber clothing, toxin testing, or one of these other health-business opportunities.
Producer David Bernad told The Hollywood Reporter that in addition to equal pay, the cast is billed alphabetically to ensure âyouâre getting people who want to do the project for the right reasons.â
But the dramaâs real breakout stars might be its shooting locations. The show revolves around the guests at the âWhite Lotusâ resort, but the characters and location change every season.
Following its first Hawaii-set season, the Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea saw a 425% YoY increase in website visits. After Season 2, set in Sicily, the Four Seasons San Domenico Palace was booked solid for six months.
AROUND THE WEB
đ On this day: In 1973, the World Trade Center opened in NYC. At the time, it was the worldâs tallest building.
After 32 years at Ford Motor, exec Mike OâBrien announced his retirement to colleagues in an email that included all the expected acknowledgements, plus a spreadsheet calling them out on all the times they botched a figure of speech over the last decade. The 55-year-old industry vet, who toldThe Wall Street Journal he did it for the laughs, logged 2.2k+ instances of verbal flubs, including the one above, plus two from CEO Jim Farley.
Some honorable mentions: âItâs no skin on our backâ â gross â and âToo many cooks in the soup.â Yum.
SHOWER THOUGHT
Just helped a friend move houses. Libraries must be the heaviest buildings in the world.SOURCE
Today’s email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Sara Friedman, with help from Sam Barsanti, Singdhi Sokpo, and Kaylee Jenzen. Editing by: Ben âThatâs too many nachosâ Berkley.
