👋 Sky’s the limit today. Christopher Bradbury took that advice quite literally when he broke the Guinness World Record for the most emoji formed by drones in three minutes. His 109 drones outlined 30 shapes against the night sky — poop emoji included.
🎧 On the pod:Demand for dog-centric spaces has shot up straighter than a basenji’s ears.
NEWS FLASH
YouTube / Agility Robotics
🤖 Ready or not (and it’s probably “not”), the robots are coming: Agility Robotics Inc. opened RoboFab, the world’s first humanoid robot factory, in a 70k-square-foot warehouse outside of Salem, Oregon. When it’s up and running, the assembly plant will be able to produce 10k humanoid robots annually. For now, Agility’s robots are gunning for employee of the year at Spanx and Amazon warehouses.
🎂 Let them eat smaller cake: People noticed Whole Foods’ once fruit- and cream-filled Berry Chantilly Cake slices had become tinier and stuffed with a gross raspberry jam. CNN used the cake, which Whole Foods admitted to standardizing across its 500+ stores, as an example of skimpflation — reduced services, smaller sizes, cheaper ingredients, etc. — which experts say can be risky if customers notice. Case in point: Whole Foods vowed to restore the beloved dessert by this week.
🖼 Time to check that Van Gogh hanging on your wall: The Van Gogh Museum exposed three privately owned “Van Goghs” as fakes. The most damning of the faux paintings was — ouch — last purchased for $993k+, and had actually been authenticated by the very same museum in 2011. Extra awkward: A completely unrelated Van Gogh drawing goes up for bids later this week and is expected to fetch $1m-$1.6m. Some advice for the comically wealthy person who wins? Keep that receipt.
MORE NEWS TO KNOW
SpaceX’s Starlinkreceived temporary approval from the FCC to provide emergency cellphone service in areas hit by Hurricane Helene.
The National Retail Federation will skip its annual report on shrink (AKA retail inventory loss) for the first time in 30+ years. That doesn’t mean things have gotten better — a new report with metrics more specific to theft and violence will replace it.
Activist investor Starboard Value has reportedly taken a ~$1B stake in Pfizer to turn things around. The pharma company’s stock has fallen sharply from pandemic highs, during which revenue hit $100B+ thanks to its covid vaccine and Paxlovid.
TOOLBOX
Sorry we don’t yet have the technology to make these links smell like pumpkin spice. They’re still worth clicking, anyway.
🤝 Say “buy,” not “bye”: Check out nine reasons why businesses lose customers — and how to not fall into those traps.
🤖 Choose your fighter: ChatGPT vs. Claude vs. Grok vs. Gemini… How does one choose the best LLM? These pros and cons for each can’t hurt.
👀 Pick your niche: How correcting one mistake helped one business owner shift from directionlessness to cornering a market.
THE BIG IDEA
The people yearn for a thing that just plays music
The iPod has been dead for years, and nobody has filled the hole it left. Now, people are getting desperate.
Fans of Sony’s MiniDisc hacked together a new program that allows anyone with a player to load it up with new music using their smartphone.
The first MiniDiscs, which looked like floppy disks and promised a cool, tactile, futuristic aesthetic, launched in 1992 and were particularly popular in Japan.
MiniDiscs produced better audio than cassette tapes and were easily rewritable, unlike CDs.
The format struggled to woo Americans, especially once the iPod came out and made it easy to simply download audio files.
The battle between cool and convenience had a clear winner, and the MiniDisc was killed in 2013.
People just want the basics
Audiophiles are searching for things that just play music — with no web browser or apps.
If this craving for more devices doing fewer things feels familiar, allow us to recall the “dumbphone” movement.
This shared desire to rewind time is also seen in rising cassette sales, and CD sales aren’t shabby either, basically on par with the cyclically trendy vinyl format, though they’re all miles behind streaming.
But how do you even play cassettes and CDs in 2024?
Playing a CD at home often requires something used or a pricey bespoke player that’ll make you feel like an ‘80s yuppie.
Playing cassettes is harder, also involving more money than you’d expect.
Sony still makes a Walkman, but it’s a digital audio player (DAP), and even for a premium price, it might not scratch the itch left by the old click-wheel iPod.
The hunger for simplified music products is there, though until more retro hacks like the MiniDisc program come along, settling for Spotify remains the easier solution for many.
In the meantime, maybe start stockpiling MP3s in case that becomes the next retro trend? The vintage file really makes Songs of Innocence pop.
People skills, sales savvy, and business acumen, as it turns out, are very important for a sales career — but it takes certain, less conventional qualities to put you over the top. See six of those.
How we source our stories at The Hustle: Largely from 52 top-notch news sites, 24 whip-smart socials, and 15 beautiful newsletters. Peep the secret spreadsheet.
DATA POINT
All the cool kids are doing it: But really, if you’ve spent some time following Gen Zers on social media, you’ve likely noticed their affinity for thrifted clothes.
America’s used clothing market hit $43B last year, up from $23B in 2018, according to a report from consignment platform ThredUp.
In the US, apparel resale grew 7x faster than the broader retail industry and secondhand apparel sales increased ~11% YoY in 2023, perThe New York Times.
Even large retail brands like H&M, J.Crew, and Banana Republic have jumped on the trend with in-house resale businesses in a move to woo wallet- and planet-conscious shoppers.
AROUND THE WEB
⚾ On this day: In 1956, New York Yankees pitcher Don Larsen threw a perfect game, the only such game in World Series history.
👃 That’s interesting: How fast-food restaurants use scent to market to customers.
Burrito on the go: So yes, we have a handy little thing called tin foil, but there’s another way to eat your burrito sans plate. Eddie L. Bernal of Defiance, Ohio, patented the “readily portable burrito” in 1983, and it’s… basically a burrito on a stick. The stick would be rolled into the tortilla before the burrito was filled with its contents and consumed to created more “structural integrity” — while also seemingly posing a massive choking hazard.
SHOWER THOUGHT
Humans generally have a tendency to generalize our experiences as universal.SOURCE
