👋 We the people… just want to have a good week. A 237-year-old copy of the US Constitution, discovered inside a filing cabinet at a North Carolina historical plantation, sold at auction for $9m last week. Maybe clean out your office today, just in case?
🎧 On the pod: The many bad investments and product flops that preceded Lego’s current golden age.
NEWS FLASH
🐶 Your pets are ready to talk, but be warned — they’re gonna sound a lot like chatbots: The Shazam Band, an AI-fueled pet wearable fever dream from startup Personifi AI, promises to “awaken your pet’s inner human.” OK, we’ll bite: It boils down to a collar loaded with a chatbot primed to respond in a human voice. If you want a more “sentient” conversation, you’ll have to pay up — on top of the baseline $495 cat and $595 dog collars, annual subscriptions of $195 and $295, respectively, will follow. The company says they’ll start shipping in February.
🚽 A startup wants to put a camera in your toilet. Austin-based Throne is selling a $499 smart camera — $299 for early adopters willing to buy it while in beta — that photographs the poop in users’ toilet bowls. Why? So that a physician-trained AI can examine it, provide data on users’ gut health and hydration, and offer nutritional advice. Privacy is obviously a concern, so Throne assures users that the camera only points down into the bowl and only registers data if a known user is in Bluetooth proximity.
🛍️ Shopping on Fifth Avenue could look a little different soon: New York City officials announced a plan to turn part of the iconic street into a pedestrian-friendly boulevard with wider sidewalks, fewer traffic lanes, seating and plants. For a street that sees ~5.5k pedestrians, on average, per hour — and 23k during the holidays — the $350m+ project could offer more room for swinging shopping bags. The downside? Cyclists and city buses might feel the squeeze.
MORE NEWS TO KNOW
Oklahoma’s First National Bank of Lindsaybecame the second US bank to fail in 2024. If it makes you feel better, this year’s failures tally $6.1B in combined assets; last year’s failures were worth $548.7B.
CVS Healthreplaced CEO Karen Lynch with David Joyner, the former head of Caremark, its pharmacy benefit manager. CVS has cut its earnings outlook 3x in 2024, and plans to lay off 2.9k workers.
Cost-cutting automaker Stellantis is selling its 4k-acre Arizona Proving Grounds, used for developing and testing vehicles. Stellantis has shed 47.5k+ employees since December 2019.
FOLLOW EVERY DOLLAR
Clean sheets for managing your money
Spreadsheets alone can’t quell your shopaholic habits, but they’re definitely a solid place to start.
Take five financial planning templates, fit for both business and personal expenses, and start tracking your cash flow like a healthy adult.
A de-extinction startup is bringing Tasmanian tigers back to life
Ever wish you could boop the snoot of a Tasmanian tiger?
We have great news.
While we’re still a ways off from making Jurassic Park a reality, Colossal Biosciences announced last week that its de-extinction of the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, genome is ~99.9% complete. PerGizmodo:
The thylacine, which went extinct in 1936 from overhunting and habitat loss, is being reconstructed from RNA strands taken from an 110-year-old thylacine head found preserved in ethanol.
Colossal is working to “de-extinct” the mammal by creating a proxy species: replacement animals that look and function the same, but will never be 100% identical to the original species.
The company only has 45 gaps remaining in its thylacine genome and expects to complete them with sequencing over the coming months.
Ultimately, Colossal’s plan is to “re-introduce” the proxy Tasmanian tigers into modern versions of their natural habitats.
Should we be scared? Excited?
Possibly both.
The Tasmanian tiger is just one of the species that Colossal plans to resurrect; it’s also working on proxies for the dodo and the woolly mammoth.
On one hand, Colossal’s resurrection tech has the potential to make animal extinction a thing of the past.
On the other, it could get ethically dicey. For now, the embryos of extinct species would need to be implanted into and birthed by living animals.
Oh, and by the way…
Even if Colossal eventually accomplishes its goal of developing artificial wombs, animals would be born without parents — and there’s no telling if they’d be able to survive in today’s environment.
Some also question why we’d pour funding into bringing animals back from the dead when we have plenty of living animals in need of saving.
Plus, playing God can get weird. Case in point: woolly mammoth meatballs.
Sorry to be a buzzkill: There will be another recession someday. Help your business prepare for it with 10 proven survival tactics from companies that weathered the Great Recession.
Steph Smith, host of the a16z podcast, talked to us about how to make money on your content, if you’re into that kind of thing.
NEWSWORTHY NUMBER
How long you’re allowed to hug goodbye in the drop-off area at New Zealand’s Dunedin Airport. While reactions to the new rule have been mixed, Dunedin Airport CEO Daniel De Bono argues that it takes just 20 seconds to release oxytocin, citing a study, and that moving people along efficiently allows more hugs overall. De Bono also noted that the car park, which allows 15-minute free visits for goodbyes, has seen some “interesting things.” Yeah, cool, we’re actually good with 20-second hugs now that you mention it.
AROUND THE WEB
📅 On this day: In 1805, the Battle of Trafalgar took place. Admiral Lord Nelson’s British fleet fended off a Franco-Spanish fleet off the coast of Spain, preventing Napoleon from invading Britain.
🐈⬛ That’s interesting: Japan’s Cat Island is coming to an inevitable end.
