Robocops are here to stop shoplifting
Milk, jeans and media company stuff.
Hello,
It’s February, we’re so back. The Six Nations is underway, New Year’s resolutions are firmly behind us and it won’t be long before shorts are back in season. Thanks to old Numa Pompilius, the Roman king who invented January and February, we’ve only got 28 days of Tuesday and then we’re into March.
‘February’ comes from the Latin word ‘februum’ meaning purification, the old English names were somewhat less poetic but far more descriptive: ‘Solmonath’ meaning ‘mud month’ and ‘Kale-monath’ meaning ‘cabbage month’. If we’re talking seasonal eating then it is indeed the right time of year to be tucking into some winter cabbage, you might also want to think about some purple-sprouting broccoli. Even though it just seems like a poncy version of basic broccoli, it is actually incredibly hardy, so can be grown throughout winter. Delicious in a stir fry.
Eat your greens,
Hugo
Chief Vegetable Officer
The Business of Stuff
The Stuff
Cokes recalled due to having even more chemicals than usual 🥤 - if your can has anything between 328 GE and 338 GE on the bottom, you might want to send it back as it’s probably got a load of chlorate in it. Disturbingly, the issue isn’t that there’s any chlorate but that there’s just too much chlorate, which is used to produce disinfectants and fireworks.
Sales of full-fat milk are increasing in the UK 🥛 - it feels almost countercultural to drink milk from an actual cow in this day and age, but people are moving away from ‘low-fat’ products which tend to be more processed. Searches for ‘full-fat milk’ were up 417% on the Waitrose website in the past month. Yoghurt is riding a similar a similar wave, as is butter. Dairy is back, it seems.
Levi’s used data to get a jump on baggy jeans 👖 - thanks to a partnership with Google Cloud that started in 2020, the purveyor of denim was able to identify that everyone was going mad for wider-fit jeans, across 50,000 points of distribution. The brand launched its ‘Live Loose’ campaign and made a whole load of baggy jeans as a result. I must admit I do like a taper but I am coming around to having a bit of looseness around the calves.
WHSmith is looking to move away from the high street 🗞️ - its most lucrative operations are of course those at airports and service stations, where there’s a captive market and they can charge £15 for a bottle of water. Unsurprisingly its high street stores are not doing so well, with revenue dropping by £14m in 2024. Unless you want a very specific magazine, there aren’t many reasons to go in there if you’re walking down, say, King Street in Thetford.
OpenAI scrambles to release free model after DeepSeek shock 🚀 - the US tech market was sent into a tailspin this week by the Chinese company releasing R1 that is just as good as ChatGPT, developed at a fraction of the cost. It has been seen as something of a Sputnik moment, and OpenAI has released its new o3-mini for free. I must admit I’m getting a bit lost in OpenAI’s approach to branding as o3 is, in fact, better than 4o, there is then o3-mini and o3-mini (high) as well as of course o1-mini and o1.
Robocops are being drafted in to stop shoplifting 🔐 - Safer Group has been installing security “pods” with cameras, motion sensors, AI-image recognition and sirens to help tackle people nicking stuff. Inevitably some people don’t love the vibes, but trials have led to a 49% reduction in “shrinkage” and a 79% reduction in break-ins.
A proposal is under consideration to stop drug advertising in the US 💊 - everyone seems to think there’s something dystopian about adverts for drugs, indeed they’re banned in every country except the US and New Zealand. If Kennedy gets through the Senate, he is going to propose banning them. This would have a big impact on media companies, as pharmaceutical companies spend billions on advertising in the US each year.
It’s all kicking off at Barclays 🏦 - it has been a hectic week for the company, with a major IT failure leaving millions unable to access their banking app. The current CEO also said that employees need to be back in the office three days a week, and the ex-CEO is gearing up for a trial over his alleged links to Jeffrey Epstein.
ITV is in talks with Redbird IMI about a plan to merge its studios 🎥 - the broadcaster is considering splitting off the production side of its business from the broadcasting part. The Emirati-backed fund, which recently tried to buy the Telegraph, owns All3Media, an acquisition target for ITV in 2023. The combined company would be one of the largest production houses in Europe, with revenues of £3million.
Comcast’s earnings beat expectations thanks to Wicked 🧹 - the witchy film broke box office records, taking $114m over its opening weekend. Comcast, who owns Universal (the maker of the film), saw adjusted earnings rise by 11% to $8.8bn. Not a bad day at the office for them.
Quote of the week
"While it is February one can taste the full joys of anticipation. Spring stands at the gate with her finger on the latch." - Patience Strong