There is some serious under-representation in the world of emojis
Vibrating stomach pills, streaming and illegal fishing feature this week.
Hello,
Welcome to 2024 and a whole new year of Stuff!
I was going to write to you over the Christmas break but unfortunately, I turned into a mince pie and as we all know, baked festive treats are not great at writing newsletters.
It’s going to be a busy old year, the world is going to do a lot more 360s and the odd 180 but The Business of Stuff is here to help you navigate through the melodrama that is humanity. Mostly this will be in the form of your weekly news round-up which you can read below but there are some other exciting, multimedia and quite frankly multidimensional plans in the pipeline.
I hope you have an excellent January, I’m still working my way through the chocolates and snacks accrued over the festive period which has really taken the edge off I must say. Time to pop on a podcast about gut health and do some stretching for a bit.
Go that way,
Hugo
Chief Navigator
The Business of Stuff
The Stuff
Amazon is responsible for over a fifth of online packages 📦 - in the week of Black Friday 21% of global online orders were shipped by Amazon and this went up to 29% in the two weeks before Christmas as everyone scrambled to get their presents sorted. Procrastination clearly works in their favour, always a good thing when your business model aligns with human nature. I reckon Etsy is in this year, it's no coincidence Amazon rhymes with Babylon.
75% of industrial fishing vessels aren’t tracked 🎣 - no one calls the oceans the wild west but you could if you wanted to because a lot is happening that’s not currently monitored. Global Fishing Watch, a Google-backed non-profit, has used satellite imagery and AI to demonstrate this, publishing pictures in Nature this week. They’re worth a gander.
Invertebrates are majorly underrepresented when it comes to emojis 🐛 - things have clearly been a bit quiet over at Scientific American as they decided to survey the fauna and flora in the emoji kingdom to assess representation levels. Turns out it's suffering from an even greater biodiversity crisis than the real world, to effectively represent the animal kingdom there would need to be a further 1,068 arthropods available for you to send to your pals. That’s not to mention the 23 roundworms required.
How much is Twitter/X worth now 🐦 - although X is no longer a publicly traded company, shareholders still need to estimate its value for their books and Mutual Fidelity, who own a stake, have written down their investment by 71%. Some advertisers are boycotting the platform over the loosening of censorship rules which has seen a rise in horrid content on the platform.
Streaming services are dealing with a lot of churn 👋 - I finally cancelled my Disney+ subscription after several months of meaning to watch The Bear. The thing is when I want to watch The Bear, I can just restart it, that’s what I realised. There’s too much choice anyway and this is showing as the number of people cancelling different services has gone up by more than 10%.
Vibrating stomach pills are the next diet thing 💊 - if the gym and/or Ozempic didn’t work, you’re in luck. Scientists are studying a new pill that vibrates in your stomach for 38 minutes, stimulating the nerve endings that tell your brain you’re full. Pigs ate up to 40% less after consuming the pill in a test.
Yondr has found a new customer base 📳 - the company makes bags that lock magnetically so people can’t use their phones at gigs. They’ve been very popular with comedians and musicians but are now being used in schools to stop pupils from using their phones in lessons. Did somebody new use case? They must be chuffed. When I was a lad, if you got caught with a phone you were taken outside and shot.
FarmVille no longer a cash crop for Zynga 👩🌾 - the company is a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive which they purchased for $12billion last year, but mobile gaming revenues are declining in general and it’s clear they bought the company at the peak of its value. I’m really amazed to hear people still play FarmVille at all to be honest, but it’s just as surprising to me that hundreds of millions of people still use Facebook regularly.
Beefeater have been fiddling with their alcohol content 🍸 - they’ve been decreasing the strength of their gin which has left cocktailists in uproar as they have to keep rebalancing their concoctions to the point that many are now boycotting it. Many spirit companies have made the alcohol content of their standard ranges the lowest it can be to still call it a spirit (40%) in order to lower costs.
Met police looking into Post Office scandal 📭 - in the wake of the decades-long Horizon fiasco which saw postmasters accused of theft (and go to prison) thanks to a dodgy IT system, the Met is examining whether there was fraud committed in the attempts to cover it up. It goes to show the power of a good TV dramatisation as it is essentially because of Mr Bates vs The Post Office on ITV that there’s been renewed interest.
Quote of the week
“It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.”
Ram Dass