Hello! What would have been one of the largest strikes in US history looks to have been averted, as a tentative deal seems to have been struck between UPS and the Teamsters union:
NeXt chapter
Twitter is dead, and an X marks the spot where its iconic blue bird once perched. While Elon Musk’s latest change may have taken some by surprise, with “X” users rushing to “X” their views about the “X” redesign, his preoccupation with (and plans around) the 24th letter actually go way back.
In 1999, Musk founded X.com, an online bank that merged with Confinity to become PayPal just a year later. Now, his biographer Walter Isaacson says, the Tesla CEO is ready to complete his original vision from nearly 25 years ago — turning X into a one-stop everything platform.
Everything, everywhere, all in one app
Everything apps, or “super-apps”, are platforms where the user can fulfill a variety of tasks from one centralized hub. That means playing minigames in the same place you message your loved ones, or reading the latest news on the app that you transfer a friend the $10 you owe them. Super-apps are huge in Asia and Musk’s goal will be to try and replicate the biggest of them all — WeChat.
Indeed, in a town hall event for Twitter employees back in June 2022, Musk explained that people in China “basically live on WeChat because it’s so usable and helpful to daily life”. The app’s 1.32 billion monthly active users — who can hail taxis, order food, pay their bills, read books, message people, post pictures, and much more — would likely agree with Musk on that point too.
Apparently, the mogul wants X to be even bigger, though. Axios observed that Musk’s tellings herald the app as “Twitter + Substack + YouTube + PayPal + Amazon + TikTok + WeChat + Baidu” rolled into one. The everything app for everything apps, then.
Not a care in the world
US stocks have climbed 19% already this year, taking the flagship S&P 500 Index to just a few percent below its all-time high from December 2021. Meanwhile, Wall Street’s “Fear Index” — the Volatility Index (VIX) — is scraping new lows.
The VIX tracks how much investors expect stock prices to fluctuate over the coming month. In simple terms, when the VIX is higher, it means investors expect prices to move around a lot (i.e. they're more uncertain), and when it's lower it means they don't expect prices to move around much.
The latest reading is a little over 13. The last time it was this low? February 2020, just before the pandemic sent it above 80 — the kind of "call your family and go full panic mode" readings that are only seen in global crises.
Explaining why stocks are doing what they're doing is notoriously difficult, but at least 3 things seem to be helping investors get comfortable. The big one is inflation, which has peaked and looks to be falling steadily, giving the Federal Reserve leeway to slow down on future interest rate rises. Another is the banking sector, which is reporting strong results after a big wobble earlier this year, when a number of banks suddenly collapsed. More generally, the risk of a recession also seems to have receded, with consumer confidence levels hitting their highest point in 2 years and unemployment hovering near all-time lows in many states.
Ripe for disruption
It’s big news for brunch enthusiasts: agricultural scientists at the University of California have unveiled their latest development, the product of more than 50 years of selective breeding — a new variety of avocado.
Trademarked as the ‘Luna UCR’, but known officially as the BL516, the Luna is the great-granddaughter of the Hass avocado, the world’s most popular variety, and has been bred to offer consumers high storage quality, excellent ripening, and, of course, great taste and texture.
However, when pitted against the Hass, the Luna is reported to have a few notable advantages for growers. Its smaller tree size allows for denser planting, yielding more fruit per meter, as well as minimal pruning and efficient harvesting. The global effects of climate change have also meant that the Hass’ intolerance to extreme heat (did you know that avocados can get sunburn?) and sensitivity to pests could make the hardier Luna a promising option for farmers.
Since the early 2000s, the US market has seen demand for avocados boom, with availability tripling from over 2 pounds per person in 2001 to more than 8 pounds per capita in 2021 — that’s 20 years of seeing millennials making more avocado toast and buying fewer houses.
To satiate our appetite for the fruit, the US relies heavily on imports, since domestic avocado production and acreage have slowly declined since 2011. Indeed, imported avocados now account for 90% of supply in the US — with the overwhelming majority of those coming from Mexico, a trade that’s worth some $3.1bn a year.
• Intergalactic ambitions: 55% of Americans are anticipating routine space tourism to become available within the next 50 years.
• Parents are paying up to $4k to hire consultants and coaches to secure sorority spots for their daughters.
• Companies are exceeding expectations, with some 78% of those that have disclosed Q2 earnings reporting better than predicted numbers.
• More than 50 whales have died in a mass "stranding event" in Western Australia, with officials and volunteers working to save as many as possible.
• So far this year, 4.24 billion people have lived in the shadow of digital censorship — these are the countries most affected by the issue.
• Dinner time: charting when different states sit down to eat.
Guess the trend: Spotify had a good start to 2023, but just how quickly did monthly active users grow in Q2? [Answers + options below].
