Extreme weather? Routine maintenance? Cyberattack? None of the usual suspects were at fault when ~15k Montana residents lost electricity three different times last week — it was just somepesky squirrels doing damage to a local substation.
In today’s email:
Power nap: Even your sleep is getting competitive.
Things are gr-r-rim: Cereal sales have seen better days.
Digits: Too many lattes, pricey dates, Halloween spend, and more.
Around the web: A wild singing technique, an author’s take on AI writing, slo-mo cuteness, and more.
👇 Listen: The gamification of your sleep.
You snooze, you lose
Don’t sleep on this: Tech is gamifying your Z’s
People are using wearables to gamify their sleeping habits.
2023-09-25T00:00:00Z
Sara Friedman
If counting sheep hasn’t been helping you fall asleep lately, you might want to consider a spreadsheet.
No, seriously. According to The Wall Street Journal, people are using wearable tech to measure and track their sleep:
The Oura Ring, which retails for $300 plus a monthly membership, uses infrared LED lights to track biometrics.
The Whoop wristband requires a $250 annual membership and uses an app to track bodily stats.
The Apple Watch has a sleep app that lets users track time spent in each sleep stage.
And today’s sleepyheads are using all sorts of tools to score more shut-eye and boost their numbers:
Mouth taping, sleep masks, blackout curtains, and smart alarm clocks are popular on social media — the hashtag #sleep has amassed 37.6B+ views on TikTok alone.
Where there are stats…
… there are people keeping score. So it’s not surprising that sleep tracking is being gamified.
Pokemon Sleep tracks sleep and rewards players with higher scores and more Pokemon depending on how they snooze. The app, released earlier this summer, has already been downloaded 10m+ times.
There’s also Sleepagotchi, an app that rewards players for sticking to their sleep goals, which has raised $3.5m in funding.
Too much of a good thing
While prioritizing healthy sleep habits and getting enough rest are vital to staying healthy, too much pressure on sleep can have the opposite effect.
Researchers have already coined the term “orthosomnia” to describe the “obsessive pursuit of optimal sleep metrics.”
And all that obsessing over sleep can lead to some serious anxiety, which — you guessed it — can make it hard to fall asleep.
Free Resource
First impressions start with your profile
LinkedIn as a social platform? A for effort, yet often despicable.
But LinkedIn as a job-hunting joint?Makes a lot of sense.
Considering it’s where career hustlers hang, we baked you this gleaming guide on how to spruce up your LinkedIn profile — and take your personal page from good to great.
A giant vegetable competition in the UK saw one man sweep five categories — cabbage, parsnip, carrot, beetroot, and cucumber — but he wasn’t even the day’s hero. Gardener (and veritable children’s book protagonist in the making) Gareth Griffin’s homegrown 19.7-pound onion is the biggest on record. If ever cut open, our eyes would water from across the pond.
SNIPPETS
McDonald’s is raising royalty fees for operators opening new franchise restaurants in the US and Canada. The increase, from 4% to 5%, is the first in nearly 30 years but won’t affect existing franchisees, who run ~95% of McDonald’s 13.4k US restaurants.
Amazon announced plans to start placing ads in Prime Video movies and TV shows starting in 2024. US Prime members can opt to pay an extra $2.99/month to go ad-free.
Warner Bros. Discovery is expanding the UK studio where Barbie and Harry Potter were filmed. The expansion, due to be completed in 2027, is expected to increase production capacity by over 50% and create 4k jobs.
Cisco is buying cybersecurity company Splunk for $28B. The all-cash deal shakes out to $157 per share — a 31% premium — and positions Cisco as a leader in AI-backed security.
Target launched a private-label kitchen brand called Figmint. Over half of the 250-item collection is under $10, and 95%+ of its packaging is plastic-free.
There’s a new sheriffin… Times Square’s subway station. And by sheriff, we mean the NYPD’s new 420-pound robot from manufacturer Knightscope, which can record video as it patrols during a two-month pilot.
The IRS will use info from sites like Ticketmaster and StubHub to tax resellers who made $600+ this year in an attempt to control exorbitant concert prices. (Lookin’ at you, Swift scalpers.)
Oof: Expend4bles pulled in  $8.3m during its box office debut, a franchise low. The cast has been unable to promote the film due to the ongoing actors’ strike.
Chart
Olivia Heller
The cereal industry’s forecast has no added sugar
Sales are in long-term decline and breakfast trends don’t give any reason for hope.
2023-09-25T00:00:00Z
Ben Berkley
In 2020, after years of declining sales, the cereal business saw a brief glimmer of hope — amid covid chaos, the comforting, shelf-stable goodness of a bowl of cereal experienced a resurgence.
Then normalcy returned, with the only “snap, crackle, pop” in the cereal aisle coming from executives’ crushed dreams.
How did we get here?
A look at the modern cereal business earned honorifics like “a slowly declining market” with a “depressed outlook” from The Wall Street Journal. Why?
Breakfast is on the outs: Last year, only 35% of Americans ate a daily breakfast, per Statista data.
When the meal happens, portability wins: Energy bars, protein shakes, and frozen breakfast options have all risen in popularity, much to cereal’s detriment.
Fast food has seized the daybreak: Decades ago, McDonald’s Egg McMuffin was the lone AM option, but almost every major chain now serves breakfast — and the menu expansions keep on coming.
What’s next?
More spoonfuls of bad news, probably. Cereal sales normalized post-covid, dropping 8.7% in 2021, then settled at a more normal rate of decline (down 3.9%) in 2022.
But even as the market shrinks, cereal is still a multibillion-dollar prize for General Mills, Kellogg, and Post to battle over.
General Mills is currently winning, with America’s two highest-selling cereals — Honey Nut Cheerios and Cinnamon Toast Crunch — and a strong market-share lead on Kellogg (34.2% to 25.9%).
And its lead may yet grow — The Motley Foolsays Kellogg is doing the “unthinkable” next month, as it splits off cereals from its larger empire.
BTW: How tall is Tony the Tiger? While freelancing for Kellogg, I once found an internal document stating he was 8 feet tall (the best fact I’ve seen in my life). But Frosted Flakes’ website now says he’s 6’3”. Hmm.
By the numbers
383.2B+: Possible latte variations Starbucks can make. Drink customizations add $1B+ in revenue annually — but workers loathe them and customers hate the wait times. Consequently, Starbucks invests billions toward finding ways to churn them out faster, including switching to smaller, easier-to-scoop ice cubes.
456:Competitors in Netflix’s upcoming “Squid Game: The Challenge” reality show. Maybe it’s a little weird for Netflix to turn its highest-viewed show — a South Korean drama about desperate people risking their lives for money — into a real competition to win $4.65m, but the question is… Will people watch?
$12.2B: How much Americans are expected to spend on Halloween this year, including an estimated $700m on pet costumes, per the National Retail Federation. With Barbie, Mario, and Spiderman among this year’s top costume influences, we can’t wait to see your French bulldog’s take on “Patriarchy Ken.”
$499: The monthly price of Tinder’s new subscription tier, Tinder Select. Perks include “VIP” search, matching, and more for “highly engaged” users. If that sounds expensive, Tinder parent Match Group Inc. also offers a $1k/week plan for The League, the invite-only dating app for ambitious professionals that it acquired for ~$30m in 2022.
AROUND THE WEB
👩⚖️ On this day: In 1981, Sandra Day O’Connor became the first woman to hold a seat on the US Supreme Court, where she served for nearly 25 years.
🧑🎤 Wow: Did you know people can sing two notes at the same time?
📩 Must read: The Neuron helps 150k+ readers stay ahead of AI news, tools, and strategies to boost productivity at work.
📚 That’s interesting: Author Vauhini Vara has gone viral for work she wrote with the help of generative AI. Now she reflects on that process, and what it means for literature.
🐹 Aww: And now, the slo-mo you never knew you needed.
meme
What are my weaknesses? How much time do you have? (Link)
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