🪳  Roaches to the rescue

👋  Good morning. If you’re swearing off alcohol after the weekend’s festivities, Heineken has an opportunity for you. The brand is partnering with OpenTable on a pilot program that rewards diners who volunteer to be the designated driver with perks like rideshare vouchers and free nonalcoholic beer. The concept was inspired by research showing 71% of Americans are more likely to make safe ride home plans if prompted at the time of booking a reservation. 

NEWS FLASH 

💉  Talk about a lasting first impression: AI startup LemonLime is facing backlash after promising instant job interviews to people who got tattoos of the startup’s logo at a company event. Seven attendees got inked, and LemonLime’s founder publicly apologized with a LinkedIn post, saying he “messed up” and that the company would cover any tattoo removal costs for those waking up a little sore and regretful.

🧠  Rethinking cognitive health: Startup Mantis Biotech developed Parva, software that tracks how users type and click to flag cognitive changes against their own historical baseline instead of population averages. The company says the approach could better capture conditions like long COVID, ADHD, dementia, and perimenopause — especially in women, whose symptoms can fluctuate between doctor appointments and have historically been harder to measure.

🛍️  AI shops local: A Seattle-area startup founded by a plumber is building an AI-powered marketplace that lets shoppers browse inventory from nearby retailers and get same-day delivery. Its shopping assistant, Savvy, learns users' sizes, style preferences, and budgets to recommend products. The company aims to sign retail partners ahead of a planned September launch and its founder says the goal is to make shopping local as convenient as ordering takeout.

MORE NEWS TO KNOW

• Aiming high: New Xbox CEO Asha Sharma outlined her team’s ultimate new goal — 1B daily users (with a pit stop at 500m by 2030). Real ambitious, seeing as how they serve ~100m daily gamers today.
  

• Teens being teens: Australia’s under-16 social media ban has been in place for three months. It’s great in theory, but in practice? A new survey found over 81% of kids still using at least one banned platform.
  

• Also happening Down Under: Target and Kmart are selling $89 Camera Glasses in Australian stores, democratizing recording wearables (Meta’s smart glasses start at $469) — and inflaming public debate about nonconsensual filming. 
  

• No bell-ringing here: More consumer companies are delaying IPOs — compared to the 743 new listings in 2021 — as plentiful private funding and booming secondary markets make going public less appealing.
  

PROMOTION PUSH

Salary talk got your tongue?

You've crushed every project, hit every deadline, and somehow still go full deer-in-headlights the second money enters the conversation.

It's painful. It's preventable.

The Hustle’s free salary negotiation kit arms you with 15 scripts for every money conversation you've been avoiding:

• Counter offer: Walk back a low-ball without burning the bridge
• Raise request: Make the case when the timing feels impossible
• New job offer: Push past that first number — they're always expecting it
• Promotion push: Tie your ask to results, not vibes

Stop winging the most important conversation of your career.

Grab the scripts

THE BIG IDEA

Cyborg roaches to the rescue?

Nobody wants to see cockroaches around the house — but if one of those little dudes showed up to save you from a disaster, you'd be stoked.

Researchers have developed a special diving suit for cyborg cockroaches — yes, cyborg roaches — allowing them to survive and maneuver underwater and in low-oxygen environments to assist in search-and-rescue operations, per Tech Xplore.

They're doing what now?

We've all heard about how cockroaches would likely survive a nuclear apocalypse (thanks, "MythBusters"), but most of us don't give much thought to how those resilient insects might aid in our own survival.

Scientists from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Singapore and Waseda University in Japan, however, did in a new study.

• Madagascar hissing cockroaches (as if that wasn't enough) are fitted with electronic controllers to guide their movements remotely without the cumbersome batteries of artificial robots.
  
• The cyborg cockroaches are outfitted with an oxygen generation tank, a flexible shell, and four silicone tubes to supply oxygen to their spiracles, which they use instead of lungs.
  
• The tank contains manganese dioxide and when diluted hydrogen peroxide is added, it breaks down to produce oxygen.
  
• They can then navigate underwater or on land for up to three hours and through heavy rain, flooding, rubble, drains, and narrow gaps.

And the cyborg insects have already proved their mettle: the team deployed cockroaches equipped with infrared cameras and sensors during Myanmar’s 7.7-magnitude earthquake in March 2025, where they relayed information to identify signs of life.

Now that they can survive underwater, they have a greater potential for assisting in other rescue operations, as well as inspecting flooded pipes, tunnels, and other hard-to-reach infrastructure.

These scuba-wearing cyborg cockroaches are far from the only biohybrids out there.

• German startup SWARM Biotactics raised $11.4m to develop biorobotic insects for defense, surveillance, and rescue.
  
• Researchers are also exploring bionic jellyfish, robots controlled by king oyster mushrooms, and muscle-powered robots (yikes).
  
• Meanwhile, others are looking to insects for inspiration, like these RoboBees.
  
• On a human scale, others are exploring a variety of biomedical applications, including sperm microrobots and brain implants.

While fascinating, these applications also raise plenty of ethical questions.

Personally, I'd opt for a future of cockroaches and Wall-E over a war against the machines.

Share this story

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

America has a lumber problem… and one former SpaceX engineer thinks grass is the fix. 

NEWSWORTHY NUMBER

Page visits to OnlyMarms, an OnlyFans account run by UCLA wildlife researchers, who’ve turned to the adult-content platform for funding following federal cuts to scientific research, per The New York Times. Since launching in June, OnlyMarms has attracted ~112 subs and generated ~$650 in tips.

But before you race off to check it out, just know you won’t find any scientist feet pics on display — the G-rated account only features “uncensored marmot content,” which is the team’s cheeky way of referring to videos of wild marmots, not “marmots gone wild.”

AROUND THE WEB

📅  On this day: In 1996, “The Macarena” hit No. 1 on American pop charts. It would go on to spend 60 weeks on the “Billboard Hot 100” — more than any other song in history.

🇺🇸  That’s interesting: A flag research engine.

♟️  Game: Chess with a spin.

🙏  What’s happening here?: Honor a pug in a rug.

🐶  Aww: So smoll.

SHOWER THOUGHT

Time might be the only measurement you can discuss anywhere in the world without first converting the units. SOURCE

Today's email was brought to you by Singdhi Sokpo and Danny Jensen.

Editing by: Sara "Bugging out" Friedman.

Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.
Working on something big?
We've got a whole library of business-building resources for you.

Subscribe to our other newsletters
Grow your business: Starter Story | Stay up-to-date on AI: Mindstream    

Expert insights: Marketing Against the Grain | Sell better: The Science of Scaling

Follow The Hustle on YouTube, LinkedIn, and Instagram.