🏛️  AI joins city council

👋  Good morning. And bless you! If you’re already sneezing, you might not want to save your most important project for allergy season. Scientists in Finland studied 14 years of high school final exams from nearly 100k teenagers and found that students consistently did worse on days when pollen was present. Every extra 10 grains per cubic meter of alder pollen was linked to a small but measurable drop in scores, with similar effects for hazel pollen. During peak bloom, that impact adds up. So, if your spring performance review isn’t what you’d hoped for, blame the trees. 

STARTING UP

An app takes chronic illness management out of the doctor’s office 

❌  The problem: Three in four American adults have at least one chronic health condition, but sporadic appointments leave patients managing their treatment plans on their own.

💡  The pitch: Frankfurt-based Oska Health wants to give people support outside the doctor’s office. The startup's app brings video- and chat-based online coaching to users to help them make sense of lab results, interpret doctor’s orders, and implement nutrition and exercise habits into their daily lives. For physicians, Oska promises more personalized care, offloading time-consuming conversations, and making sure patients are following recommendations. 

🚀  The outlook: Oska has already partnered with 20+ health insurers in Germany and is growing at more than a 8x rate, according to investors.

NEWS FLASH

• Lights, camera, inaction: Luxury movie chain iPic has filed for bankruptcy, citing a drop in attendance and unfavorable box office deals. The chain offers comfy seating and an elevated menu, but has struggled to recover from a 2019 bankruptcy filing followed by the pandemic. 
  

• You’ve probably wanted to set your phone on fire, which is entirely possible with Oukitel’s WP63, a smartphone with an electric igniter for camping or if you get stranded on a desert island. It also has a loudspeaker and a built-in USB-C charger to power other devices.
  

• Grow is growing: Grow Therapy, a startup that matches patients with mental health professionals who take their insurance, is now worth $3B and is expanding to include primary care and deals with employers.

• That’s fast: Diagnostics firm Droplet Biosciences will use Nvidia’s AI infrastructure to expedite cancer testing. Droplet analyzes cancer patients’ post-surgery lymphatic fluid to detect the disease in just 24 hours, whereas blood tests usually take 4-6 weeks. 
  

FROM OUR FRIENDS AT MINDSTREAM

“First of all, you’re not broken…”

Has ChatGPT given you an overly emotional or plain-old patronizing response to a simple question?

You’re not alone — in fact, OpenAI is rolling out an update designed specifically to reduce those kinds of responses.

👉  Read more on Mindstream.

THE BIG IDEA

Local government, but more accessible (and hilarious)
Occasionally, you’ll see a clip from a city council meeting so ridiculous, it could be a scene from “Parks & Recreation.” But we can assure you, such meetings do get wild sometimes.
Startup Hamlet posts a bevy of odd public comment videos to social media, including: 

• A man representing the “Rent is Too Damn High” party.
  
• A Pastafarian — perhaps familiar to anyone who was very online in the early aughts.
  
• This woman with a fair point, actually.

It’s funny, sure. But it’s part of Hamlet’s larger mission to get people more involved in local government by making city council meetings more accessible, and to offer valuable data to its enterprise clients.
How it started
Sunil Rajaraman is a serial entrepreneur who previously launched media site The Bold Italic and co-founded Scripted, a marketplace connecting businesses with freelance writers.
He told The Hustle that he was inspired to found Hamlet after running for public office in Orinda, California — which he did after walking past a sign that said it was short city council candidates.
He didn’t win, but he did experience first-hand how “opaque” local government can be.
City councils decide on the issues that impact our daily lives, whether that’s where a stop sign goes or if a proposed development project can proceed. Yet while the public is invited to comment, many citizens can’t sit through hourslong meetings.

Rajaraman found himself using AI to parse lengthy meetings, and now, that’s what Hamlet does. It takes online video recordings of city council meetings, summarizes them, and makes them searchable.

• Citizens and journalists can use a free search tool to find various topics from 1.2k+ US cities and counties and jump right to where they’re mentioned.
  
• As a paid service, Hamlet can track projects or agendas. This is useful for real estate developers, political action groups, nonprofits, or anyone interested in a specific issue — e.g., housing, zoning, data center development, etc.
  
• Hamlet also publishes The District, a weekly deep dive, like this piece that explores why Ann Arbor, Michigan’s city council has the highest dissent rate in the US. 

Even more data-driven products are on the way as Hamlet evolves.
“We view it as we need to become the local government company for citizens, for journalists, for government, and for private companies,” Rajaraman said. “That whole ecosystem has to work for an American city to work. And if we can head in that direction, we're excited about that.”

Oh, before you go: Here’s a man who break dances to, shockingly, no applause.

🔗

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Want to connect to your audience? Try the “said no prospect ever” test. Here’s how to do it.

NEWSWORTHY NUMBER

How much the aviation industry could cut emissions by, if only airlines would get rid of business class, according to a new study. All that extra legroom comes with huge environmental costs that researchers say could be drastically mitigated by reorganizing cabin layouts to seat more fliers — but are airlines willing to prioritize the planet over profits? 

Not likely: business and first-class travelers, who make up ~12% of total airline passengers, are up to 5x more carbon-intensive compared to economy passengers, but 2x as lucrative, accounting for up to 75% of profits.

AROUND THE WEB

📅  On this day: In 1960, newspaper photographer Alberto Korda took the famous photo of Ernesto “Che” Guevara at a funeral for workers killed in a Cuban port explosion.
🖌️  That’s cool: Discover and make tessellation art.
📰  Newsletter: The Wrap delivers need-to-know stories and major market movements.
🏴‍☠️  Game: You run a shipping company. But watch out for pirates!
🐶  Aww: They were waiting for you.

SHOWER THOUGHT

Reflecting on the accuracy of a memory makes it less accurate. SOURCE

Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Singdhi Sokpo.
Editing by: Sara "Checking the minutes" Friedman.

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