🍻 Another round

👋  Good morning. If you get a rush from stalking your loved ones on the Find My app, you might enjoy this: Scientists have attached tiny $200 tags to 1.75k monarch butterflies to track their travels over thousands of miles. The research could help protect the winged creatures as the species fights against habitat loss, pesticides, and climate change. Don’t worry, the tags won’t hurt them — they weigh about as much as a drop of water. Need to stop tracking your ex’s whereabouts? Maybe download the Project Monarch Science app instead. (We’re just trying to help.)

NEWS FLASH 

💪  Get in, bro, we’re going to pilates: Pilates is having a major moment with men, with 4.1m of them taking Pilates classes nationally last year, up from 2m in 2021, according to the Health and Fitness Association. The number of men taking Pilates on fitness app ClassPass has nearly tripled since 2023, and male participation in Pilates classes is up 50%+ in the last 18 months at Equinox gyms.

🤓  The sound of silence: If your neighbor at Starbucks looks like they're muttering to themselves, don't worry: they might be chatting with their glasses. San Francisco startup Subvocal Company is developing glasses that detect subtle facial movements made when forming words and translates them into text. The specs use radio-frequency sensing to detect changes in muscle movements and can reportedly process 200+ words per minute. Subvocal has raised $1.3m, with pre-orders available for $499.

💧 Don't be so salty: Portugal-based cleantech startup Seamoretech raised $1.2m in its seed round to make good use of brine, the super-concentrated saline waste from desalination that's typically dumped back into the ocean. The company's technology extracts additional freshwater from brine while recovering high-value minerals, including magnesium, calcium, copper, and lithium. The company claims to double freshwater yield, cut energy consumption by 50%, reduce operating costs by 30%, and lower carbon emissions by 80% compared to conventional mining.

MORE NEWS TO KNOW

• 3D in 0-G: German startup Orbital Matter 3D-printed a half-meter-long rigid beam in space with its Replicator 2 satellite, paving the way to building large structures like solar arrays directly in orbit instead of shuttling them to space inside rockets.
  
• Breaking up is hard to do: CVS Health announced plans to split its pharmacy and insurance businesses into separate public companies by 2028. The split would reverse CVS’s $78B Aetna acquisition and separate its ~9k retail pharmacies from Caremark. 
  
  
• Bot-picked berries: South Korean startup Beyond Robotics developed a two-armed robot, known as Picky, that can harvest and sort 13k strawberries a day using AI and 3D cameras to gently pluck only the ripest of berries.
  
• Another Jurassic Park reboot? Paleontologists discovered mineralized red blood cells inside fossils of a 115m-year-old dinosaur — something previously thought impossible. The finding could help improve our understanding of blood's evolution and dinosaur activity, and find similar traces of life in the universe. 
  

FROM OUR FRIENDS AT MINDSTREAM

A very expensive game of Frankenstein

Anthropic just warned that its AI models could soon get good enough to help build the next, more powerful version of themselves — a concept called recursive self-improvement (RSI).

None of Anthropic’s current models have hit that threshold yet, but the company says it’s already reworking its safety rules to make sure humans stay in the loop if and when they do... Sounds fine.

👉 Read more on Mindstream.

THE BIG IDEA

From social media 'misfire' to beer-drinking empire

These days, it can be tough to keep track of time or even remember what day it is. But anyone working a nine-to-five knows when Friday comes around. And when the clock strikes five, it’s time for a beer.

Yes, sure, the sudsy kind, but also the digital media and comedy brand, Friday Beers. 

What started as a social media channel that resonated with that off-the-clock feeling has grown into Almost Friday Media: 25+ brands, including Friday Beers, with 20+ creators, 40m+ followers, and 2B+ impressions per quarter.

“The people who weren't returning our emails before started being like, ‘Oh my God, they have 100k followers, 150k followers, 250k followers,’” Almost Friday co-founder and CEO Jack Barrett told The Hustle.

How it started

Friday Beers was founded in 2019 by Jack and Max Barrett, brothers seeking jobs in television writing.

“When we started the account, it was the greatest misfire of all time," Jack said.

As it turns out, this social channel was the refreshing sip everyone needed.

• Growth was completely organic; fans shared videos with friends, who in turn passed them on to their friends.
  
• Covid gave a boost: posts about missing the bar kept followers pouring in.

By the end of 2021, a choice had to be made: call it a night as a small comedy social media account selling T-shirts with their logo, or order another round.

"If running Friday Beers is a five out of 10, then [Almost Friday Media] could be a 12 out of 10," Jack said.

Another round it was. Almost Friday built a team and started expanding the brand.

How it's going

Turns out the misfire wasn’t a misfire at all. Since doubling down, the brand made deals with some major outlets:

• Almost Friday TV wrote "Last Night Was a Movie," a show sold to FX.
  
• It shot the movie Boys for Life in South Africa this summer for Paramount (or whatever it’s called now).
  
• It produced 24 YouTube episodes alongside Netflix's "On Campus" college football series.

They have also dipped their toes into IRL libations: 

• The Almost Friday Sporting Club in Nashville
  
• Friday Beers, a beer brewed by Saranac
  
• A possible space in the Los Angeles International Airport
  
• Partnerships with BetMGM, White Claw, Celsius, and Fireball

The goal: to create on every platform where people consume content.

"We are focused on making it bigger,” Jack said.

Share this story

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Have a passion project podcast? These lessons on monetization, grinding, and getting started could make it your career. 

NEWSWORTHY NUMBER

Labor share of income — AKA the percentage of the US’s total economic output that goes to workers through wages and salaries — as of the second quarter of 2026, the lowest level ever recorded by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

One culprit behind our shrinking piece of the economic pie: the AI boom, which has boosted corporate profits to historic highs while displacing workers and diminishing labor’s bargaining position.

What’s worse? Apparently, we haven’t hit the floor yet: Economists told CNN the labor share could fall below 50% by 2030. Welp.

AROUND THE WEB

📅  On this day: In 1994, 45-year-old George Foreman beat 26-year-old Michael Moorer to become boxing’s oldest-ever heavyweight champion.

🚽  Kinda gross but interesting: The history of the bedpan.

👣  That’s cool: An artist dedicated to “walking men” pedestrian icons from around the world.

⚾  Long read: The Dominican Republic produces the most pro baseball players of any country, but the pipeline to the majors has a dark side.

🦁  Aww: The king of aging gracefully.

SHOWER THOUGHT

Somewhere out there, there’s a baby whose name was chosen by ChatGPT.
 SOURCE

Today's email was brought to you by Ben Berkley, Danny Jensen, and Bill Meincke.

Editing by: Sara "Almost Friday" Friedman.

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