👋 Good morning. Maybe let Claude rest today? MIT researchers found that AI can, in fact, weaken your brain. The study tracked students writing essays over four months, with one group using ChatGPT, one using a search engine, and one using nothing but their brains. The group using no technological aid showed the strongest brain connectivity, while search engine users were intermediate and the AI group showed the weakest. Further proving the point: In the first session, 83% of the AI users could not produce any quote from the essay they’d just written. Let that soak in (the old-fashioned way).
NEWS FLASH
🤖 Make robots fun again: That’s the mission of Dynamic Creatures, which emerged from stealth this week to ditch industrial bots in favor of something more… huggable. The company, founded by two Boston Dynamics alums, is building robotic characters for theme parks, casinos, and cruise ships, starting with a purple poodle named Danielle. The startup plans to launch its first pilots in 2027, with puppeteers in place to operate the fuzzy creatures while the AI learns what makes humans laugh.
💼 Every day I’m hustlin’ and so is everybody else, it seems: The share of Americans with a side hustle jumped from 19% in 2017 to 27% in 2025, with middle-income earners outpacing low earners significantly. College-educated workers grew from 35% of multiple jobholders in the 1990s to over half by 2024, and women (especially those aged 20-24) are driving the trend as AI shakes up an increasingly precarious job market.
🍬 Don’t act like you wouldn’t eat something called “Sprinkled Foamies”: The newest candy from European confectioner Cloetta is a “playful multisensory candy experience,” which is another way of saying they’ve mashed foaminess, crunchiness, and sourness into one candy. Sprinkled Foamies are Cloetta’s answer to the big consumer trend in candy: a desire for texture. That checks out here — Nerds Gummy Clusters sound great right now.
MORE NEWS TO KNOW
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Buzzy legal AI startup Harvey just got buzzier: The company just raised another $550m in funding — following a previous $200m round in March — at a $15.5B valuation.
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Booked and busy: Book club events on Eventbrite jumped 33% in the first half of the year, per Axios, driven by “hyper niche” meetups as younger generations search for in-person communities.
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The latest legitimization of creators… is their induction to the entertainment industry’s living rolodex, IMDb, which will now list “digital creators.”
- The protein-in-everything trend will never stop: Australia’s OMG, or Oat Milk Goodness, is rapidly accelerating growth of its protein oat milks. Listen, we still haven’t figured out how to deliver protein via newsletter and we’re sorry.
NO MORE BLIND SPOTS
Where are you leaking?
Not talkin’ gossip. We mean leads, because every business has some massive blind spots.
My First Million’s Channel Audit Kit is a full-scale checkup system for your social media, podcasts, and newsletters. Founders Sam and Shaan built this to analyze their status and surface inefficiencies — and you can, too.
THE BIG IDEA
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One man’s designer trash is another man’s side hustle
The next time you treat yourself to a little retail therapy, maybe reconsider tossing out the packaging your goodies came in — those empty boxes could help you undo some of the damage to your wallet.
On secondhand marketplaces like Vinted and eBay, original packaging for items ranging from designer bags to video game consoles are selling for hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of dollars.
- On eBay, there are 180k+ search results for “empty box.” On Poshmark, designer packaging is selling for as little as $3 and as much as $10k for bundles.
- Boxes of less collectible goods, like tech products (e.g., Apple, Nintendo, Dyson) and high-end makeup, are also commanding big bucks.
The trend, which has taken off since the pandemic, comes at the intersection of a booming resale market and social media culture.
So, who’s buying?
Resellers…
… who want the original packaging of the wares they’re trying to sell, which can significantly increase an item’s resale value.
- In 2021, a study by credit broker Money found boxes for high-end watch brands like Rolex and Omega commanded average resale prices of ~$200; today, you can find some going for well over $3k, per Wired.
That might seem like a stupid amount to pay for an empty box, but considering resale prices for certain luxury items, like purses and watches, can fluctuate by tens of thousands of dollars, the ROI can be worth it.
Counterfeiters…
… are also fueling the market for resold packaging, buying up authentic boxes to repackage knockoffs and market them as the real deal.
Some are even duping consumers by sending them branded boxes with nothing in them.
But worse than them are perhaps the clout chasers…
… who, according to one empty-box purveyor who spoke to Refinery29, have driven much of the demand.
- Small-time influencers and wannabes are purchasing them to dress up the backgrounds of their photos to project the image of a life they might not actually be able to afford to their followers.
- Or, social media researcher Tama Leaver told Wired, to make it seem like they have partnerships with high-end brands in hopes that they might actually score one.
Fake it till you make it, I guess.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
AI is the future… but what does that even mean? A $39B tech founder seems like a good person to make some predictions.
NEWSWORTHY NUMBER
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Flock cameras you can destroy in “GTA 5” using Grand Theft Automated License Plate Reader, a mod created by artist Morry Kolman, per Wired. In the game, players earn $600 for each of the surveillance cameras they destroy, though doing so in real life will only get you arrested. Flock cameras have been vandalized in at least 36 states.
For the record, Kolman says the mod is “not an endorsement” of the activities it rewards virtually (wink, wink), but maybe it should be... There’s definitely something to be said about a fictional dystopia drawing inspiration from the real world.
AROUND THE WEB
📅 On this day: In 1841, American portrait painter John Goffe Rand patented the first collapsible tin paint tube. Before that, artists stored leftover paint in animal bladders.
🧩 Game: A daily puzzle of a weird item from museum archives.
🍽️ Helpful: A database of restaurant health grades.
🚽 That’s interesting: The rise and fall of the public restroom.
🐱 Aww: Kitten puddle.
SHOWER THOUGHT
Because of time zones, you could die four hours before someone else but officially die a day after them. SOURCE
Today's email was brought to you by Ben Berkley and Singdhi Sokpo.
Editing by: Sara "Thinking outside the box" Friedman.
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