👋 Good morning. We said it to you, and now maybe you should go say it to your neighbor? Fewer Americans are speaking with their neighbors at all: In 2012, 51% of young Americans regularly engaged with their neighbors, while today that number has reached just 25%, according to a report from AEI. It goes deeper than social anxiety — technology is likely to blame for stopping young people from seeking connections with their neighbors IRL. But what happens if they need to borrow an egg for late-night brownies?
Want to play pickleball with us? We’re teaming up with Starter Story and The Dink to host the Founders Open at New York Tech Week. Come say hi, grab a paddle, and get networking. RSVP here.
NEWS FLASH
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🚀 To the moon: NASA is testing out a next-gen computer chip that’s 500x more powerful than current space chips and would allow spacecraft to make decisions autonomously. Designed to withstand extreme temperatures and radiation, the chip would let spacecraft react to issues in real time instead of waiting for commands from Earth. The chip has shown promising results so far and, if successful, could speed up scientific discovery and help power future missions to the moon and Mars.
📚 End of an era: For 133 years, Princeton University employed an honor code during exams. Students promised not to cheat and that was enough. Now, faculty has voted to implement proctoring in all in-person exams beginning this summer thanks to AI, which the school says both professors and students believe has led to “widespread” cheating. In a student newspaper survey of 500+ seniors, 30% admitted to cheating, while 50%+ said they knew of an honor code violation. Of those, less than 1% made a report, fearing backlash.
💪 Who wants to live forever? Bryan Johnson, the tech entrepreneur who’s spent millions trying to reduce his biological age and live longer, shared the top 41 things he’s learned about longevity. They include obvious tips around sleeping well, eating healthy food, and exercising, but also avoiding social media and seeing at least one friend per week. The kicker? “Do less… most things don’t work.”
MORE NEWS TO KNOW
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What’s up, doc? Fitness tracker Whoop will soon allow US members to book on-demand video chats with licensed clinicians for an unknown fee on top of its $359 annual fee.
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LinkedIn live: LinkedIn wants to host up to 4k creator-led events per year as a new revenue stream, starting with 50 creators in the second half of the year.
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Keeping it in the fam: Family businesses drive roughly a quarter of US GDP and employment, and you’ll definitely see some familiar names on the new Forbes list: Walmart, run by the Walton family, topped the list with $713B in revenue.
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Can you hear me now? AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon are teaming up in a newly proposed joint venture to pool spectrum resources and eliminate wireless dead zones in the US.
BOOST YOUR BUDGET
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THE BIG IDEA
Dark sky tourism is a booming business
For many of the world's 4B urbanites, travel has become an opportunity to chase one thing city life can't give them: darkness.
With the night sky becoming an increasingly rare sight, more starry-eyed travelers are planning trips around dark sky tourism, AKA astrotourism — a fast-growing industry worth ~$10B and projected to double by 2035 — hoping to catch a glimpse of the cosmos where they’re still visible, per Outside Magazine.
- The night sky got brighter by 9.6% annually between 2011 and 2022, according to one study.
- Sixty-two percent of travelers are interested in dark-sky destinations, according to Booking.com’s 2025 travel predictions.
All the hype has fueled some innovative businesses offering out-of-this-world views.
Seeing stars and lucrative opportunities
For unobstructed views of celestial bodies and phenomena, train rides from Nevada to Norway offer late-night trips into remote regions, ranging from $15 to $300+ and providing telescopes, guidance from professional astronomers, and sometimes Champagne, too (it’s still a vacation, after all).
At several hotels, darkness has become an amenity. Some, like Iceland's Hotel Rangá and the Anantara Kihavah Hotel in the Maldives, staff resident astronomers and “sky gurus,” while others feature private observatories and rooms with glass ceilings for stargazing.
Other starry adventures include everything from twilight canoeing to Indigenous-led aurora hunts.
Dark sky tourism’s bright future
The popularity of astrotourism has also spurred the growth of Dark Sky Preserves — areas with minimal light pollution, certified by the nonprofit DarkSky International — and inspired cities and towns, from India to New Zealand, to reclaim the night sky for both residents and tourists.
But stunning views and tourist dollars aren’t the only benefits of a dark night sky.
- Many ecosystems that rely on darkness are endangered by light pollution, making efforts to preserve dark skies vital to wildlife conservation and protection.
- Cosmological research also relies on it (which is why DarkSky is fighting one startup’s plans to reflect sunlight back to Earth after dark.)
- Plus, one 2024 study found people who feel strongly connected to the night sky tend to experience greater happiness and better mental health.
BTW: Wanna plan your own dark sky trip? Check out DarkSky’s map of 200+ preserves to find a stargazing spot near you.
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NEWSWORTHY NUMBER
Atom bombs worth of energy that would be dumped each day into Utah’s Hansel Valley if a proposed “hyperscale” data center ends up being built there, based on calculations from Utah physicist Robert Davies, per The Salt Lake Tribune. With a thermal load of 16 gigawatts (the entire state consumes less than five), the so-called Stratos Project’s impact on the local ecosystem would be catastrophic.
If A-bombs aren’t a unit of measurement you’re able to comprehend, Davies also said the 40k-acre facility would have an energy footprint equivalent to 2k Walmart supercenters stacked 20 deep — you don’t need a physics degree to know that’s a whole freaking lot.
AROUND THE WEB
📅 On this day: In 1905, Las Vegas, Nevada, was founded.
📷 That’s cool: Check out these award-winning nature photographs.
🗞️ Newsletter: Semafor Media covers the forces transforming the media industry.
😓 Haha: Keep the employee’s Slack dot green.
🐈 Aww: How to climb stairs when you’re very small.
SHOWER THOUGHT
Vampire bites turning people into vampires is extremely disadvantageous to their survival. SOURCE
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Editing by: Sara "Wishing on a star" Friedman.
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