🪵  Lab-grown lumber

👋  Good morning. If you’re arriving at the office a little damp around the collar, there’s an app for that. Researchers at Arizona State University developed Cool Routes, an online navigation system that calculates sun exposure and temperatures to suggest cooler pedestrian paths. The system uses mean radiant temperatures, which take into account elements such as sun exposure and reflected heat. It unfortunately can’t help you avoid the heat you caught for missing that deadline. 

NEWS FLASH 

💸  Dollars and no sense: Americans aren’t so good with their money — and it’s only getting worse. Adults correctly answer about half of the Personal Finance Index’s 28 questions on average, according to researchers. While the average has never surpassed 52%, this year’s 47% was the lowest in the survey’s 10-year history. It’s worse than red marks on a quiz: Researchers say poor understanding of financial concepts makes people more likely to be “financially fragile” and unable to handle unexpected expenses.

👨🏻‍💻   Code so bad it’s good: The annual International Obfuscated C Contest asks contestants to code computer programs that work perfectly but are as difficult as possible for humans to understand by looking at the source code. Projects from the competition, founded in 1984, have included source code that doubles as a game of Pong, generates white noise, or simulates digging through Earth. Vibe coders could never.

🤖  A humble startup from a no-name founder: Jeff Bezos’s AI startup Prometheus just raised $12B at a $41B valuation to build an “artificial general engineer.” The startup’s AI tools would help engineers develop physical products faster and more efficiently, making it possible to speed up the “invention loop.”

MORE NEWS TO KNOW

• That’s a lot of chatting: OpenAI’s ChatGPT hit 1B monthly app users in May, according to Sensor Tower.
  
•  Special delivery: Alphabet-owned Wing and Walmart are expanding what they say is the nation’s largest drone delivery service into seven new markets as they aim to serve 10% of the US population by 2027.
  
• Extra, extra: A lawsuit filed last week alleges that The Washington Post used surveillance pricing to hike subscription costs for some subscribers based on their personal data. 
  
• Musk’s moonshot: SpaceX began trading on the stock market Friday under the ticker symbol SPCX with a $1.77T valuation, making Elon Musk the world’s richest man and first trillionaire in history. 
  

WIN WITH AI 

The only Gemini tips that matter

Jeff Su was Google’s worst salesman. And then one of its best. Last year, he left his 9-year stay to be a YouTube educator.

Over 1.67M people follow him for productivity systems, job-hunting advice, AI agent guides, and other workplace hacks. Here are his 7 essential Gemini tips that most folks overlook.

1. Skip the side panel model
2. Definitely enable this one setting
3. Reference many Google Drive files at once
4. Add Docs AI summary blocks
5. Describe Sheets formulas in plain English
6. Make stylized slide decks via NotebookLM
7. Build a searchable Meeting archive

Master Gemini

THE BIG IDEA

A startup sees the forest through the lab-grown trees

If a tree grows in the lab, could it change the future?

Trees famously take ages to grow, but Netherlands-based startup New Dawn Bio developed the world's first cultured wood that grows 10K times faster than conventional forestry without cutting a single tree, per TechFundingNews.

The startup secured an oversubscribed $2.4M pre-seed financing round for the innovative technology, which could revolutionize the wood and timber market, while preserving biodiverse forests and reducing carbon emissions.

Going out on a limb

Founded in 2023 by Tom Clement and Kianti Figler, New Dawn Bio took shape on the Wageningen Campus, Europe’s leading agricultural research center.

The company has found a way to grow pre-shaped premium wood, which is wild (and yet, not wild):

• Stem cells harvested from trees
  
• Cells multiplied in bio-reactors
  
• Cells given biological signals they'd receive inside a tree trunk
  
• Signals guide cells to harden into wood tissue in any desired shape

The company's current samples are only hand-sized — and include six different species — but bench-scale models are next.

New Dawn Bio estimates its cultured wood could reduce the cost of goods by 80% by eliminating waste from sawing, routing, drilling, and gluing.

Money might just grow on (lab-grown) trees

The demand for wood isn't going away.

• The global wood and timber products market was valued at $992B in 2024 and is projected to reach $1.25T by 2030.
  
• Around 12m acres of tropical forest are lost each year.
  
• Paper and wood products are the third largest driver of deforestation.

If New Dawn Bio can grow from hand-sized samples to an industrial scale, the company stands to help eliminate 2.1 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions annually due to deforestation and preserve the rich biodiversity of forests.

What can't they grow?

Other startups also exploring biomanufacturing include:

• Foray Bioscience developed a technique to grow plant-based materials.
  
• Ecovative uses mushrooms to create packaging, insulation, furniture, leather and meat substitutes.
  
• Cultivated Biomaterials grows leather from cells of a living cow.
  
• Galy developed lab-grown cotton, plus cocoa and coffee powders.

At this rate, your next kitchen may be grown in a lab — groceries and all.

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HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

No more Sports Authority… or Modell’s. Just the looming giant that is Dick’s Sporting Goods. Here’s how the brand built a $17B business off its competitors’ scraps. 

NEWSWORTHY NUMBER

Increase in US sales of dates in 2025, per Inc. The nutrient-rich fruit — representing a global market that’s expected to grow from $34.5B today to $55B+ by 2034 — is enjoying a boom in sales thanks to health-conscious consumers, who are increasingly forgoing ultraprocessed snacks in favor of better-for-you options, and social media, where viral videos show them being used in smoothie and dessert recipes as a natural alternative to refined sugar.

But before any influencer tries to claim they started the trend, know that ancient civilizations were eating them long before they were “cool”: dates are one of the oldest cultivated fruits in human history, tracing back ~8k years.

AROUND THE WEB

📅  On this day: In 1974, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s book All the President’s Men, which broke down the Watergate scandal, was published.

🧑‍🌾  That’s cool: Find a farm near you.

🍉  Wow: How a cube-shaped watermelon grows.

💣  Game: Minesweeper in 3D.

🐱  Aww: A kitten on a train. 

SHOWER THOUGHT

What if the reason Squidward is bad at the clarinet is because he has tentacles instead of hands? SOURCE

Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Singdhi Sokpo.

Editing by: Sara "Knock on wood" Friedman.

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