👋 Good morning. Especially to Romeo, the 71-year-old resident of the Gulfarium on Okaloosa Island in Florida, who was confirmed to be the oldest manatee alive. Romeo was found in the wild in 1957 when he was estimated to be at least 2-5 years old and has lived in three different aquariums in his long mammalian life. An anomaly among manatees — whose average lifespan is 30-40 years old — Romeo beat out the previous record holder, Snooty, who lived to 69 years and two days. Who's snooty now?
STARTING UP
An AI movie startup takes a cue from live music
❌ The problem: Younger audiences are increasingly drawn to immersive, multimedia experiences, and classical music is getting left in the dust.
💡 The pitch: Swiss startup OOVIE Studios is developing “Music Interactive Movies,” AI-powered films that evolve in real-time based on live musical performances and audience interaction. OOVIE’s software listens to musicians, analyzes and interprets the music, and assembles pre-designed film clips for a custom narrative that changes every performance.
🚀 The outlook: The company recently raised ~$194k to build its OO App, which aims to let users create films directly from music. Now we just need tech to shush those teenagers making noise in the back row…
NEWS FLASH
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As if you needed a new worry, researchers say workers are now facing “AI replacement dysfunction” (AIRD), defined as the distress experienced by people facing the threat or reality of losing their jobs to AI. Symptoms include anxiety, depression, insomnia, and identity confusion.
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A different kind of Joe: Koppie, a Belgian startup that’s developed a coffee alternative made from peas, is building out 1k tons of capacity thanks to new funding. The idea is to bring hybrid coffees, made from a blend of Koppie and traditional beans, to market this year.
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Important ruling: A Buffalo Wild Wings customer filed a $10m claim against the chain in 2023 after finding out its boneless wings contained meat from chicken breasts, not just wings. A judge threw out the claim this week, saying no reasonable consumer would think they were “truly deboned chicken wings, reconstituted into some sort of Franken-wing.”
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The hottest club in Manhattan could be Morgan’s, the English pub on the 13th floor of JPMorgan Chase’s new $3B office building. Many of the building’s ~10k employees would love a pint of Guinness, but the bar has just 55 seats, requiring some employees to make reservations weeks in advance if they want a table.
FROM OUR FRIENDS AT MINDSTREAM
Will AI start walking?
Alibaba hopes so.
It launched RynnBrain, an open-source model designed to power robots that helps machines see, understand tasks, and move around.
With aging populations and labor shortages driving demand, physical AI could become a $1T market.
👉 Read more on Mindstream.
THE BIG IDEA
The startup that wants you to go out and do something
Are you the only person in your friend group that loves escape rooms? Are you tired of your karaoke buddies flaking? Perhaps there’s finally a friendship app for you.
WashedUp is a social platform designed to help people find companions for local events they don’t want to go to alone. It’s currently available in the Los Angeles area, where users can sign up for a free profile, and then begin browsing and creating events.
How it works:
- If you have an event you’d like to attend, you can create it as a “plan” and invite people to join. You can set a headcount, age range, or make it women-only.
- Users can browse and join other people’s plans — concerts, trivia nights, comedy shows, dinner reservations, fitness classes, thrifting, etc. Or, even a larger networking event, the idea being that you’d be more confident if you showed up with someone else.
Founder Liz Bridges — whose previous endeavors include working at a chimpanzee sanctuary and opening a hotel in Sri Lanka — has always loved meeting and connecting people. She told The Hustle that her friends used to joke, “There’s four of us coming, and then whoever Liz finds on her way here.”
The inspiration for WashedUp came during a stint in Lisbon, Portugal, where she managed to get ~10 people to attend a concert together — a process she described as “no small feat” that involved multiple apps and platforms.
Speaking of all those apps…
There are so many platforms that promise new friends. Some, like The Breakfast and Timeleft, match users for a meal. Others, like MeetUp, allow users to form groups and create events centered around an interest, neighborhood, or lifestyle.
But Bridges found many too cost-prohibitive, too restrictive, too specific, or too complicated to use, requiring users to swipe through potential matches, dating app-style.
“I think all of this technology… is keeping people on their phones and on their computers, even the friendship apps. There’s no short execution to just go meet people,” she said. “The idea of WashedUp is you just put something up there, and then your phone buzzes [when] someone [joins] your plan.”
As WashedUp scales, Bridges hopes to monetize by taking a commission from ticket sales that occur due to the platform. She’s already emailed several businesses asking if they thought more people would attend events if they could find people to go with them… and received a “resounding” yes.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Smash that like button… and lose engagement. Here’s how My First Million’s producer gained 200k+ subscribers with a gentleman’s agreement.
NEWSWORTHY NUMBER
Countries that have implemented, or are considering implementing, restrictions on minors’ social media use, per The Economist. This includes Denmark, France, Malaysia, Spain, the UK, and Australia, which led the charge in December after banning social media for kids under 16. The proposals aim to protect impressionable young users from very real internet dangers like addiction, cyberbullying, predators, and mental health issues. But critics argue they’re ineffective and unrealistic, suggesting that social media platforms should instead be made safer.
How do the kids feel about it? “Quite frankly annoyed,” according to one 15-year-old Aussie, who told The New York Times he simply made a new account using his mom’s info. Maybe the haters have a point.
AROUND THE WEB
📅 On this day: In 1992, John Singleton became the first Black director to be nominated for an Academy Award for his film, Boyz n the Hood.
📺 That’s cool: Miss MTV? Here’s a website where you can watch music videos and specials from the now-defunct channel.
🗞️ Newsletter: Subscribe to Do Good for uplifting stories to restore your faith in humanity.
👀 That’s cool: See what the internet used to look like.
🐑 Aww: You need to look at these tiny sheep.
SHOWER THOUGHT
Because of yearbooks, it is more than likely that all of your past teachers have a photo of you in their house. SOURCE
Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Singdhi Sokpo.
Editing by: Sara "The more the merrier" Friedman.
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