👶  Baby’s first thrift

👋  Good morning. Are you dreading your office happy hour tonight? You might just be an otrovert. The term, coined by a New York psychiatrist, describes people who enjoy deep one-on-one connections and are empathetic, but who feel uncomfortable in social groups like clubs, political parties, and sports teams. While introverts and extroverts feel drained or energized from socializing, respectively, otroverts have a deep-rooted sense of “otherness.” Maybe just forward this to your co-workers when declining that invite? 

NEWS FLASH 

🦵  Don’t pull a hammy: Three former Duke decathletes launched Jeani, a startup that uses AI and smartwatch data to detect subtle changes in movement that could signal joint issues or overuse injuries before they become serious. The startup’s founders say they believe the app, which recently launched on Apple's App Store for $10 per month, fills a gap in the current wearables market by quantifying musculoskeletal health.

☕  Blue skies for green aprons: Starbucks is pushing deeper into employee-driven marketing, announcing a creator program on TikTok highlighting unofficial worker-made videos. It makes sense that Starbucks would incentivize its baristas to post more: 61% of Gen Z say they learn about new products from employees’ social media activity. Also fueling the trend: Staples, which backed an employee doing ASMR-style videos on the job and saw her following grow to 600k+.

🩺  Closing the gap: Startup Xella Health launched its AI-powered platform to help women detect and manage 130+ conditions — including perimenopause and endometriosis — with biomarker testing, clinical guidance, and personalized analysis. The startup takes aim at a larger issue: Women’s health is underfunded and underrepresented, receiving just 6% of private health care investment despite the fact that women often face longer diagnostic journeys with fewer treatment options.

MORE NEWS TO KNOW

• Sin is in: Las Vegas landed the top spot in US News & World Report's first-ever ranking of America’s best conference cities, followed by Chicago and Orlando. Today’s high in Vegas is 108 degrees Fahrenheit, but sure.
  
• Nearly out-twitted: Meta says Threads has topped 500m monthly active users, a milestone that has it knocking on X’s door (~550m MAU). 
  
• More exploding things: German defense tech startup Stark, which makes weaponized drones, picked up ~$568m in funding to keep on doing that. It should not be confused with the fictional Stark Industries, even though it carries the same exact vibes.
  
• Brave li'l toaster: Zoox, Amazon’s autonomous vehicle subsidiary, unveiled its redesigned driverless vehicle. The toaster-shaped car houses more comfortable seats and larger “bidirectional reflectors” to help others on the road distinguish the oddly shaped vehicle’s front from its back. 
  

FROM OUR FRIENDS AT MINDSTREAM 

Nvidia is teaching manners to robots

The chip giant is working on new software and hardware that would help humanoid robots work more safely around humans.

There’s a lot riding on it: Barclays estimates humanoid robots could generate $200B in revenue by 2035.

👉 Read more on Mindstream.

THE BIG IDEA

Why playgrounds are dripping in vintage

As a kid, wearing someone else’s hand-me-downs was never considered cool — at least it wasn’t back in our day.

Today’s parents, however, are flipping the script on what’s considered hot on the itty bitty fashion scene: For a new generation of kids, vintage and secondhand clothes are in vogue, per The Financial Times.

• The secondhand market for children’s clothes is expected to be the fastest-growing segment of the booming clothing resale market, according to a 2024 World Economic Forum report.

For sale: baby shoes, well-worn

Parents are seeking out hand-me-downs from resale sites like Vinted and Depop, and on Instagram and TikTok from sellers via DM. For in-person shopping, several sellers have also opened physical locations.

• British brand Sol Kidswear opened its first studio in May and is already eyeing an expansion to New York and Paris, citing growing customer bases.
  
• NYC-based La Fefi, a high-end vintage brand for kids, launched last fall on Instagram and offers in-person shopping by private appointment only.
  
• French brand La Manotte’s monthly drops occasionally include items that date back to 1900.
  
• In March, Elemeno hosted the first all-kids vintage popup market in Los Angeles, which saw 17 sellers and 2k+ shoppers over one weekend, per The Los Angeles Times.

Why?

For most of the same reasons millennial parents are buying secondhand for themselves.

The pieces are unique and can be more affordable — one shopper told FT she found a baby Burberry jacket and matching pants for ~$30 — which is important when considering how kids, famously, grow up so fast.

Plus, it’s more sustainable than buying new.

• Many older threads are made with natural fibers like cotton; meanwhile, several children’s clothing lines from fast-fashion brands have been recalled due to high lead volumes.
  
• Some parents are hoping to pass on their eco-conscious shopping habits to their kids.

Nostalgia is also an element: Many millennials are dressing their kids in clothes reminiscent of their own childhoods and baby photos, whether that’s a shirt featuring ‘80s and ‘90s IP like the Rugrats or a lace-trimmed dress fit for a Victorian doll.

BTW: One Elemeno organizer told the LA Times that much of the vintage he sees today is returning to the US from countries in Asia and South America, where they were likely sent decades before as donations.

Fashion really is cyclical.

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HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Hope: It turns out it’s important in life and business. The Trevor Project’s chief communications officer explains how he makes it part of the strategy. 

NEWSWORTHY NUMBER

Hours it took for tickets to this year’s Camp Breastie — a four-day retreat that one event organizer described as “Coachella” for breast cancer survivors — to sell out, per The New York Times. With ~4m breast cancer survivors in the US but just ~500 spots available, demand for the Pennsylvania-based summer camp, which brings women together to connect over their shared experience (plus 200 different activities and s’mores), has been so high that organizers are planning a West Coast expansion for next year.

AROUND THE WEB

📅  On this day: In 1978, the first rainbow Pride flag appeared at the Gay and Lesbian Freedom Day parade in San Francisco.

🍬  That’s cool: How a Pez dispenser works.

🗞️  Newsletter: Quartz Obsession is a monthly deep dive into the hidden history of how the world works.

🧠  Game: Figure out the popular phrase containing a number.

🐶  Aww: Who’s a good intern?

SHOWER THOUGHT

Unicorns could have existed long ago, but they don't show up in the fossil record because their horns are made of soft tissues that don't fossilize.  SOURCE

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

Editing by: Sara "What goes around comes around" Friedman.

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