In doing research weekly for this newsletter, sometimes I notice interesting trends and connections that I would have otherwise never cared to pay any attention to. This week I noticed something - you might say it’s a little bizarre or you might (probably will) say I’m reaching a bit to make this make sense. Either way how about a new way of kicking this newsletter off?

OK are you ready for a six degrees of separation timeline?

(jumping 3 degrees at a time)

Degree One - The HBO show, “The Idol”, starring Abel Tesfaye, aka The Weeknd, (emphasis on Weeknd) ended early after only 5 episodes (instead of 6) sparking rumours that the show was getting cancelled. I haven’t watched it myself but all reviews point to it being an over-sexualized cringe fantasy world of celebrity stardom.

Degree Three - Over the the Canada Day long weekend Air Canada reported that they cancelled or delayed 2000 flights. TWO THOUSAND FLIGHTS. We’re all still reeling from their crazy issues in the winter and now apparently the summer is supposed to be just as bad if not worse. Rumour has it the station wagon is making a come back for all those people who don’t want to fly on basically Canada’s only airline.

Degree Six - You know what Americans love? INDEPENDENCE DAY. You know what else they love? HOT DOGS. Put them together and what do you get? The annual NATHAN’S HOT DOG EATING CONTEST. But it was cancelled this year over weather concerns because the organizers didn’t believe in checking the weather beforehand (I’m joking but seriously who plans a major outdoor event and doesn’t have a plan B?).

'I'm gonna get the rest of the guys out and we're gonna do this f***er'

It was only until Joey Chestnut, the reigning and defending 16 time champion, stormed back outside and gathered his competitors in a moment of absolute patriotic exuberance the competition was back on. Or maybe they just waited the storm out and decided to start a bit later. Suffice to say Joey won his 16th championship eating 62 hot dogs in 10 minutes

How did we get here? Weeknd Cancelled → Long Weekend Flights Cancelled → Hot Dog eating almost cancelled - phew!

This week's issue is a 5 minute read:

📱 Fabric App vs Bird App

🧑‍🚀 No, Apple, No

👔 You no longer need to pack for Japan

Did you download Threads yet?

Wednesday night felt like the first day back at school from summer vacation - the moment when you see all your friends again, who all look familiar but have minor new tweaks about them. Wednesday night felt like the times where we left our bikes scattered on the front lawn of our friend’s house. Wednesday night felt like 2005 again. If you began using Meta’s new app, Threads, then you experienced a rare social media occurrence - just a lot of curious people, curiously interacting with complete strangers, navigating this newfound thing all as one collective.

OK I’ll get off my philosophical soapbox. In reality, Mark Zuckerberg did what he did to Snapchat (Instagram Stories) and what he did to TikTok (Instagram Reels), he copied another major social media app, Twitter to be exact. And blew it up - to the tune of 10M new users within the first day or so.

In reality, you aren’t missing anything by not joining Threads. In fact functionality and feature-wise, all you can do is post a status update, like and share a status update, and scroll through an endless of feed of literally anyone since the feeds aren’t curated yet based on who you’re following. It’s assumed Meta will eventually get to stealing Twitter’s other features or tweaking them slightly to call them their own.

For now we have an app that potentially could make Elon’s $44B purchase last year go down as one of the worst purchases in the history of human beings purchasing ANYTHING. And this includes those stupid Heely shoes everyone wanted back in the early 2000s.

Apple’s (head)setbacks

It wasn’t too long ago the world was Ooooing and Ahhhing over Apple’s announcement around the Vision Pro. And then probably cringing over the price tag. The three trillion dollar company had set its sights on being able to deliver one million units of their digital ski goggles (I can’t help myself) in 2024.

But because of supplier setbacks, mainly with the OLED screens arriving at manufacturing facilities defective, the forecast for delivered units to the public is looking more like 130,000 to 150,000 in 2024. This also pushes back the timeframe for when the thing will actually be more affordable - so basically $2500 instead of $3500. I honestly don’t know what Apple considers a cheap version of anything anymore.

If history has taught us anything, it’s that receiving defective parts for a device that you overhyped doesn’t typically bode well in the long run - enter: the Blackberry Storm. This all said analysts predict the Vision Pro to have a user base of 20 million users in about 5 years. I for one, will not be one of those users…in case you were wondering.

Renting clothes in Japan

So initially I thought this was a pretty good idea, for the simple fact that when we went to Japan earlier in the year, we brought an extra suitcase because we knew we would be buying a lot of things to bring back home. But upon further thinking through this idea, I don’t know if it works for certain people.

A collaboration between Japan Airlines and Sumitomo Corp has created a rental clothing program for travellers to Japan. The idea is that you can rent up to eight outfits for two weeks, in small, medium, and large (no clue if these are Asia sizes or not). Chosen styles which include, smart, smart casual, and mixed, are then delivered to your hotel.

Japan hopes that people will travel with less luggage therefore the Japan Airlines planes will be lighter therefore they won’t have to store and use as much fuel therefore burning less emissions into the sky therefore becoming more carbon friendly. However, if y’all gonna give me my clothes for the week, that just means I’m packing empty suitcases to THEREFORE bring back full with all kinds of crazy things from Don Quijote.

Also I’m 6’4, ain’t no way the Japanese are thinking of anyone taller than 5’11 with this program. The shirts may fit but there’s no way the pants will work. This all said, Japan stays winning as a country while the rest of us NPC’s continue to talk about how much we wish we lived there. Le sigh.