We should be in a recession. Interest rates jumped after COVID, the war and tariffs ruin global trade, while western countries are struggling with expensive energy, social spending, and competition from China. But the economy is growing and markets are breaking records. This is happening because of AI: it explains roughly 85% of US equity gains this year, and about half of the S&P 500 stocks are associated with AI.

Everyone comparing it to the dotcom bubble either doesn’t know about what happened in 2000 or misunderstands it. Even though the internet was early, for some reason people believed it’d change everything in a year or two. Investors poured millions into any companies with the world “internet” in their boilerplate despite little to revenue, relying on users alone. And by users I literally mean “signups” because nobody tracked Daily or Monthly Active Users back then.

Most of Mark Cuban’s fortune came from his dotcom project Audionet, a streaming platform for audio and video that he sold to Yahoo! for $5.7Bn in 1999, just in time before the party ended. You know what revenue they had? $13.5 million in the last quarter before the sale.

The unknown minority, exploding Haribo, and what if the US invades The Hague.

Cagots

In medieval France there was an oppressed minority known as the Cagots. And there is one interesting detail about them.

The JDM phenomenon, giant tube TVs and why all steel is radioactive.

Quick update: I've decided to switch the publishing day for Five Finds to Monday. My birthday prevented me from writing this issue last Friday, but Monday seems like a more reasonable option anyway: much calmer and easier. Hope you don't mind!

What Happened to the World's Largest Tube TV?

Tech people adore Stripe. Linear’s old branding infected GenAI so much all its landing pages look purple. Arc Browser received glowing coverages from top-tier outlets even for basic features.

Some companies get viral while their competitors struggle to break through the ice. Why?

This is a question that bothers many founders and marketers wishing to promote their companies or clients. What’s curious is it often have little to no connection to the financial success. Adyen is as big as Stripe, but only the latter is the Silicon Valley darling. There are immensely successful tech companies out there, entire unicorns whose founders have only a few hundred followers.

Turns out writing a regular newsletter is hard, which is why I had to skip Friday. But here's your regular issue for this week anyway!

How One Pig Becomes Hot Dogs, Bacon, Salami, and More

Don't watch this if you're vegan! But I've always been curious how most of these meats are made, from hot dogs to salami, and this is a perfect demonstration.

Bot Appetit is a fantastic community on food with great recipes, if you ever need one.

YouTube is full of videos with people trying to replace their iPhone with half a dozen devices. They carry an iPod for music, a dedicated camera to take photos, a Kindle for reading, a notebook for thoughts, sometimes even a flip phone for calls.

Companies are selling minimal phones, like the $599 Light Phone that can do only a few things and won’t let you get you an Uber. The market for old point-and-shoot film cameras is so hot that Pentax and Lomo are now making brand-new film cameras and some people are buying up old digital ones. Kylie Jenner and Zendaya made Contax T2 so popular it costs $1000 now.

A used iPod Classic in good condition can sell for $200 on eBay and there are now dedicated companies that repair and retrofit them on-demand, like Elite Obsolete and Retrospekt. Batteries, screens, buttons, cases: all third-party parts are easy to find. The only limiting factor is the motherboards, so they depend on how many iPods Apple originally made.

The marvellous Concorde, why nobody can ban tobacco and people with no imagination

When Imagination Fails You

Aphantasia is a condition in which people are unable to create mental visual images or picture things in their mind’s eye.

Man loves surfing so much he lives on a beach and capitalism brights back film cameras.

A secret beach house inside a box truck

A few weeks ago I fell down into another YouTube rabbit hole of camper vans. Lots of people are recording themselves camping in areas where it's technically illegal, like their university parking. This one is less about being stealth and more about being awesome, literally the most beautiful and comfortable camper build by a guy who just wanted to be close to surfing (so he lives at the beach for half a year now).

Zuckerbeg. Nadella. Benioff. An exclusive announcement from Microsoft.

TBPN has been blasting from all corners of tech Twitter lately. It’s a technology daily show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, streaming live every weekday for about three hours. Sometimes I wonder who has that much free time to listen to it.

Both hosts take it immensely seriously and first got the accolades of tech Twitter and now gathering Magnificient 7 CEOs one by one. They also secured top-tier sponsors like Figma, Brex, Linear, and Public. It all started just over a year ago and has grown tremendously since.

SR-71 was built with Soviet titanium, modern cars look the same and beavers are cool.

Drowning under work tasks, so forgive me for not adding much of a prelude here! Enjoy!

SR-71 Blackbird Was Built With Russian Titanium—And They Never Knew

The uglification of the world, what animal to look for on the wine bottle, and how Uniqlo got to $20Bn in revenue.

Have a great Friday! I know I will, since I’m driving from Lisbon to Porto for an extended vacation I’ve needed for a long time.

To avoid some possible envy, I’ve prepared the usual package. Enjoy!

The worst year to be alive, lofi anime, and overachieving kids.

Fabulous Friday to you, friends. Here’s my catch for this week — hope you’ll like it!

Year 536 was the worst time to be alive

Primitive tribes still live on practically all continents, the story on how phones lost their antennas and should I buy an old iPod?

***

Hey everyone! Meet the latest Friday edition of Five Finds, a newsletter where I share the most interesting things I stumbled upon.

Primitive Forest Tribe Meets Modern Man for the First Time

Yesterday, I found myself sitting on a cliff with a brisket sandwich, wondering when this would end.

Thankfully, today it's Friday!

The Vela Incident

This is one of my favorite stories.

Have a great Friday and the most perfect weekend!

When Sweden switched sides

Most countries got stuck with whatever side of the road they started using for driving, but some changed. Sweden did so in 1967:

• All traffic stopped at 4:50 am. At exactly 5:00 am, cars carefully moved from the left side of the road to the right. Strict speed limits were enforced for the next week.

• Overnight, crews had swapped out 350,000 road signs and repainted intersections.

• They bought buses with doors on both sides to prepare in advance.

Last week, Apple relented and introduced the Sleep Score for the first time since adding sleep monitoring to the Apple Watch. This is huge, since they were always extremely careful about giving out assessments like this.

Apple dominates the concept of personal fitness trackers, but other options have been getting a lot more attention, right to the point where you can pick up an Oura at Walmart and a half of the F1 paddock wear a Whoop through the race.

Unfortunately, both of these devices come with a hefty subscription and are basically unusuable without it; Oura provides just a bit of data but that’s the least they could do to avoid saying it doesn’t work.

Have a great Friday! Here are some links to kill the end of it.

This guy cloned his winning horse

Remember Dolly? Turns out cloning is accessible right now, albeit expensive, so this guy from Argentina cloned his winning polo horse over a dozen times. He then won the 2016 Argentine Open riding six clones.

Good things are approximately ten times better than the average thing you can buy. In each category. The real challenge is finding them.

Wirecutter was supposed to be exactly about this, but I often find myself baffled by their recommendations for product areas I care about. They don’t focus on user experience as much as they should and often prioritize the price too much.

Reddit is kind of an obvious one (please watch this 47s video on “finding subreddit for a hobby”), but few subreddits bother to collect their findings in a single FAQ post, so you have to go through everything.

Reviewers and youtubers are incentivized to care about the most recent thing and produce more content, so I often find myself overwhelmed — they rarely tell you directly what is the best.

Good day to you, and hope you’ll have a great weekend shortly!

Here are the most interesting things I read about this week.

The iconic watches that inspired Apple Watch faces

Hey!

It’s Yury here. Thank you for subscribing to my blog. It's been great having you (yes, you) as a reader.

I spend so much time scouting the internet and making notes that I decided to start sharing it with everyone. Therefore, I'm launching Five Finds newsletter that will provide five amusingly interesting links I found each week. Lend me a few minutes of your time and I hope to spark your curiosity in exchange.

Let me know if you like it! (or don’t)