Good morning.

It’s Tuesday, July 8 — and today we honor two iconic cultural forces: the birth of Wannabe and capitalism’s favorite diary. Yes, on this day in 1996, the Spice Girls dropped their debut single and unleashed girl power on the planet. Somewhere right now, a millennial is yelling “zig-a-zig-ah” in a bar after three espresso martinis.

And way back in 1889, The Wall Street Journal published its first issue. Since then, it’s been helping finance bros everywhere pretend they understand the economy, while mostly just tracking how sad their stocks are.

May your inbox stay quiet, your coffee stay strong, and your week stay mildly productive at best. Thanks for being here. 

Today’s stories:

• Lab-grown salmon hits upscale restaurant plates

• Orcas caught French kissing, scientists blushing

• Lululemon sues Costco for stretchy knockoffs

• Honda launches rocket, lands it perfectly

• MIT makes printer that sculpts with light

• Hidden home costs average $21K yearly

• Stake crypto, score 10-year Dubai visa

• Parisians now swimming in the Seine

• TikTok builds U.S. version to survive

• Meta throws six figures at AI nerds

  and more…

Stocks slumped Monday after President Trump reignited trade tensions with a global swipe and extended his reciprocal tariff deadline to August 1. The U.S. slapped 25% tariffs on imports from Japan and South Korea, with more countries receiving similar notices via Truth Social — because of course. Trump said the rates could go “up or down” depending on how other nations behave at the negotiating table.

The Dow fell 422 points (0.9%), while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq each dropped nearly 1%, snapping last week’s record run. Tesla sank 6.8% after Trump publicly mocked Elon Musk’s new political party. Diplomacy? Not today.

_____

Crypto Bros Can Now Stake Their Way Into Dubai

Telegram’s Open Network (TON) just made crypto bros' dreams a reality: stake $100K in Toncoin for three years and get a 10-year UAE Golden Visa — complete with sunshine, tax perks, and vibes. It’s crypto’s first real “residency by investment” play. Stake the coins, hold for three years, earn ~4% back, and boom — you’re now a Dubai resident. Add a $35K government processing fee and a seven-week timeline, and it’s still way cheaper (and faster) than the old-school route that demanded over half a mil in frozen assets. Even better: You keep full control of your funds during the lock-up, and your whole immediate family gets the golden ticket too. The crypto crowd is loving it. Dubai just became the new fantasy land for Web3 escape plans.

_____

Lululemon sues Costco for copying its stretchy vibes. Lululemon is suing Costco for doing the unthinkable: making sweatpants that look… suspiciously identical to Lululemon sweatpants. Filed in California, the lawsuit accuses Costco of selling "confusingly similar" dupes of its jackets, hoodies, and leggings — the kind of copy-paste fashion that makes yoga moms everywhere do a double take. According to Lulu, some customers think they’re buying the real deal, while others know they’re grabbing knockoffs and just don’t care. Either way, Lululemon is not chill about it. The brand says it’s a “path-breaking” innovator with trademarked stitching, vibes, and “strategic fits” — and apparently those vibes are now being sold next to 40-packs of paper towels.

Congrats, you bought a money pit. So you finally bought a house — congrats! Now welcome to the part no one puts on Zillow: the hidden costs that drain your wallet slowly but surely. In 2025, the real price of homeownership is an extra $21,400 per year. That’s your “surprise!” bill for things like taxes, utilities, insurance, internet, and maintenance. But if you live in Hawaii, congrats: you’ve unlocked Extreme Mode. The average hidden costs there are over $34,000 a year — more than $13K above the national average. Annual maintenance alone costs nearly $20K, and energy bills are so brutal ($7,871) they might as well come with a lei and a warning label. Blame inflation. Blame the housing market. Blame that one HGTV episode that made you think homeownership would be all throw pillows and wine racks. Either way, the American Dream is starting to look more like a subscription you can’t cancel.

How much Meta pays its AI nerds. Meta is in a full-blown bidding war for AI talent, throwing fat stacks at engineers like it’s Monopoly money. According to federal filings, base salaries at Zuckerberg HQ are looking less like paychecks and more like lottery wins. Software engineers can rake in up to $480K. Machine learning engineers are pulling $440K. Even product designers and UX researchers are comfortably cruising past $200K — and that’s just base pay. No stock. No bonuses. The info comes from H-1B visa data, where tech companies are legally forced to reveal what they’re really paying foreign hires. Meta’s also dangling $300 million packages at top AI researchers to build out its “Superintelligence” lab — because apparently we’re already doing that now.

Honda Just Launched a Rocket and Didn’t Crash It

Honda — yes, the Civic people — just yeeted a rocket into space and brought it back. While SpaceX keeps turning its rockets into very expensive fireworks, Honda quietly pulled off a clean liftoff and landing in Japan. It flew 57 seconds, hit 890 feet, and landed just 15 inches from where it started. This chonky little 2800-lb space bean was built by Honda’s R&D team, because apparently “cars, jets, and robots” wasn’t enough on the resume. The rocket launched from Hokkaido, which is now trying to rebrand as a “space town,” because of course it is. Anyway, Honda now makes rockets. Sleep tight, Elon.

_____

MIT just made a pocket printer that builds stuff with light. MIT researchers, clearly bored with normal science, have created a pocket-sized 3D printer that zaps resin into solid objects using nothing but light. The brain behind it: PhD candidate Sabrina Corsetti, who casually turned a millimeter-scale chip into a Star Trek prop. The chip fires customizable holograms into a resin well. The resin hardens instantly into whatever shape it’s told to become. No motors. No moving parts. Just science and a very chill disregard for reality. This isn’t a printer, it’s sorcery with a product roadmap.

Now on the menu: salmon born in a test tube. Science has done it again: salmon made without swimming, flopping, or fishing. The FDA just gave Wildtype’s lab-grown salmon the green light, declaring it “as safe as” regular fish — minus the mercury, parasites, or guilt. Chef Gregory Gourdet, of Portland’s trend-magnet restaurant Kann, is now serving the high-tech sushi-grade “saku” cut on Thursday nights. It's made from real salmon cells grown in little fish spas, seasoned with plant stuff, and shaped into fillets for eco-conscious diners with deep pockets and good lighting. The fish industry’s collapsing, the oceans are heating, and sushi demand isn’t slowing down — so lab-grown seafood is stepping in with sterile tanks, sterile marketing, and very real price tags. For now, this high-end science snack is exclusive to select restaurants. But the food-tech dream is clear: upscale sustainability with a splash of biotech.

TikTok preps a new app because geopolitics said so. TikTok is quietly building a separate app for U.S. users, because Washington told it to or else. ByteDance, its China-based parent, is scrambling to meet a September 17 deadline to sell off TikTok’s American operations or risk a full ban. Trump says the deal is “pretty much” done, which is code for “we’re still figuring it out.” The new U.S.-friendly version is set to hit app stores on September 5. Users will eventually need to switch over, but the old app will limp along until March — unless, of course, the plan changes again.

You Can Now Swim in Paris Without Regretting It

For the first time in 100 years, Parisians are cannonballing into the Seine without risking a tetanus shot. The river — once known for hosting trash, mystery liquids, and the occasional scooter — has officially reopened for public swimming. Thanks to an Olympic-level glow-up, the Seine is now home to three designated swim spots welcoming over 1,000 people a day through August. Locals are thrilled. Tourists are confused. Somewhere, a rat is deeply annoyed by the intrusion. So yes, if you’ve ever wanted to swim in a river where Hemingway probably stared moodily, now’s your chance. 

_____

Orcas are making out now. Just when you thought killer whales couldn’t get weirder — after the whole boat-sinking hobby — they’ve decided to add tongue play to the resume. Scientists have officially caught two wild orcas full-on French-kissing in the open ocean. Yes, with tongue. Yes, someone wrote a paper about it. Researchers described the scene as “gentle, face-to-face oral contact.” Translation: two murder dolphins made sweet aquatic love while scientists took notes like it was a Nicholas Sparks novel. The behavior, lovingly named “tongue-nibbling,” is the first of its kind ever documented in the wild. Nature really said get a room.

_____

TikTok of the day: watch here

We wanna be friends with your friends

Share Increadible Newsletter (increadible.com) with your friends and stay informed anxiety-free together