Good morning.

It’s Thursday, April 16 — and the spring weather is finally here. About time. We’ve all been emotionally held hostage by “light jacket but still freezing” energy for long enough.

On this day in 2018, Kendrick Lamar did something that made a lot of old institutions clutch their pearls — he won a Pulitzer Prize for music for DAMN.. Yes, a hip-hop album. At the Pulitzer. Somewhere, a panel of classical music purists had to sit down and process that the culture had officially moved on without them.

Anyway. The sun is out, the culture already won years ago, and you’re here — which means your taste is obviously excellent.

Have a good read.

Today’s stories:

Stocks kept climbing Wednesday, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite hitting fresh all-time highs — momentum is doing most of the talking. The S&P 500 rose 0.8%, while the Nasdaq jumped 1.6%, extending its win streak to 11 days. The Dow Jones was the outlier, slipping slightly by 72 points.

Markets have been riding a wave of optimism around potential de-escalation in the Middle East, with the S&P 500 now up about 3% this week and the Nasdaq nearly 5%.

Translation: stocks are in rally mode — powered more by expectations than certainty.

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Live Nation and Ticketmaster built a near-monopoly, jacked up prices, added mystery fees, and basically told everyone “you’ll still buy the ticket anyway,” and unfortunately… they were right. Now the U.S. Department of Justice and a bunch of states stepped in, and a federal jury just said yes, this whole setup looks very illegal, which is not shocking to anyone who has ever paid $300 for a $90 concert ticket. And just to make it worse, internal messages came out where executives were literally laughing about overcharging people, like actual “rob them blind baby” energy, which is bold considering they still need those same people to buy tickets next weekend. Live Nation says it was just jokes. Of course. Everyone’s joking when they get caught. Anyway, maybe — maybe — this means fewer insane fees and less pricing chaos, but let’s not get too optimistic, they’ve been getting away with this for years.

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Your shoe brand is now a tech startup. Once a cute little sustainable shoe brand worth $4B, Allbirds woke up one morning, saw everyone making money off AI, and decided it too is now an “AI compute infrastructure company”. So yes, they’re rebranding to NewBird AI, which sounds like a startup your friend’s boyfriend is “advising,” and going full “GPU-as-a-Service,” because if you can’t sell shoes anymore, you might as well sell computing power and hope nobody asks follow-up questions. Stock up nearly 600% in one day, not because they suddenly built groundbreaking tech, but because they said the magic word: AI.

Airwallex is coming for Stripe. Airwallex spent years quietly building boring but important payment infrastructure, and now it’s entering in-person payments, basically walking straight into a fight with Stripe, Square, and Adyen. Their pitch is simple: one system, multiple countries, no need to deal with a million local vendors and regulations, which if you’ve ever tried expanding a business globally sounds less like innovation and more like basic common sense that somehow nobody fixed earlier. Stripe literally tried to buy them for $1.2B back when they were tiny, and Airwallex said no, which in hindsight looks like one of those “I trusted my gut” moments founders love to talk about on podcasts. Now they’re valued at $8B, moving serious money, growing fast, and basically saying they built the actual infrastructure while everyone else was busy being the cool front-end.

Delta’s new seats for better sleep in the sky. Delta Air Lines just unveiled a new Delta One suite, because the real airline competition isn’t about getting you there on time, it’s about who can make rich people sleep slightly better at 35,000 feet. Beds are three inches longer (life-changing, obviously), more legroom, and a fancy cushion, all tested for hours so side sleepers can finally rest peacefully while the rest of the plane fights for armrests. These will show up in 2027 on Airbus A350-1000 planes, which gives you plenty of time to not afford them. Meanwhile, airlines are doubling down on premium seats because that’s where the money is, while economy gets… vibes and maybe a slightly thinner pretzel. And yes, United Airlines is doing the same thing. Fly more, pay more, lie flat.

McDonalds reinvents soda. McDonald's is jumping into energy drinks and “dirty sodas”. They’re rolling out things like a Red Bull Dragonberry drink, Dirty Dr Pepper, and fruity refreshers, which all sound like something a 16-year-old would order at 2am and somehow it’s now a corporate strategy. The goal is simple: sell sugary caffeine at lower prices than Starbucks and Dutch Bros, and make very nice margins while everyone pretends this is a “little treat” and not a full personality. Franchise owners are already buying new machines to mix these drinks, because nothing says innovation like turning soda into a science experiment. Meanwhile, Americans are ordering more energy drinks and less coffee, so naturally every fast food chain is now racing to caffeinate you in new, increasingly unnecessary ways.

Amazon quietly retires your Kindle. Amazon is cutting off older Kindle devices (anything from 2012 or earlier), meaning they’ll still turn on, still work, still hold books… but suddenly can’t access the Kindle Store, because that would be too convenient. So yes, your device is fine, you’re fine, everything is fine — except now you can’t download new books unless you jump through USB hoops like it’s 2008. This is the classic tech move: don’t break the product, just slowly make it useless until you “choose” to upgrade. And of course, Amazon generously offers you a discount on a new Kindle, because nothing says customer care like creating the problem and then selling you the solution.

NASA just revealed the menu for the Artemis II mission, and while you are technically going around the moon, you are still eating mac and cheese, brisket, and an aggressive number of tortillas. Like… 58 tortillas. For four people. In space. The logic is simple: tortillas don’t crumble, which makes them elite astronaut food, because nothing says danger like floating bread crumbs in zero gravity. The crew gets 189 menu items, warm meals (luxury), cookies, hot sauce, and about 43 cups of coffee total, which feels low considering they’re literally in space with the same three people for 10 days. There’s even maple syrup on board, because one astronaut said “I need a little personality up there.” So yes, humanity has mastered space travel, but the menu still feels like a slightly upgraded airport lounge.

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Nature really lost control here. Meet the Platypus — the animal that looks like someone combined leftovers from three different species and refused to explain. It lays eggs (illegal for a mammal), “sweats” milk because it doesn’t even have nipples (weird), and hunts by detecting electricity like some low-budget superhero, and yes, all of this is real and not a joke scientists made after a long night.  When Europeans first saw it, they thought it was fake, which honestly feels like the only reasonable reaction, but no, evolution just got bored one day and decided to experiment.

This water bottle wants to fix your snoring. REMplenish is a water bottle that refuses to cooperate, makes you work for every sip, and calls it “therapy,” because apparently your tongue has been lazy this whole time and needs discipline. Founder Anders Olmanson skipped surgery and CPAP and went straight to “what if drinking water was uncomfortable,” then showed up on Shark Tank playing a didgeridoo like this was all completely normal. The Sharks tried it, struggled immediately, looked mildly concerned, and still offered $400K… then backed out later, which is corporate for “fun idea, but absolutely not.” Yes, there are studies, yes it “works,” but we’ve reached a point where even hydration comes with instructions, resistance levels, and a learning curve.

Meta did it, Apple wants it prettier. Apple is reportedly working on AI glasses, because obviously your phone, watch, laptop, and headphones weren’t enough, now your face also needs to be connected. The glasses will have cameras, microphones, speakers, and sync with your iPhone, so yes, you’ll be able to take calls, listen to music, and casually record everything around you like it’s completely normal. They’re going straight after Meta’s Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, but Apple’s angle is simple: same idea, but make it expensive and aesthetic so people actually want to wear them outside. Multiple styles are coming too, from classic frames to “Tim Cook core,” because if you’re going to live in a surveillance device, it better match your outfit.

The sky is getting crowded fast. Amazon is buying satellite company Globalstar for $11.57 billion, because delivering packages on Earth wasn’t enough, now they want to deliver internet from space. This is part of their plan to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink, aka the current king of “let’s fill the sky with satellites and figure it out later.” The idea is simple: connect your phone directly to satellites so you can text from literally anywhere, which sounds great until you realize it also means more things flying above your head than anyone can realistically manage.  Also, Amazon gets access to pre-approved global spectrum, which is basically the cheat code of telecom, and partners with Apple so your iPhone can keep working even when you’re off the grid… and very much still online. The only tiny concern? Space is slowly turning into a crowded parking lot, and scientists are casually warning about a scenario where everything starts crashing into everything else and creates a never-ending cloud of space debris. But sure, let’s add thousands more satellites. What could possibly go wrong.

Whales might be smarter than your group chat. Sperm whale communication is not just random clicking — it’s structured, layered, and weirdly similar to human language, which is honestly humbling considering they’ve been doing this for millions of years while we’re still arguing in comment sections. Researchers found whales basically have their own “alphabet” and vowel system, using patterns like tones and lengths of clicks, kind of like Mandarin or other complex languages, which means those underwater noises are less “random chaos” and more “full conversation you’re not invited to.” They even hang out close together to “talk,” like real discussions, not yelling across a room like we do when WiFi is bad. Projects like Project CETI are now trying to decode it with AI, because of course AI is now involved in talking to whales too, and apparently we’re not that far from actually understanding what they’re saying. So yes, whales have culture, communication, community, and possibly better emotional intelligence than half the internet.

Nicole Kidman revealed she’s becoming a death doula, which sounds like a plot from one of her movies, but is actually very real and very serious. Death doulas support people emotionally at the end of life, and she said the idea came after her mom passed, when she realized families can’t always handle everything, even when they try. So instead of just collecting awards and roles, she’s now adding “helping people die peacefully” to her resume, which is… a pivot. Also not alone — Chloé Zhao is doing the same, partly because she’s terrified of death, which honestly feels like the most relatable motivation in this entire story. It sounds a little intense, a little unexpected, but also kind of makes everything else people in Hollywood are doing feel… less meaningful.

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Link in bio is officially dead. Meta is testing product tagging directly in Instagram Reels, meaning creators can now tag up to 30 products in a video and let you buy instantly, instead of sending you on a scavenger hunt through bios, comments, and questionable DMs. So yes, the whole “link in bio” era — aka click here, then click there, then maybe find it — is getting replaced with “just tap and buy”. Creators will also be able to earn commissions through partnerships with Amazon, eBay, and Temu, which means your favorite influencer is now one tap away from monetizing literally everything you look at.

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TikTok of the day: watch here

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