We’re writing an article about the George Foreman Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine, AKA the George Foreman Grill, AKA one of humanity’s finest inventions, and the last bit of sizzle this story needs is you. Have you ever owned one of these meat-making masterpieces? Let us know.
In today’s email:
To tip or not to tip: Actually not a question.
AI misuse: Of course that’s a thing that’s happening.
Not necessary: A Bugatti for your wrist.
Around the web: Guess the movie, founder advice, and more.
👇 Listen: Who should be responsible for paying service workers a liveable wage?
The Big Idea
Great, now we have a no-tip influencer
A man’s whole influencer schtick is not tipping. Does he have a point?
2024-06-27T00:00:00Z
Juliet Bennett Rylah
A man’s gone viral for not tipping, sharing his exploits of racking up big bills and stiffing servers across Los Angeles.
But does he have a point?
The anonymous non-tipper…
… goes by @zerodollarstip on Instagram and @idonttip on TikTok, a la Mr. Pink from Reservoir Dogs, only 32 years later.
He toldLA Taco that earlier this month, he was confronted with a tip screen suggesting $1-$3 on a $3 danish and decided he’d make not tipping a “lifestyle.” This is despite admitting he used to be a service worker whose generous tips afforded him a Prada wallet.
He recently posted a ~$400 bill for cocktails and tableside truffles — $0 tip. By not tipping, he estimates he’s saved ~$300 in two weeks.
Let’s be clear
A guy who clearly has money to spend self-righteously harming service workers like some kind of B-team Batman villain may crave change, but it’s a shitty way to go about it.
But there is a very real conversation to be had about tipping culture, which has only gotten more confusing in the last few years:
Many US service workers rely on tips, with the federal minimum wage for tipped employees at $2.13/hour.
Yet tipping culture has rapidly expanded, including to cashiers. This has led to backlash, with ~63% of Americans saying too many places are asking for tips.
Meanwhile, many other countries don’t tip at all. In some, like Japan, it’s considered offensive.
The primary question in the US…
… is who should shoulder the burden of providing service workers a living wage — and there’s no easy answer.
In Los Angeles, where Captain No Tip lives, fast-food workers now make a minimum of $20/hour and tipped workers make a minimum of $16/hour, per state law.
Local restaurants — still reeling from the pandemic and two Hollywood strikes — are struggling with the rising costs of labor and everything else, forcing some to hike food prices and replace humans with kiosks or robots.
Yet, with the average LA apartment renting for ~$2.7k, workers don’t have it much easier.
The end result? Nobody’s happy, except maybe this non-tipping guy, and landlords — some of whom are also asking for tips now, and no, absolutely not.
Free Resource
5 mad skills development templates
You have to keep on learning new things — every day, all the time. Because staying curious is one of those classified secrets to winning at life.
For a stronger sense of structure, try these tidy skill-building templates. Use the space to kick-start new habits, better manage time, read more books, or otherwise get shit done.
You get a template, andyouget a template…
Five-year plan template
Individual skill development template
SMART goal-setting template
Management by objective template
Performance improvement plan template
We also call them “skillets.” They help you break in beautifully.
Sit down for this one: Scientists in Japan are attaching skin to robot faces. Thankfully, the skin is artificially produced in a lab using living cells. While the skin looks pretty real — and can even heal itself after a cut — the robot faces themselves could use a little work if they want to pass for humans.
SNIPPETS
Volkswagen will invest up to $5B in EV maker Rivian, starting with an initial $1B infusion. The partnership pairs the world’s second-largest automaker with one that lost $6.8B in 2022.
Denmark is introducing the world’s first agriculture carbon emissions tax to reduce livestock emissions. The new tax will charge $43 per metric ton of CO2 from livestock beginning in 2030, increasing to $107 in 2035.
Yikes: Indonesia’s national data center has been locked down for a week by a ransomware gang seeking $8m. The hack has disrupted 200+ government institutions but the nation’s leaders say they won’t pay the ransom.
The Japanese yen is flirting with disaster, on track to hit its weakest level since 1986. Next up: a protracted battle between Japan’s finance ministry, which is trying to boost the currency, and hedge funds that have shorted the yen. Fun.
Morgan Stanley will give its ~15k financial advisors a new assistant: AI chatbot Debrief, which will listen in on client meetings, take notes, and autogenerate discussion summaries. The firm says it’ll save 30 minutes of work per meeting (it annually hosts 1m Zoom meetings).
Verizon will pay $1m to settle an FCC investigation into a nearly two-hour 911 outage that affected calls in several southern US states in 2022.
The New York Times is adding a new game to its roster Friday. Strands is a themed word search that racked up millions of players over a four-month testing period.
Toys “R” Usmade a 66-second ad about its founder, Charles Lazarus, with Open AI’s text-to-video tool, Sora. It still took ~12 people to fix it up — and it still looks a bit uncanny valley.
Don't miss this...
Three invaluable marketing lessons from Ron Goldenberg, who runs international marketing for the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets — and once used an orchestral tribute to The Notorious B.I.G. to grow the team’s reach in Paris.
Data Point
Tonight marks 2024’s first US presidential debate, and yes, we could hear your pained groan from here.
It’s the second debate you’ve really gotta worry about, though — not the actual one on Sept. 10, but the misinformation battle from hell that’ll play out on everyone’s social feeds.
Political deepfakes are the most common way AI has been abused so far, per DeepMind, Google’s AI research division. Twenty-seven percent of the misuse cases DeepMind studied attempted to shape political opinions through distortions of reality, like impersonating lawmakers and generating fake news.
If influencing the public through AI tomfoolery isn’t your speed, there are many other forms of tech malice gaining popularity, like content farming (think: publishing AI-generated drivel en masse, then collecting ad revenue), next-level phishing scams (think: impersonating loved ones to extort money using AI-generated audio), and undressing services (think: … about anything else, actually — this is the gross, sexually explicit kind of deepfake content that can’t be banned soon enough).
Hot tip: Be wary of photos, currently bad actors’ preferred medium. It’s 2x as popular as video — for now.
Fit The Bill
There are thousands of companies valued at $1B+. How many clues do you need to identify today’s billion-dollar brand?
Clue 1: This company’s founder came upon his multibillion-dollar idea as a college freshman living 10 hours apart from his girlfriend.
Clue 2: It has been indirectly responsible for adding some phrases into common meeting lexicon, like: “We’re going to wait five minutes for everyone to join,” “Let me just hit record,” “You’re on mute,” and “Sorry, sorry, I thought I turned my mic back on. My bad. Anyway…”
Clue 3: This company experienced 30x growth between December 2019 and April 2020, a period when remote work suddenly became a more common part of modern life. (No, it’s not a sourdough or whipped coffee business.)
👇 Scroll to the bottom for the answer 👇
Not Necessary
Jacob & Co. and Bugatti
Can’t afford a Bugatti? Maybe you can swing the next best thing: a Bugatti you can wear. The carmaker is partnering with watchmaker Jacob & Co. on a luxury timepiece that pulls inspiration from the Bugatti Tourbillon model. The limited-edition watch — only 250 units are being sold — has grilles, windows, and a working replica of the car’s V16 engine made from a big ol’ chunk of sapphire. While it’s not as pricey as the $4m Tourbillon, it’s not exactly a steal: It’ll cost you $340k.
AROUND THE WEB
📚 On this day: In 1922, author Hendrik Willem van Loon won the first Newbery Medal for children’s literature for The Story of Mankind.
🖌️ That’s interesting:Why our ancestors painted in caves in the dark.
🧠 Useful: Heavybit has a bevy of advice for early-stage startups from tech founders, including how to build a community and how to maintain your sanity.
