🐟 Plunder the sea

Plus: Bid on a knockout Range Rover limo, pay up for SpaceX debris, a dancing cat, and more. View Online Sign us up: Vermont State University will offer a course on the music of "Weird Al" Yankovic this fall. Taught by professor Brian Warwick, an audio engineer who worked on Yankovic's two latest albums, the course will delve into subjects like parody, songcraft, and 20th-century pop culture. True to form, the class's name — "Weird Al and his Polkas" — is a loose parody of Harvard's Taylor Swift course, "Taylor and her World." In today's email: Shipwrecks: Why it's a great time to scour the ocean floor. Not necessary: If you covet Mike Tyson's Range Rover limo for some reason, you'll love this one. Why, though?: Remembering a rare miss for Lego. Around the web: A free productivity tool, what really happened to nature during the pandemic, and more. 👇 Listen: Looking for a shipwreck? Yeah, you and everyone else. The Big Idea Why finding shipwrecks has never been easier It's a great time to become a pirate — or a scientist. 2024-03-26T00:00:00Z Sara Friedman If your childhood dream job was archaeologist, marine biologist, or pirate — we're about to make your day. Deep-sea exploration experts say it's a great time to go looking for shipwrecks, per The New York Times. And technology is playing a big role in treasure-hunting's heyday: Autonomous underwater vehicles can cover large sections of ocean floor and travel to locations that were previously inaccessible — like 25 miles below an ice sheet. Satellites can spot shipwrecks from space by the plumes of sediment that surround a wreck. The digitization of historical archives and increased accessibility of telepresence systems, which livestream images of the ocean floor on the internet, let more people discover wrecks from the comfort of their homes. But there's another unfortunate reason that shipwreck discoveries have become more common: climate change. Rising sea levels, eroding shorelines, and powerful storms are increasingly washing shipwrecks ashore. X-ploring marks the spot More shipwrecks are also being discovered because, well, more people are looking for them — or stumbling upon them. Private companies and research groups are exploring the ocean floor to map the world's seabed while others are surveying for oil and gas leases, pipelines, and cables. Some big names in tech and business have set their sights on the ocean floor: The Schmidt Ocean Institute is a nonprofit research organization founded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his wife, Wendy Schmidt. Billionaire investor Ray Dalio founded ocean exploration company OceanX with his son. And then, of course, there are those who are not experts but tempted by the pull of extreme tourism — which sometimes ends in tragedy, like the OceanGate sub. Before you go diving for gold, know that finding shipwrecks has become more about studying history and less about stealing buried treasure. Those who do find riches often end up in legal disputes with nations, rarely winning. England, for example, is taking no chances with its treasure: It's testing out new forensic marking technology to protect 57 of its shipwrecks from thieves. Free Resource 100 one-liners to save for later There aren't many rules, here at The Hustle… but just so you know, here are a few: Fridays are for sending out props Count how many times that one guy Rob says "dude" each Zoom Never send a subject line that sucks To help you with the point that matters most, take 100 swift samples to sauce up your subject lines and achieve the open rates your emails deserve. There are options ranging from "Welcome in" and "Buy this" to tapping into social proof and pain points. Stash this away in your little folder that functions like a cheat code. Juicy subject lines → TRENDING The secondhand market for exploded SpaceX Starship debris is, well, exploding. Sellers on eBay are hawking charred, hexagonal ceramic tiles recovered on Texan and Mexican beaches from last year's failed test launches, with bids reaching up to $2.5k so far. SNIPPETS Boeing's CEO Dave Calhoun is stepping down at the end of 2024. The airline's chairman of the board will also step down, and its commercial airplane unit CEO is out amid ongoing scrutiny over quality and safety concerns. Nissan announced plans to cut production costs while expanding its EV offerings with 30 new car models, including 16 EVs, over the next three years. It also plans to release 34 new EVs through 2030, when it hopes EVs will constitute 60% of its product offerings. TikTok said its new youth council, consisting of 15 teens from around the world, has begun consulting on media literacy campaigns and privacy and safety issues. Spotify is experimenting with online learning. The company is trialing video courses on desktop and mobile for UK users across four categories: "make music, get creative, learn business, and healthy living." Cocoa exceeded $9k/ton for the first time. Bad weather and crop disease in West Africa are to blame for the increasing price of chocolate — including Easter eggs. NASA wants volunteers to use its SunSketcher app to capture the upcoming eclipse for research on how solar gravity affects planets. Meatly, a startup focused on lab-grown meat, says it produced the first-ever cans of pet food — wet cat food, to be specific — with cultivated chicken as the protein source. CBS inked a deal to air the Golden Globes and American Music Awards for the next five years. This year's Globes telecast reached ~10m viewers. Trounce more tasks: You don't need a personal assistant to start finding more white space on your calendar. Improve your workflow with five DIY time management templates. Don't miss this... This one's for the salespeople: Some prospects are more headache-inducing than others — hear from experts who discuss eight of the toughest prospects to handle and how to deal with them. Not Necessary Classic Car Auctions Going once, going twice: Grab your bidding paddle, because Mike Tyson's 1994 Range Rover Vogue limo went up for auction over the weekend and it could still be yours for a cool ~$32.9k. The Vogue LSE model was converted into a limo to get the boxing heavyweight around Scotland in 2000. Its modifications, which included extending the chassis and body of the car by 40 inches and raising the roof by eight, took nine months to complete and cost ~$170.6k. The cabin is decked out in oxblood leather, carpet, and walnut trim, with three captain chairs, a glass divider, and two TVs in the back. Happy bidding. 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: Here's an entrepreneurial feat for you: In 1963, a man left the menswear field to buy a small Tupelo, Mississippi, business in a very different industry. By 2003, it had grown into that industry's largest. Clue 2: If companies could get tattoos, you would probably see this Kurt Cobain quote inked on this company: "I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not." It is, after all, a fixture on lists of America's most-hated companies. Clue 3: This company has a whole lot of character. For starters, it's got a friendly ghost, a moose and a squirrel, a heroic Collie, a panda versed in martial arts, an ogre, and whatever the hell the Minions are supposed to be. 👇 Scroll to the bottom for the answer 👇 Failure to launch Why, though? Lego has seen its fair share of failed products The Lego Group is a profitable toymaker today, but it's seen some real flops. 2024-03-26T00:00:00Z Juliet Bennett Rylah Yesterday, we wrote about a massive Dungeons & Dragons Lego set that sounds pretty cool, if you're into that sort of thing. But The Lego Group hasn't scored a home run with every kit; back in 2014, Lego designer Mark Stafford posted to Reddit about the toy company's many failures, per Business Insider. What happened? Stafford said that in the '90s, Lego replaced many of its more experienced designers with "innovators" who knew little about toy design or what it took to manufacture them. They created several products that had way too many parts, causing all sorts of issues — storage, logistics, pricing, etc. These products included: A "fiber optics" kit with plastic tubes connected to LED lights. Cool, but they cost more to produce than the kits sold for. Primo, or Lego bricks for babies. Babies don't play with Legos because, well, they are babies. But Stafford hated Galidor the most "Galidor: Defenders of the Outer Dimension" was a short-lived children's sci-fi show co-created by TV creator Thomas W. Lynch and The Lego Group as a way to break into the action figure market. According to Lego podcast Bits N' Bricks, the toy designers felt lackluster about the show before it aired. After it aired, it received mixed reviews and failed to find an audience. Also: The line competed against another Lego Group product, Bionicle. The toys contained several pieces that were costly to make and, counter to Lego's typical strategy, no bricks. The show lasted only two seasons and sales were a complete flop. Some went so far as to blame "Galidor" as a contributing factor in Lego Group's near bankruptcy. In 2004… … Jorgen Vig Knudstorp became CEO of The Lego Group. He cut unprofitable lines and turned the company around. But "Galidor" toys still have their fans and collections, and The Lego Group did learn from its experience. Bits N' Bricks notes that the toys' system for connecting limbs is used in various toy lines today. AROUND THE WEB 🍞 On this day: In 1804, President Thomas Jefferson attended a party at which a giant loaf of bread was consumed alongside a 1.2k-pound piece of cheese, the latter a gift from a group of Baptists who admired his religious tolerance. Accounts suggest the party was a drunken mess. 🌲 That's interesting: Was nature really healing during the pandemic? Research suggests it's complicated. ⏲️ Useful: A free Pomodoro timer, to-do list, and music player. 🕹️ Game: Touch the white square. 🐱 Aww: Why are cats like this? SHARE THE HUSTLE Hey. Don't keep us a secret. Refer just 3 people and we'll send Hustle essentials as a thank you. Share this custom referral link: https://thehustle.co/join?ref=7598767985 Your referral count: 0 Today's Fit the Bill answer is Comcast (Market cap: $168.78B) Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Sara Friedman. Editing by: Ben "I love Rocky Road" Berkley. Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here. PODCAST JOBS CONTACT US The Hustle, 2 Canal Park, Cambridge, MA 02141, US. Never want to hear from us again? Break our hearts and unsubscribe.