🪩 RSVP to ASMR

Plus: A golden toilet, art for your wellbeing, and more.

Share The Hustle: https://thehustle.co/join?ref=7598767985 Check your referral progress & prizes here 👋  Good morning. A whole new week is at your feet, and you can be anything you want to be. Except a "Godfather of AI," most likely. Yoshua Bengio, one of the three such founding fathers, became the first person to receive 1m Google Scholar citations. One of Bengio's papers alone received 105k citations, while Einstein's 1915 paper on general relativity has just 11k. And yet, your most recent project received zero kudos. Rough. STARTING UP Can wind win the freight race? ❌  The problem: Air freight and traditional cargo ships are slow, cumbersome, and harmful to the environment, leaving companies looking for speedier, greener shipping options.  💡  The pitch: France's Vela is building a 100% wind-powered cargo ship that uses solar power (it's covered in 2.5k+ square feet of solar panels) and hydro generators as backup. The company says its vessel can cut emissions by 99% compared to air freight and 90% compared to container ships.  🚀  The outlook: Vela's first vessel sets sail next spring and, if sailing is smooth, will start deliveries for Takeda Pharmaceuticals, cosmetics company Greentech, and others. It plans to add four more ships to its fleet, allowing for weekly departures and, later, expanding routes around the world. Sounds like a breeze, right? NEWS FLASH   Topgolf may see a valuation of ~$1B if parent company Topgolf Callaway Brands sells the driving range brand to private equity firm Leonard Green. Golf club company Callaway bought Topgolf in a deal worth $2B in 2021, but sales have dropped as recreational golfers have pulled back on spending.  Archer Aviation — apparently the official air taxi for the 2028 Olympics in LA — purchased the Hawthorne Airport for $126m. It's located ~3 miles from LAX and near multiple sporting venues. Vine is back? The short-form video platform is being rebooted as Divine by ex-Twitter employee Evan "Rabble" Henshaw-Plath — who's been able to salvage ~170k videos from the OG Vine. It's currently in beta, and has already announced it won't allow AI slop. Good news for human writers who love em-dashes: OpenAI announced that ChatGPT will finally follow instructions not to use em-dashes — a useful punctuation mark that some claim is a telltale sign of AI-generated content. Hopefully, this means we can now use them to our hearts' content. FIND BALANCE Clean sheets for managing your money   Spreadsheets alone can't quell your shopaholic habits, but they're definitely a solid place to start.    Take seven financial planning templates, fit for both business and personal expenses, and start tracking your cash flow like a healthy adult.     Templates for boundless budgeting: Personal finance  Spending allocation Cash flow tracking Balance sheet Profit/loss statements Financial projections Stock portfolio Seven spending staples — free of charge. Know your numbers   THE BIG IDEA Are ASMR parties the next big thing?    If you've ever been on TikTok or YouTube, then you know just how popular ASMR is.    Since the mid-2010s, ASMR — or autonomous sensory meridian response, a warm tingling sensation often accompanied by feelings of calm and relaxation — videos have proliferated the internet, and gone from niche to mainstream.    But until recently, and despite a few in-person spas that have started offering such services in the last few years, the trend has lived mainly online in video form and it's largely been a solo experience.    But Tinglesbar ASMR Spa & Collective — the world's first dedicated ASMR spa — is changing that, per Wired.    How it works   Launched in 2018, the Toronto-based business combines ASMR with in-person roleplaying in group settings, where handfuls of strangers can get lost in spine-tingling sounds and sensations for a couple of hours together.    Some scenarios include: A "'90s/2000s summertime birthday party" with face painting, games, and sound baths. An immersive classroom experience complete with lice inspections, arts and crafts, and throwback snacks.  A Harry Potter-themed one that promises to "un-petrify" you. The group roleplay hangouts range from ~$20 to ~$50, and are guided by licensed professionals with backgrounds in wellness and performance art. (Solo sessions are also offered, starting at ~$100, and are customizable, with roleplaying available for an extra ~$35.)   Why it works   To start, we live in an age of anxiety, and ASMR offers a little reprieve from life's stresses.  Not everyone experiences ASMR, but for those who do, it can be deeply soothing. A 2018 study found that when people who experience ASMR watch ASMR videos, their heart rates slow and their positive emotions increase significantly.  While the roleplay isn't necessary to experience ASMR, founder Tammy Lung told Wired that the added comfort of a nostalgia-inducing scenario can "help break down people's walls to make the most of the experiences."   Plus, immersive and multisensory wellness experiences are in high demand.  Other businesses banking on the formula include Miami's Scratcher Girls, where pros with well-manicured nails offer a massage-like back-scratching experience with elements of ASMR, and "art bathhouses" like Submersive. And although tech has made our societies more antisocial, people are touch-starved and still crave connection. Quietly enjoying a gentle head scratch beside other strangers, even in the form of a lice check, is one way to satisfy that itch. 🔗 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED   How a pantry king got canned: For 100+ years, Del Monte was considered a "recession-proof" brand. So how did it end up bankrupt in 2025? Come along for the wild ride.    NEWSWORTHY NUMBER Expected starting bid for Maurizio Cattelan's America (2016) — a 100-kilogram, 18-karat, solid gold toilet — which will hit the auction block tomorrow at Sotheby's, per ARTnews.   Gold or not, that's a high price for a used toilet — the fully functional artwork helped 100k+ people relieve themselves while installed at NYC's Guggenheim Museum in 2016 — but don't be surprised if it fetches far more than that. Cattelan is also the artist behind the famous "banana duct-taped to a wall" piece, which sold for $6.2m last fall. AROUND THE WEB 📅  On this day: in 1839, Giuseppe Verdi's first opera, Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio, debuted in Milan, Italy. ⚔️  That's cool: A soundboard for tabletop RPGs. 🗞️  Newsletter: Get insight and analysis into global markets with Semafor Business. 🖼️  That's interesting: A study found that going to art galleries can improve your wellbeing. 🐿️  Aww: Here, have some adorable baby squirrels. SHOWER THOUGHT There's probably countless combinations of three people such that you are the only person in the world who has met all three people. SOURCE   Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah, Sara Friedman, and Singdhi Sokpo. Editing by: Ben "A real head-scratcher" Berkley.   Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here. Working on something big? We've got a whole library of business-building resources for you. 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