When Yakult first hired a team of women to deliver its sweetened probiotic fermented milk beverage directly to the front doors of people living in Japan, the goal was to spread the word about the benefits of the gut-healthy consumable and increase sales. That part worked. “These women appealed particularly to other women, who were more likely to make decisions about household groceries, and were often already known to the people they delivered to – a familiarity that helped foster trust.” The drink became a hit in Japan, and it’s now sold in 40 countries. But over the decades, as Japan’s population has aged, the company and its customers realized that the service delivered a benefit beyond the microbiome. It provided a bit of a social infrastructure. It turns out that hanging out, even briefly, with one other human being can be as valuable as spending every day with the 6.5 billion live and active Lacticaseibacillus paracasei Shirota strains found in each small bottle of Yakult. “Japan is the world’s most rapidly aging major economy. Nearly 30% of its population is now over 65, and the number of elderly people living alone continues to rise. As families shrink and traditional multi-generational households decline, isolation has become one of the country’s most pressing social challenges. The suited woman is a Yakult Lady – one of tens of thousands across Japan who deliver the eponymous probiotic drinks directly to people’s homes. On paper, they’re delivery workers, but in practice they’re part of the country’s informal social safety net.” BBC The yogurt delivery women combating loneliness in Japan. (Alt link.) As far as I can tell, Yakult delivery addresses the two biggest challenges we face as we age: Isolation and regularity. 2Contradicting Around“I think the war is very complete, pretty much.” No, that wasn’t George S. Patton or Ulysses S. Grant. That was Donald Trump’s general message to the world (generally) and the markets (more specifically, and perhaps, for him, more importantly). The Pentagon is giving a different message. The Pentagon says this will be ‘our most intense day of strikes inside Iran.’ And from The Hill: Trump, Pentagon give conflicting signals on end to Iran war. Sun Tzu said that “all warfare is based on deception.” We’re taking it next level by not only deceiving the enemy, but often deceiving ourselves. 3Waste Case“Americans are really, really good at throwing things away. The country produces nearly 300 million tons of trash a year, and billions of dollars in reusable materials end up in landfills, even after passing through recycling bins. The problem has always been sorting it all — pulling the wheat from the chaff or in this case, the aluminum can from the dirty diaper.” Can AI solve the problem? Robots, cameras, and lots of data about garbage: Inside the recycling industry’s new bet. (With our luck, sorting through garbage will be the one job our AI overlords let us keep...) 4Drop Til You Shop“We learned to focus on the rare thing at the expense of what was around it—psychologists call this ‘tunneling’—and to prioritize avoiding loss over gaining rewards. It was typically smarter to fight for something everyone else wanted than to waste time looking for something else. That animal wisdom is a reason our species survived. It is also a reason that, in late 2025, you could find a grown adult—a person who lives in the kind of material plenitude our distant ancestors could never dream of—in a Starbucks parking lot before dawn, desperately seeking a coffee cup shaped like a teddy bear. You see, this coffee cup was available only as a drop.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Highly Exclusive Way That Everybody Shops Now. “When everything’s a drop, what’s the point of a drop?” 5Extra, ExtraLimp Election: “President Donald Trump said Monday he won’t sign any other legislation into law until Congress passes a strict proof-of-citizenship voting bill that he says also must end Americans’ ability to vote by mail, a startling demand months before the midterm elections.” (He’s definitely clear and consistent when it comes to waging war on democracy.) From The New Yorker: The Latest Republican Efforts to Make It Harder to Vote in the Midterms. 6Bottom of the NewsHave GLP-1s finally met their match? Lindt, which makes chocolate Easter bunnies, says weight-loss drug users are eating more chocolate, not less.
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Tuesday, March 10, 2026
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