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👋 Good morning. Every moment, whether you know it or not, someone, somewhere is doing something hilariously strange. Take, for example, the thousands who gathered in Minneapolis over the weekend to cheer on a giant pencil getting sharpened. The event, which began after a fallen oak tree was turned into a 20-foot No. 2 pencil, celebrated its fifth year with performers in pencil costumes, dancing, and fanfare before the ceremonial sharpening. Your weird hobby, it turns out, isn't so weird after all.

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NEWS FLASH

A hot latte in a white coffee mug with espresso beans falling around it.

☕ Coming for Keurig? Italian coffee maker Lavazza launched Tablì, a brewing system that uses tablets made from 100% compressed coffee grounds and which can only be made using a Lavazza machine. Tablì, born from Lavazza’s acquisition of Italian startup Caffemotive, took 15+ patents, five years, and a new production facility to develop. The tablets, which have no coating, binder, or gelatin, are a more sustainable single-serve option than plastic cups. Lavazza generates $100m+ annually in the US through retailers like Target and Walmart and is targeting $1.15B in US business.

🍿 So, there: Despite outcry from moviegoers, Alamo Drafthouse’s new policy requiring guests to order concessions by scanning a QR code as opposed to handing paper-and-pencil requests to servers is working. It says box office revenue is the highest since 2019, employees are earning more take-home pay on average because they can handle more guests, and customers are placing more orders than before. The company also insists it’s less distracting, as employees no longer have to deliver paper checks — which they typically did right when the film was barreling to its thrilling conclusion.

🎵 Soul music: Adrian Younge of record label Jazz is Dead arranged charts for AI-generated hit “Through My Soul” and asked the Midnight Hour band and vocalist Loren Oden to record the track. Younge realized he enjoyed the song when performed by humans, and includes it frequently in set lists. Played by Humans, an online initiative from Jazz is Dead and advertising agency TBWA\Chiat\Day LA that advocates for a digital standard to verify human-made music, also uses the cover in its campaign. To certify music as the real deal, Played by Humans uses software that looks for markers frequently left behind by AI.

MORE NEWS TO KNOW

Robotaxis hop the pond: Uber is partnering with British AI startup Wayve to bring its robotaxis to London. The program will launch in the coming months and start with operators still behind the wheels.
Another IPO: Bending Spoons, the company that’s acquired 50+ businesses, including Vimeo, Eventbrite, and AOL, and has 500m+ monthly active users and 9m paying customers, has filed to go public in the US.
Terminally online: The British Film Institute compiled ~430 viral videos it deemed culturally significant, including “Charlie bit my finger,” the “Badgers” animation, and a Cambridge livestream of a coffee pot.
Sticker shock: A FIFA World Cup tradition involves collecting stickers for each team. Panini, the Italian company that makes them, sells them in blind packs, so it can be tricky. Still, the trend is on fire this year, with some retailers selling out.

GRAB THE BUNDLE

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THE BIG IDEA

Could your bathroom break help save the planet?

The mess you make in the toilet might not smell like roses, but it could help grow them.

Urine, it so happens, is full of nutrients, like phosphorus and nitrogen (even more so now that everyone’s proteinmaxxing) that are vital to plant growth.

Rather than letting those nutrients go to waste, startups like VunaNexus are developing tech to harvest urine and turn it into a natural alternative to synthetic fertilizer.

How it works

The Swiss startup’s process is similar to the way batteries are recycled separately for their minerals, per The Guardian.

Using special (but normal-looking) urine-diverting toilets, undiluted pee is flushed down a pipe to a treatment facility in the basement of a building.
Then, the yellow stuff goes through a series of filtration tanks that separate micropollutants and odors from the desired nutrients, and pasteurize the liquid to kill any viruses.
What’s left is distilled water and usable fertilizer, or “Aurin,” which the startup claims is the only mineral fertilizer made entirely of human urine currently on the market.

“This is not a hippy thing”...

… founder David de Chambrier told The Guardian. Although that’s how it was widely regarded until the wars in Ukraine and Iran made raw materials inaccessible and sent fertilizer prices soaring. Then, suddenly, alternatives like Aurin started seeing serious demand.

Not only are they more sustainable than synthetic fertilizers, they’re also critical at a time when:

Fertilizer prices are expected to rise by nearly a third this year.
The United Nations estimates 45m people globally are at risk of acute food insecurity due to strained fertilizer supply.

Fortunately, several other startups are working on similar solutions.

What’s next?

Aurin is currently being tested by cities in France and Switzerland, installed in residential and commercial buildings (including the European Space Agency’s headquarters), where it is already recycling 3m liters of urine annually.

The ultimate goal is to bring cheap, sustainable crop fuel to urban and rural communities — though, for now, that’s proving to be a challenge: Extracting one kilogram of nitrogen from pee using VunaNexus’ process is currently 40x-50x more expensive compared to synthetic fertilizer.

Gee whiz — who knew something so gross and free could be so expensive?

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HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Want to find your $1m idea? Shadowing a SaaS entrepreneur with a $3m business is a good place to start.

NEWSWORTHY NUMBER

Number of days that Amazon will be in the pizza business. From June 15 to June 26, the ecommerce giant is partnering with Little Caesars to bring Prime members even more value, with large pies on offer for just $5, per Restaurant Dive.

That’s cheaper than the pizza chain’s usual pricing, but also what it used to cost and probably as much as you should pay for what one Reddit user described as “cardboard quality.” Since 2022, when the chain raised its prices for the first time in 25 years, the cost of a Little Caesars pizza has climbed by as much as 200% in certain regions, from $5 to ~$10.

AROUND THE WEB

📅 On this day: In 1993, Jurassic Park premiered in Washington, D.C.

🐴 That’s interesting: A rare horse was born at the Bronx Zoo. They’re shorter than other horses and have thick legs made for running and kicking each other.

🐦 That's cool: A list of the 100 best bird names, like the Bare-faced Go-away-bird, or perhaps the Diabolical Nightjar.

🎩 Haha: Hasbro announced a “brainrot” Monopoly game.

🐈 Aww: You again.

SHOWER THOUGHT

Graham crackers are a gateway snack. SOURCE

Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Singdhi Sokpo.

Editing by: Sara "Golden opportunity" Friedman.

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🌿 Answering nature’s call