🏁 Less putting, more vrooming

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👋 Good morning. Who among us doesn’t love a good fort? Unfortunately, whatever you build will pale in comparison to the new Guinness World Record holder for the largest blanket fort. Local residents and high school students in Las Vegas, Nevada, built a 14,103-square-foot fort designed by engineering students that included hundreds of sheets, tent poles, ropes, pipes, and binder clips. An inspection by an official Guinness adjudicator took place to ensure the tent fulfilled all requirements, including allowing a person to “sit comfortably” inside.

THE BIG IDEA

The private racetrack boom

The most thrilling racing experience most of us will ever have is besting our friends in Mario Kart.

But for those who can afford it, private racing tracks allow car enthusiasts to live out their F1 fantasies, while also offering an alternative to a bougie, but more boring status symbol: the country club.

Why now?

Two reasons, per The Wall Street Journal.

Extremely wealthy people are dropping big bucks on elite experiences, and this is just one example.
The market for luxury vehicles — we’re talking $1m+ — has shifted from vintage finds to modern high-performance models.

At the same time, LA-based car collector Matthew Katz told WSJ, “The nature of car collecting has evolved from ‘Look at what I own,’ to ‘How can I experience them and how can I make it more social?’”

You can take your old Mustang to the local car show and swap restoration stories, but if you’ve got a fast car, you want to drive it fast — and that’s just not possible on city streets. Just ask the guy who demolished his $300k McLaren street racing.

These private clubs cater to social supercar fans who want a safe place to speed. They’re lifestyle-oriented, offering amenities including spas and club houses.

So, where can I go vroom?

Singer Vehicle Design, a company that restores vintage Porsches, opened Singer Drivers Club at the Willow Springs International Raceway in California. You can drive a Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 RS Clubsport on multiple circuits and enjoy communal lounges, luxury locker rooms, and driving simulators. Membership starts at $450k.
Members of Florida’s Concours Club can arrive by private jet and enjoy an array of ultra-fancy amenities. Founding memberships were $350k five years ago and fees have gone up — though the club hasn’t said by how much — since. If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.
Illinois’s Autobahn is more budget-friendly if you can swing a $60k initiation fee and $7.2k annually for a full membership, while social and go-karting memberships are a mere $6.2k per year each.

Not rich? Well, there’s always Las Vegas, the city where you can shoot a machine gun, get hitched, and do a few laps in a supercar for under a grand.

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BILLIONAIRE MINDSET

AI tackles an 80-year-old math problem

For decades, mathematicians have been puzzled over a seemingly straightforward geometry puzzle.

In 1946, one posed a possible answer — but no one has been able to prove or disprove it.

Until now… and thanks to AI.

👉 Read more on Mindstream.

NEWSWORTHY NUMBER

Recent studies that have linked declining fertility rates to the advent of the iPhone, which debuted in 2007, the same year the US birthrate started to fall, per The New York Times. One of the studies found the smartphone responsible for as much as 52% of the fertility rate decline between 2007 and 2011, with the effects most pronounced among younger age groups.

Researchers suggest it could be that iPhones increased access to information on avoiding pregnancy, or pornography, which became a substitute for sex — but it’s entirely possible that doomscrolling is simply the most effective form of birth control.

AROUND THE WEB

📅 On this day: In 1981, the original "Donkey Kong" game was released in Japan, introducing both Donkey Kong and Mario.

🃏 That’s cool: An online deck shuffler for Magic: The Gathering.

🧩 That’s interesting: What defines a perfect game of Tetris — and the player who finally achieved it.

🖼️ Game: Complete the picture.

🦉 Aww: Don’t you wish you had an owl to gently pet?

SHOWER THOUGHT

Humans are easy to navigate in a crowd because you can instantly tell where they’re going, faces point forward, backs mean they’re moving away. This cue makes a huge difference. If we’re moving sideways like crabs with no clear “front” at a glance, crowded places would probably turn into total gridlock. SOURCE

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

Editing by: Sara "Vroom vroom" Friedman.

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🏁 The new country club