What if we told you this wasn’t Nick or Jack? But someone who has access to their Google Drive, LinkedIn, Notes app, and email login. These are the best nuggets from the week of TBOY plus…some reader exclusive bits.

This week’s edition is 60% of the best of the pod and 40% things we had to share off the record. 

Scroll for:

• Stock highlights

• Wild stats

• Lingo updates

• Things ya didn’t know were “a thing”

• Worthy reads/listens

• Facts you’ll call mom about

• Sources the world has kept on the DL

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A graph worth sharing

Percentage of 18- to 25-year-olds who said they used weed or alcohol in the past month, shared by Bloomberg. These days we’re at…

• An all-time-high (ATH): Nearly a third used cannabis in the last month.

• An all-time-low (ATL): Just 50% of young people drank alcohol in the past month.

• 🎂 Happy 20th birthday to TheFacebook. Zuck’s baby turns 20 on Sunday and Meta just had its best Q ever: 4B people logged into its apps, profits 3x’d to $14B, and the stock jumped 20% on Friday (Zuck’s b’day gift to himself is $700M in dividends).

• 🐑 Uggs: They’re back baby. Holiday sales of the fuzzy boots surged 15% thanks to our “20-Year Rule of Nostalgia”: Every 20 years, what’s old becomes novel again… Uggs was born in the 1980s, returned in the 2000s, and is back (again) for the 2020s.

• 🔻 23andMe: The stock’s fallen 98% to under $1. A DNA data breach didn’t help. But overall it looks to us like “The Macarena Problem”: 23andMe’s $99 ancestry tests were a one-hit-wonder product. We miss the Spit Party days.

*” It’s giving” is a new Gen Z phrase on TikTok. It means something is intense, dramatic, or over-the-top.

Speaking of…

• Canuary: People weren’t boozing in January so they turned to weed instead.

• Situationship: 2 people have somewhat of a “thing” (romantic relationship) but it’s not ofish. Sweethearts Candy even concocted a treat for your situationship ahead of V-day.

via Nick’s Apple Notes app

"The opposite of a good idea can be a good idea." - From Rory Sutherland's Rules of Alchemy

• Where Ya Bin: It’s a chain of stores you’ve never heard of…it’s where Amazon’s returns go. Every week there’s a new haul of overstock and unsellable merch. To sell it all, prices start on Fridays (day 1) at $14. What’s left over falls in price everyday until Thursdays (day 7) when everything is just 25 cents.

• Robot Wranglers: The nickname of a position at Amazon for employees who coral the robots like cattle. We call them “Bot Cowboys.”

• Electric School Buses: It’s real. Zum hit $1.3B for a smart school bus fleet. It has its own mobile app for parents to locate Little Lucy, cameras to give a safety score to Danny the Driver, and a Net Zero goal by 2027.

• Jack’s listening to: Trevor Noah’s interview of Mark Cuban on Noah’s Podcast, “What Now?”

• Nick’s reading: Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense by Rory Sutherland.

• 📬 No Address Land: Carmel-By-The-Sea, CA has 4K residents, but no addresses. No street addresses or #s. Just names. The Mailmen drop off mail based on the name. The town of Carmel is voting now on whether to add addresses — 59% of residents don’t want them.

• 📜 Delaware: 68% of the Fortune 500 incorporate in the state. DE’s got America’s oldest business court — and it uses judges instead of juries to keep trials moving fast… Except Elon doesn’t like them, so this week he said Tesla will move its incorporation to Texas.

• 🫙 The Perfect Package: To maximize revenue, just minimize design — Consumers will pay more for a cracker if the package is simple ($6.39), but less if the same cracker’s package is complex ($5.56). Apparently we perceive “simple” as “wholesome.” It’s what’s on the inside that counts, but it’s what’s on the outside that sells.

• The layoffs tracker: layoffs.fyi 

• For the quarterly earnings calendar: Jack hits up Finviz. (How we kept up to speed on Big Tech earnings week).

• Google Trends: This week “Vegas to Japan” reached a 5-year high. Wonder why…

What’s the picture filling in the TBOY logo?

Hint: it’s Bulls*** Answer at the bottom.

• 👀 Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, sold $10B of Amazon stock last year for charity. She has sold about half her Amazon shares, with the remainder still worth about $37B.

• 🧑‍🤝‍🧑🧑‍🤝‍🧑 IBM has nearly 300K employees - That’s bigger than the population of St Louis.

• 🇳🇴 Norway’s sovereign wealth fund is the biggest stock fund in the world and made $213B in profits last year — that’s enough to give $42K to every citizen…but they didn’t do that.

• 🦷 $3M = The price of rapper Offset’s teeth… because they’re covered in 40 carats of diamonds. His LA dentist pioneered the diamond tooth biz. MillionDollarMollars.

• 🧘 “People don’t pause habits, they pivot them.”

• 🥓 “Slice long content up, then post it on TikTok — It’s the Salami Strategy.”

• 🤿 “Today’s Apple Vision Pro is the worst one you’ll ever use — Because with tech products, the first version is the worst version.”

Monday: 🤌 What is the #MobWifeAesthetic? Where Ya Bin's purge-pricing. IBM's mysterious stock pop.

Tuesday: 💋 “Sephora’s suuuurge” — LVMH’s luxurious quarter. Amazon & iRobot’s Deal cancelled. FanDuel’s parent Flutter starts trading on NYSE.

Wednesday: 😶‍🌫️ “Merlot vs Marijuana” — Cannabis’ Dry January Surge. SmartLess’ $100M podcast deal. Big Tech’s dollar saved.

Thursday: 🚌 “The Tesla of School Buses” — Zum’s $1B e-Schoolbus. Norway’s huuuuge wealth fund. 23&Me’s riches to rags story.

Friday: 🤘 “Better have RiRi’s Money” — TikTok’s Music Purge. Apple’s headset debut. Wilson’s racquet IPO.

The Answer: It’s a Nobull shoe. Because this week, Tom Brady merged his nutrition brand TB12 with the training brand, Nobull.

And one more thing. What did you think of this newsletter makeover? Like we said on the pod yesterday “Today’s Apple Vision Pro will be the worst one ever,” so tell us what else you want to hear to make next week’s edition the best one yet. 🙌 🙌

—Nick & Jack