#31 The Weekend Download – Catching Up on What Matters
Essential insights you need to stay ahead
📩 Issue #31 – 20/09/2025
⚡ Quick Hits – What You Need to Know
🛰️ Ozone comeback
The ozone layer is on track to fully recover by mid-century, a rare win for global science-driven cooperation.
Read More (WMO)
🤖 Meta’s glasses flop
Meta’s CTO admits smart glasses demos failed — and not just because of Wi-Fi. Big bets, bigger stumbles.
Read More (TechCrunch)
💸 Nvidia + Intel’s $5B chip pact
Nvidia is teaming up with once-fallen Intel in a $5B deal. Intel will design custom CPUs optimised to integrate with Nvidia’s chips across PCs and data centers — a “historic” partnership that could reshape the semiconductor race.
Read More (WSJ)
🔥 Top Insights
💬 How people really use ChatGPT
OpenAI’s first usage study sheds light on who’s using ChatGPT, what for, and how patterns are shifting – from writing and coding to personal advice and even “AI companions.”
Read More (Washington Post)
🎨 Design for the future
Fast Company’s Innovation by Design awards spotlight products and systems shaping how we’ll live and work next.
Read More (Fast Company)
📈 Chief Longevity Officer
Companies are appointing execs to plan for 100-year lifespans – putting demographics at the center of strategy.
Read More (Forbes)
🎮 20 hours a week
A study finds teenage boys now spend an average of 20 hours per week gaming — with health impacts rivaling smoking.
Read More (The Independent)
📊 Movements to Watch
📉 Pop Mart’s toy bubble cools
The craze for Labubu dolls is fading, sending Pop Mart’s stock down nearly. The slide erased billions in value – though the toymaker is still up 180% this year, leading the Hang Seng Index.
Read More (Bloomberg)
🃏 Pokémon cards as assets
Pokémon trading cards are emerging as a serious investment class, rivaling fine art and vintage wine.
Read More (WSJ)
📖 Warby Parker joins book club culture
Brands are embedding themselves in cultural rituals like book clubs to build deeper loyalty and lifestyle relevance.
Read More (AdAge)
🤖 AI in politics
Albania just appointed an AI “minister” to oversee procurement — a symbolic step into algorithmic governance.
Read More (The Guardian)
💡 Something to Think About
🎥 YouTube’s invisible labor
New reporting reveals how billions of hours of video have quietly fueled AI training sets – without creator consent.
Read More (The Atlantic)
👩👩👧 AI in the family
A Guardian writer’s unsettling week with an AI-powered toy reveals how deeply bots can worm into family life.
Read More (The Guardian)
🌐 What makes us human?
In an age of AI, the New Yorker asks: what’s left of human uniqueness — and how do we protect it?
Read More (New Yorker)
🖊️ The handwriting rebels
Some students are ditching laptops entirely, embracing handwritten notes as a form of intellectual resistance.
Read More (Dazed)
🌀 Offbeat & Unexpected
🥒 Pickleball nation
The New York Times mapped America’s pickleball boom, from small-town courts to a billion-dollar industry.
Read More (NYT)
📺 Ads in your fridge
Samsung is bringing targeted ads to smart refrigerators – because apparently no screen is safe anymore.
Read More (The Verge)
🚙 Uber goes on safari
Uber is tapping into Kenya’s $4B safari industry with in-app wildlife tours, expanding far beyond urban rides.
Read More (Bloomberg)
⚔️ Robot wars, SF edition
San Francisco just hosted its first robot fighting championship — part sport, part startup showcase.
Read More (NYT)