The money-making magic of a good Hampton Inn waffle
Here's the best things I found on the internet this week!
What’s up everybody,
Hope your weeks are off to a great start, and more importantly your summers. It’s officially July, my favorite month of the year (my birthday…and America’s, listed in order of importance). I’m turning 30 in about a week and feeling old as hell.
But that’s not stopping me from whipping up another round of “conversation starters,” the best, most interesting and most entertaining content on the internet in the past week. Hope you enjoy and share with friends!
What’s the coolest story or thing you found on the internet this week? Reply to this email and shoot me a link. Would love to hear from you!
For Forbes, I wrote on Friday about how the F1 movie blurs the line between cinema and commerce—and could shape the future of both. It’s an inside look at the product placement industry and how brands are becoming essential to big budget filmmaking.
You all know that Reeves Wiedeman is one of my favorite journalists and each of his dispatches for New York Mag is a must-read for me. But this story was particularly fascinating — a story from Japan on the trend of overtourism across the globe. By one estimate, 80 percent of tourists visit just 10 percent of the world, leading to, as Reeves says, “too many people with too much money and too few places to go.” But how can we solve it??
Hampton Inn is the largest US hotel chain, and a global export, by being “rigorously OK,” says Bloomberg. And from my childhood travel basketball trips to my own current budget travel experiences, I admit I too am under the spell of “good enough” when it comes to travel, which Hampton embodies. This definitive deep dive is our Long Read of the Week.
Even though she didn’t ultimately make history, watching Faith Kipyegon try to become the first woman to break the 4-minute mile barrier was thrilling to watch.
The Atlantic is throwing haymakers in this hit piece against wraps, and their tie to current beauty standards. “They’re like a salad, but less refreshing, or like a sandwich, but less filling—a worst-of-all-worlds Frankenstein’s monster, an indistinguishable food slurry wrapped in edible cardboard.” Do you all agree? Personally, as someone who is very strongly Team Burrito over taco (fighting words in LA), I’m a fan of wraps??
The way this former covert CIA officer talks about “the economy of secrets” makes someone rethink every conversation they’ve ever had. He explains how to accumulate secrets without giving any away, gaining leverage on others (I’m not sure this is a good way to live, but it is interesting).
Something I’m fascinated by and return to often is how vitality has revolutionized dining. Here’s a perfect example — a professional pastry chef stood in long lines to try all of the city’s TikTok certified pastries (and boy do people in NYC loooove lines). One of her lines echoes in my head “I can’t tell if they’re actually good or just algorithmically optimized.”
Speaking of something that could only happen in NYC — for $40, this expert will give you a two-hour walking tour of the city’s rat infestation.
Thanks for reading and sharing! On Friday we’ll be talking much much more about the F1 movie, which is crushing it in theaters.