Last week we asked about which emoji you’d use if you could only use one for the rest of your life. Catch the findings, and some hilarious answers, below.
In today’s email:
Huh? Celebs are taking 17-minute flights.
Chart: America’s TV addiction.
Morgan Housel: Principles that govern finance.
Around the web: Finding the lizard, discovering fonts, why “craptops” are useful, and more cool internet finds.
🎧 On the go? Listen to today’s 10-minute podcast to hear Jacob and Juliet break down the ✨drama✨around Instagram’s app overhaul and Kylie Jenner’s private jet. Plus: Google Maps updates, Spotify earnings, and jeans news.
The big idea
The ultra-wealthy’s private jets are under scrutiny
Here in drought-stricken California, we’re composting food scraps, running appliances on energy-saver mode, and letting it mellow if it’s yellow. Except for Kylie Jenner, who’s taking her private jet on 17-minute flights.
We know this thanks to @CelebJets, the Twitter account exposing the uber-rich and their clown shoe-sized carbon footprints.
Jenner became its most recent target amid backlash surrounding an Insta post featuring two jets: hers and partner Travis Scott’s.
But it all started with Elon Musk…
… as most internet drama does.
Jack Sweeney, 19, began using FAA data to track Musk’s PJ, leading the billionaire to offer him $5k to please stop. Instead, Sweeney expanded his jet-tracking and added estimated fuel use and carbon emissions, perProtocol.
Example: @CelebJets found that country star Kenny Chesney’s recent trip from Camarillo to Monterey, California, resulted in ~2 tons of CO2 emissions.
That ~225-mile journey is a ~4.5-hour drive. Or, he could have taken Amtrak’s Coast Starlight train and written a cool song about it.
What’s the climate impact?
Private jets are 5x-14x more polluting than commercial planes, and 50x more so than trains.
To put that into perspective, a recent 17-minute jaunt aboard Jenner’s $72m Bombardier BD 700 jet made up about a quarter of an average plebe’s annual carbon footprint, perThe Guardian.
Meanwhile, the World Inequality Lab found that the world’s 1% emit 70x as much carbon as the bottom 50%.
The question is, Will the rich be cyberbullied into more responsible forms of transit or tell everyone to eat cake?
BTW: Curious as to whose private jet use results in the most emissions? Apparently, it’s Taylor Swift.
SNIPPETS
Meta-reverse: Meta saw its first YoY quarterly revenue decline in Q2. This comes after it announced $100 price hikes for Quest 2 VR headsets, which surely will sway more people to buy them.
Cue the music: Spotify reported 433m monthly active users in Q2, up 19% YoY. They’re also stopping production on Car Thing, a hardware device you probably didn’t know existed.
Jackpot? Not just yet. The Mega Millions pot is now worth $1B+, marking the fourth time it’s crossed that mark. With ~1-in-302m odds, the only guaranteed winner is the IRS.
Better maps: Google released new features in its Maps app, including location sharing notifications, immersive aerial views of 100 landmarks, and improved biking routes.
Need jeans? Old Navy promised not to raise the prices on its denim through the end of September in an effort to lead a strong back-to-school season for the struggling retailer.
Shots fired: SoulCycle is offering 47 classes to anyone who trades in their Peloton bike. The “F#ck It, Let’s Ride Together” offer is available to the first 100 people who trade in.
Niche opp: Trendster Sam Eitzen cleared seven figures after one year of selling artisan gifts to big brands. Read the Trends article to learn how he did it.
Chart
Singdhi Sokpo
Where does all our time go?
If you’re between 35 and 44 and feel like you have no time to yourself — it’s ‘cause you don’t.
A recent study from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics found this age group has the least amount of daily leisure time at three hours and 52 minutes.
And over half that time…
… is spent watching the 4.5B TV shows that came out in the last year.
Other findings include:
15- to 19-year-olds spend the lowest percentage of leisure time watching TV (35%), but the highest percentage on video and computer games (25%).
20- to 24-year-olds only spend 18 min./day on sports and fitness compared to 42 min./day for 15- to 19-year-olds. Damn job!
35- to 44-year-olds spend the highest percentage of leisure time socializing (15.38%). That number falls hard after 65 (7.25%).
But it’s not all bad news for the 65+ crowd — in total, the group spends the most time relaxing, thinking, and reading. Sounds lovely.
Free Resource
Wait, are you still sleeping on LinkedIn?
Stop that. It’s time to face the facts.
With over 300m monthly active users, LinkedIn is the de facto social network for business pros.
Whether you’re working to scale a B2B or D2C ambition, there are ways you could (should) make meaningful strides on the platform: expand your reach, hire top talent, shape your presence, be a thought leader, maybe all of the above.
HubSpot Academy has assembled yet another fire foundational mastery course. It’ll help you bolster your brand and have confidence in the words you share with the world.
Learn how to produce great LinkedIn content — for free. Achoo. HubSpot says bless you.
In his book Succeeding, John Reed wrote one of the smartest things I’ve ever read:
When you first start to study a field, it seems like you have to memorize a zillion things. You don’t. What you need is to identify the core principles — generally three to twelve of them — that govern the field. The million things you thought you had to memorize are simply various combinations of the core principles.
The finance world…
… employs some of the best-educated, highest-paid people on the planet, but everything that matters in the field stems from four core principles:
Live below your means. A tremendous amount of spending is designed to show people how much money you have. Your savings rate is the gap between your ego and your income.
Understand what bet you’re making. If you invest with a short time horizon, you are betting you’ll be able to sell to someone at a higher price. If you invest for the long term, you’re betting companies will innovate, humans will become more productive, and the rewards will accrue to a growing economy.
Everything worthwhile has a cost. In investing, the cost of good long-term returns is putting up with constant volatility.
There is a lot of money to be made in finance. This leads to hucksters, scammers, and charlatans charging egregious fees for little in return. Few things are as critical to financial success as a well-tuned BS detector.
AROUND THE WEB
🧟 On this day: In 1932, White Zombie starring Bela Lugosi premiered in NYC. It’s considered the first feature-length zombie film but, at the time, received very poor reviews.
🖊️ That’s cool:Fonts in Use is a typography archive with entries from around the world.
💻 That’s interesting: Why you should test your product on a “craptop.”
🦎 Cure boredom: Can you #FindThatLizard? It’s a Twitter game started by Dr. Earyn McGee — an excellent follow if you love lizards.