Jarvis Junction, Hog Hotel & Perky Pines 🐽

But for all this hard work, resources and uncertainty, at the end, farmers typically earn a profit of $8 to $10 per tree. That's an average of $1 per tree per year. 

Most farmers will make deals with big box retailers like Home Depot so as to mitigate the risks of unsold Christmas tree. But this deal comes with a downside. Retailers immediately markup the price by 200-300% selling them at $80-$90 a piece. 📈

This price hike has lately inspired many holiday shoppers to buy artificial trees in a box. Benefits: one time price, long lasting, and clearly better for the environment. 

The public appeal for plastic trees keeps growing. In fact, in 2019, Americans bought almost the same amount of artificial trees (25 million) as real trees (26 million). 

The artificial Christmas tree market has already touched $1 billion in value in recent years with many new companies and startups propping up in the industry. Startup Balsam Hill, founded in 2006, has become a gladiator in the artificial Christmas tree market. 

So how will the tree farming industry compete in the next 10 years against the increasingly popular fake tree category?

"How can we cancel?" 
~ Nearly Churned Customer 😔

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Big Tech’s appetite for AI technologies is clearly ballooning. 

According to a McKinsey survey from early December, AI adoption at companies has more than doubled since 2017, with 63% of businesses expecting spending on AI to increase over the next three years. 

In 2017, 20% of respondents reported adopting AI in at least one business area, whereas today, that figure stands at 50%. 🤖

The level of investment in AI has also increased alongside its adoption. Five years ago, 40% of organizations using AI reported spending more than 5% of their digital budgets on AI, whereas now more than half of respondents report that level of investment. 

What’s more? AI focussed hiring is also on the rise. Despite the recent mass layoffs, survey responses show that organisations are keen to hire software engineers to build AI applications. Sadly, due to the recent tech talent shortage, majority of respondents report difficulty in hiring for each AI-related role in the past year.

Lastly, while investments in AI tech, adoption and hiring is on the rise, firms don’t seem to care much about the risks of AI. The report suggests that there have been no substantial activities to reduce or mitigate AI-related risks such as data breach or unethical profiling. ☠️

🧮 CountThings is a very successful app that counts things. The templates page shows the things people pay to count.

🚫 Heavenbanning is a hypothetical way to moderate social networks. Instead of being thrown off the platform, bad actors have all their followers replaced with sycophantic AI models that constantly agree and praise them. Real humans never interact with them. 

🎧 Fees from music playing on Peloton are “a top 10 account for pretty much all major record labels right now.”

🐷 In August, the world’s largest ‘hog hotel’ opened in Hubei, China. Up to 600,000 pigs live in the 26-storey tower block, eventually producing 54,000 tons of pork per year. The site has twice as much floor space as The Shard in London. 

🌐 37% of the world’s population, 2.9 billion people, have never used the Internet.

⛴️ 40% of global shipping involves moving fossil and other fuels (oil, gas, wood pellets) around. Another reason to go sustainable. More renewables (solar, wind, nuclear, geo), means fewer ships.

💣 Japanese atom bomb survivors lived five years longer and were less likely to get cancer than average Japanese citizens. Reason: Low-dose radiation. 

📺 70% of Gen Z viewers tend to watch videos with subtitles, which is why a team at Netflix worked extra hard on the subtitles - like swarm chittering, tentacles squelching wetly - for Stranger Things.