The wackiest headlines from the week as they would appear in a Classifieds section.

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SALESFORCE (AGAIN): Despite cutting 10% of its staff last year, the software giant recently kicked off a big hiring push by holding an event for former executives and giving them stuffed bears to woo them back. Unfortunately, the company went too far with the “at least three days in-person” recording they put in the toys.

CASINO SAVIOR: The MGM Grand is hiring an IT pro to rebuild its security infrastructure from the ground up after a cyberattack caused havoc for its casinos and hotel. The pay: $110/hour. The hours: Every dang day until the job is done.

Personal

VIOLENT FAMILY REUNION: Hasbro is opening its first Nerf theme park in Brazil in October and two in the US as soon as next year. One of the US locations will be in Pigeon Forge, TN, which means the perfect vacation now exists: smashing your loved ones with foam darts after visiting Dollywood.

CONFUSING COMMUTE: As part of a London Fashion Week marketing campaign, the Bond Street tube station was renamed “Burberry Street,” prompting complaints from confused riders. To make matters worse, they also replaced Big Ben with a bottle of Chanel No. 5.

For sale

PUFFER JACKET TO BEAT THE HEAT: Tiger Beer and fashion designer Izzy Du teamed up to release a puffer jacket that’s designed to lower your body temperature. When you put cold beer cans into the pockets, they’ll allegedly send cool temps across your torso through a network of tubes. It was a Paris Fashion Week thing, so it doesn’t have to make sense.

C-SPAN DRIP: The public service channel famous for livestreaming Sen. Dianne Feinstein being confused at work wants to remind everyone to check out the merch table in the back. Right after the Senate’s dress code was nixed, C-SPAN advertised its branded hoodies (and life-size cutouts of Reagan).—MM

Here are some illuminating scientific discoveries from the week to help you live better and maybe even get rid of garlic breath.

Deep breathing helps AI do math. Okay, not literally. But after Google’s PaLM 2 large language model was prompted to “Take a deep breath and work on this problem step by step,” the ChatGPT-like bot answered a set of math questions more accurately than it did without those mindful instructions, Google DeepMind researchers found. They think it might be because large language models scrape data from the internet, and these calming phrases often appear on Q&A forums that walk people through math problems. Past research has shown that prompting chatbots with humanlike language improves their responses.

🧄 Yogurt could be the new breath mint. The next time you have shrimp scampi, you may have a scientific excuse to get froyo for dessert. After food scientists at Ohio State treated raw garlic with whole milk plain yogurt, they discovered a 99% reduction in the food’s odor-producing compounds—meaning the air was essentially deodorized. In the process, the team also found that fried garlic is far less pungent than raw garlic. The lead researcher previously identified apples, mint, and lettuce as other effective garlic-fighters, especially when eaten immediately afterward. Next up for yogurt trials: human breath tests.

Scientists found a “holy grail” substitute for palm oil. A sustainable alternative to the preservative found in about half of all cosmetic and food products could help people lead healthier lives while saving trees. Made with byproducts from the flax/linseed industry, PALM-ALT has 80% less saturated fat and 30% fewer calories than palm oil—and it’s 70% better for the environment in terms of carbon emissions, researchers say. Plus, a panel of testers couldn’t tell the difference between products made with the breakthrough alternative and those made with regular palm shortening. The palm oil industry accounted for 8% of global deforestation between 1990 and 2008.—ML

Auto workers were among the first US employees to get the 40-hour workweek, which has been a legal standard for 83 years. So, you can thank them for making the sunrise-to-sunset grind an atypical work arrangement for most people whose title isn’t “junior investment analyst.”

And now the United Auto Workers (UAW) is pushing to shorten what we consider normal working hours.

Over 18,300 UAW members employed at GM, Ford, and Stellantis are on strike. They’re demanding a 36% pay bump across a four-year contract and annual cost-of-living wage adjustments, enhanced retirement benefits, and the abolition of a tenure-based tiered pay system. But arguably the most audacious part of the UAW’s “what-do-we-want?” chant is a 32-hour workweek without a pay cut.

While negotiation insiders concede this demand is unlikely to make it into the final contracts, it’s been met with worker enthusiasm and could help push the concept into the mainstream even though there’s no consensus about whether an abbreviated workweek is truly…workable.

Is this a new demand?

The idea of normalizing working less than 40 hours a week may sound like it originated on r/antiwork, but it’s actually over 80 years old. It was first floated in the 1930s when workers were making gains in the movement to work less.

First, they got it down to 40: Ford became the first major US company to institute a two-day weekend and shorten the workday to eight hours in 1926. Then, in 1938, the Fair Standards in Labor Act codified a 44-hour week (later reduced to 40 hours) as the norm for hourly workers, with any time beyond that meriting a time-and-a-half overtime pay rate.

Autoworkers pushed for an even shorter workweek, intensifying their demands as carmakers increasingly relied on machines to assemble vehicles in the 1940s. “Labor originally thought, ‘Yeah, this is our thing. We keep fighting for shorter hours and higher wages, and it kind of doesn’t end,’” Jonathan Cutler, a Wesleyan University sociologist who wrote a book on the topic, told Morning Brew.

But UAW leadership at the time ultimately chose to prioritize a peaceful relationship with the automakers over pursuing a shorter workweek, according to Cutler, who also said the issue was shelved until the emergence of the current generation of UAW leaders, who are more accountable to the rank-and-file members.

Does the 32-hour workweek make sense?

Companies in other industries that have recently tried the arrangement have been happy with the results.

• A few dozen UK businesses trialed a shortened workweek for the last six months of 2022 in an experiment organized by the advocacy group 4 Day Week Global. Many participating firms chose to continue testing fewer hours after the trial was over, and employees were overwhelmingly enthusiastic—15% said they would never go back to the five-day grind, no matter how much they’re paid.
• A similar pilot program in Iceland resulted in 90% of workers transitioning to reduced hours or getting other accommodations, per Euronews.

The co-founder of 4 Day Week Global, Andrew Barnes, said, “The four-day week is a proven strategy to increase productivity and profitability, and to work in a sustainable fashion.”

Not everyone’s convinced: Organizational behavior researcher Alexander Stajkovic noted that the UK study wasn’t peer-reviewed, and participating companies shortened the workweek by only 7% on average. And University of Texas Austin labor economist Daniel Hamermesh told Morning Brew he’s skeptical of positive results from pilot programs since they’re typically run by advocacy groups using white-collar employees and only include employers that were already inclined to try a shorter week. Both experts are doubtful that most workers can maintain the same output with fewer hours.

The fact that the 32-hour workweek remains rare proves that “most workers and most employers just don’t find it feasible or productive,” Hamermesh said.

Bottom line: Whether or not the current movement works out for auto workers, this likely won’t be the last big push for a shorter week, because workers love working less—a third of employees would ditch their current employer for a four-days-a-week opportunity, according to a Monster.com survey.—SK

Meal prep: The new cookbook by Dan Pelosi (aka @GrossyPelosi), Let’s Eat, will give you an endless supply of weeknight dinner recipes.

Listen: To dreamy rock music by multi-instrumentalist Luna Li.

Read: Emily Wilson’s new translation of The Iliad is one you won’t need to SparkNote.

Snack: Here’s a healthier alternative to everyone’s favorite chocolate hazelnut spread.

Stream: For a masterful combo of comedy and mystery, watch The After Party.

Follow: Homeworthy, for a daily dose of interior and exterior design.

Whatcha watchin’?: With Curiosity Stream, there’s always a documentary, series, or show to check out. And with new content dropping every week, there’s something for everyone. Stream for $4/month.*

^{*A message from our sponsor.}

It’s a big world out there. In this section, we’ll teleport you to an interesting location—and hopefully give you travel ideas in the process.

If you’re looking for a reason to visit Las Vegas that doesn’t require lying to a significant other about why you really want to go, we have one that takes dining to new heights.

The Fontainebleau Las Vegas, a $3.7 billion hotel nearly two decades in the making, announced it will open on the Strip on Dec. 13. Resort CEO Jeff Soffer broke ground on the hotel in 2007 but, due to the financial crisis, construction stopped the following year and the building remained dormant until 2021. The property changed hands several times over the years before Soffer reacquired it with new investors and finished what he started.

At 67 stories, the Fontainebleau Las Vegas is Nevada’s tallest occupiable building—hopefully it doesn’t cast a shadow over Terry Benedict’s pool—and will be vertically integrated with the casino separated from restaurants and other amenities.

Of the resort’s 36 restaurants, there’s one that’s a cut (of beef) above the rest. The hotel, a sister property of the Fontainebleau Miami Beach, will feature the South Beach staple Papi Steak, allowing its patrons to partake in the renowned Beef Case.

• When you order the $1,000 Wagyu tomahawk steak off the menu, it will be brought to you in a rhinestone-encrusted Beef Case that’s an homage to the briefcase from Pulp Fiction.
• You will be introduced to your raw steak with a presentation that includes strobe lights, an entrance song, and a branding of the steak. Would this be considered a meat-cute?

Since everyone knows a hotel room in Vegas is only there to provide a few hours of sleep before you head back out to do the fun stuff, here’s some of the fun stuff you could be doing before and after Fontainebleau opens:

• Formula 1 racing comes to town Nov. 16–18. If you can’t get tickets, here are the hotels that are expected to have the best views of the race.
• The Sphere at the Venetian—aka the building with the power to transform into a beautiful basketball or haunting eyeball—will open this Friday with the first of 25 performances by U2.
• Super Bowl LVIII (that’s 58, for everyone who doesn’t think about ancient Rome all the time) will take place at Allegiant Stadium on Feb. 11.

Even with the new hotel, Dubai is set to surpass Las Vegas as the city with the most hotel rooms by the end of this year, despite not having a single restaurant that serves a Beef Case.—DL

Last week, we asked: What Looney Tunes-esque trap would you have deployed to capture the Pennsylvania fugitive?

Here are our favorite responses:

• “I’d have a piece of paper reading, “What’s better: Sheetz or Wawa?” sitting underneath a big box propped open with a stick. Once he goes to give his opinion (and trust me, every Pennsylvanian has one), I’d pull the string I have attached to the stick and trap him in the box.”—Clayton from Apex, NC
• “I would find out what the fugitive likes to eat and put a large but undetectable amount of metal into it, leaving it in an area where he could be hiding. After said fugitive eats the meal, I get one of those strong ACME magnets attached to a helicopter, snag the bad guy, and fly him back to the prison.”—Dave from Kalamazoo, MI
• “Rakes in the yard…gets ’em every time.”—Angelica from San Diego, CA
• “I would play Billy Ray Cyrus’s ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ over and over, on the loudest volume possible, until he stands up, holding his ears, screaming.”—Roger

This week’s question

What’s the most underrated kitchen appliance?

Matty’s answer to get the juices flowing: “I can’t imagine going back to heating water in an old tea kettle on the stove. Absolutely not interested in living in a Laura Ingalls Wilder novel. I need an electric kettle to make sure my Americano is exactly 194 degrees.”

Share your response here.