Startup Stash - The Rewrite and Hybrid Favoritism 🤫

Food For Dogs? Yay. Humans? Nay.

In an ironic twist of food tech fate, lab-grown meat is carving out a market in the UK—not for humans, but for their pets.
 

Enter Chick Bites, the world’s first lab-grown meat dog treats, now on limited sale in a single UK pet store. Produced by the startup Meatly, the treats are made from a mix of plant-based ingredients and lab-grown chicken. The exact proportion of cultivated meat in the treats remains a mystery, but Meatly insists it’s “just as tasty and nutritious as traditional chicken.” At least, for dogs.
 

But while pet food companies forge ahead, cultivated meat for humans remains trapped in regulatory and financial limbo. In fact, the UK and Europe have remained stern on

Outside of Europe, several startups in the industry have been facing losses and shut downs. Examples: New Age Eats, SCiFi Foods, Upside Foods. Now cultivated meat is no longer available in any restaurants in the US, Singapore, or anywhere else. 

Despite billions of dollars in VC funding, the industry still hasn’t figured out a viable way to scale production commercially. Adding to that are the political roadblocks and regulatory changes with changing government.

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As companies call employees back to the office full-time, they’re also making some exceptions—but only for a special few.

According to a new report from consulting firm Korn Ferry, a “new hybrid hierarchy” is taking shape. Translation? Top talent gets to work remotely, while everyone else is stuck in rush-hour traffic five days a week.

And it’s not just about performance—this divide is also playing out along salary lines. Executives and high-wage workers often get more flexibility, while lower-wage employees are expected to clock in at their desks like it’s 2019.

At some companies, flexible schedules are being dangled as a perk for top performers, while mid-level employees get no such luck, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The problem? Besides the obvious unfairness, this setup isn’t exactly great for morale. When some people get work-life balance and others get a long commute, it’s bound to create frustration—and probably a few passive-aggressive Slack messages.

Recommerce And The Loss of a Circular Economy

Recommerce, at its inception, was never just about flipping used items for profit. It was a vision of regeneration — a far cry from the simplistic “reverse commerce” label it wears today.

The Rewrite: With Fewer Ethics

Google has quietly updated its public AI ethics policy, and let’s just say, it’s a lot more… flexible now. The company has removed its previous commitment to avoiding AI applications for weapons and mass surveillance, marking a significant shift in its stance on responsible AI use.
 

In its previous ethic document, Google explicitly stated that it wouldn’t develop technology intended to harm people or surveillance tools exceeding international norms—but that language has now mysteriously disappeared from the updated policy.
 

This reversal is especially striking given Google’s own history. Back in 2018, the company made a big show of its ethical stance, even walking away from a $10 billion Pentagon cloud computing deal because it couldn’t guarantee alignment with its AI Principles. At the time, more than 4,000 employees signed a petition demanding a clear commitment to never building warfare technology, and about a dozen resigned in protest.
 

But that was then. Now, as AI becomes a multi-trillion-dollar industry, Google appears to be reevaluating what “ethics” really means. And if that definition conveniently shifts in favor of lucrative defense and surveillance contracts? Well, let’s just say some principles are easier to rewrite than others.

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